Known as a place of stark beauty, dramatic geographic dimension, and challenging desert terrain, Big Bend National Park is located in West Texas on the north bank of the Rio Grande, adjacent to the Mexican states of Coahuila and Chihuahua. Although a place of natural grandeur, the unique location of this 118-mile long, 1.5 million-acre corridor has led to many challenges between the United States and Mexico, two nations who share one ecosystem but inhabit different political worlds.

Big Bend National Park explores the cultural and diplomatic history of this transborder region that was designated a national park on the US side and the site of a long-hoped-for “international peace park” on the other. Michael Welsh demonstrates the challenges faced and lessons learned by both the US and Mexico as they struggled against political and environmental vicissitudes in their attempts to realize the creation of a shared frontier.

Geopolitical and environmental conflicts such as Cold War fears, immigration, the war on drugs, international water rights, and more stringent American border security measures after 9/11 all hindered relations between the two countries. But more recently, renewed cooperation and ongoing diplomatic relations have led to new developments. Mexican park personnel began assisting American officials with efforts to re-wild the American side of the river with animal species that had been eliminated, and the Obama administration relaxed some post-9/11 restrictions, allowing American visitors to cross over to the Mexican park and its nearby towns.

The ambition of developing a park for peace has yet to materialize, even as individuals and their governments continue to work toward an accord. Big Bend National Park provides a greater understanding of this complex borderland and hopes to help fulfill the aspiration of creating a shared ecosystem and the dream of a park for peace.

When the cactuses bloom in Big Bend National Park, their vivid pinks and purples, reds and yellows bring an unforgettable beauty to the rugged Chihuahuan Desert landscape. In fact, many people visit the park just see the cactus blossoms and the wildflowers. If you're one of them, this book will increase your enjoyment by helping you identify the wonders at your feet. And if you've never been to Big Bend when the cactuses are blooming, you'll discover here what you've been missing.

Douglas B. Evans describes twelve kinds of cactus—living rock, topflower, stout-spined, hedgehog, pineapple, button, barrel, fishhook, nipple, chollas and pricklypears, and Texas nipple—and their individual species known to occur in the park. Color photographs taken by Doris Evans and Ro Wauer accompany the species descriptions. As you hike or drive through the park, you can identify most of the cactuses you see simply by leafing through these splendid pictures and then checking the descriptions, which indicate the cactuses' characteristic features and habitat.

To make the book even more useful, Evans also briefly defines the parts of a cactus, explains how scientific names work, and offers a quick introduction to the geography and ecology of Big Bend National Park and the Chihuahuan Desert. With this information, you'll enjoy not only seeing the cactuses of the Big Bend but also being able to tell one from another and knowing just what makes each one special.

A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a 23-foot travel trailer in tow, she anticipated no more than a civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized, "From the sheltered life of a city girl of moderate circumstances, I too would have to face the reality of frontier living."

In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family's first years (1944-1946) in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking-and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months' long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

A breathtaking country of rugged mountain peaks, uninhabited desert, and spectacular river canyons, Big Bend is one of the United States' most remote national parks and among Texas' most popular tourist attractions. Located in the great bend of the Rio Grande that separates Texas and Mexico, the park comprises some 800,000 acres, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, and draws over 300,000 visitors each year.

The Story of Big Bend National Park offers a comprehensive, highly readable history of the park from before its founding in 1944 up to the present. John Jameson opens with a fascinating look at the mighty efforts involved in persuading Washington officials and local landowners that such a park was needed. He details how money was raised and land acquired, as well as how the park was publicized and developed for visitors. Moving into the present, he discusses such issues as natural resource management, predator protection in the park, and challenges to land, water, and air. Along the way, he paints colorful portraits of many individuals, from area residents to park rangers to Lady Bird Johnson, whose 1966 float trip down the Rio Grande brought the park to national attention.

This history will be required reading for all visitors and prospective visitors to Big Bend National Park. For everyone concerned about our national parks, it makes a persuasive case for continued funding and wise stewardship of the parks as they face the twin pressures of skyrocketing attendance and declining budgets.