Since its establishment in 1944, the national park has developed programs and facilities in line with its two-fold purpose of preserving and protecting natural and historic values while also enriching the lives of its visitors. Santa Elena Canyon and historic Castolon form an important sight-seeing area in the southwestern corner of the park, and the road from Panther Junction to Santa Elena is probably the most scenic in the park. The Basin lies in the heart of the Chisos Mountains. This beautiful valley has complete motel, dining, and camping facilities, and an amphitheater where park naturalists give evening programs. The Rio Grande Village-Boquillas area on the southeast side of the park offers delightful camping, a visit to the nearby Mexican village of Boquillas, and a view of Boquillas Canyon’s magnificent portal. More than 175 kilometers (110 miles) of paved park roads link major sites and well-kept hiking, horse, and nature trails will take you to other spectacular areas. For properly equipped desert buffs, primitive backcountry roads and trails offer exciting opportunities for true wilderness adventure. But whether you come to the park for a weekend or a week, for vistas and views, or for a close-up look at nature and its mysteries, you will find that Big Bend is more than the sum of its parts. When the setting sun paints the Sierra del Carmen red and blue and purple, you feel both Big Bend’s unity with all Earth processes and its wonderful uniqueness. In those many-colored cliffs hung above the desert, you see rainbows waiting ripe with promise for the miracle of rain. 2 From the Rio to the Chisos _Text by Helen Moss_ [Illustration: Try to make it to the Window in the Chisos for the archetypal Big Bend sunset!] [Illustration: Adapting to desert dryness, creosotebushes space themselves to exploit available moisture. Their roots produce root toxins that may discourage competition from other plants.] A World of Difference Stand on the bald knob of Emory Peak and you’ll see the Chihuahuan Desert rolled out below you with wave upon wave of mesas and mountains reaching out to the rim of the world. You can see for hundreds of kilometers in all directions. Not a house, not another human being, no living thing moves. Big Bend looks round, complete, as timeless and permanent as planet Earth itself and as beautiful and barren as the Moon. But Big Bend isn’t just one world, and it isn’t lifeless. It is many different worlds inhabited by countless creatures both great and small pursuing an extraordinary variety of lifestyles. These worlds may be as narrow as the mosquitofish’s spring-fed pool, as wide as the cougar’s hunting range, as dry as the pocket mouse’s burrow, as wet as the beaver’s pond, as open as the mule deer’s golden grassland, or as canopied as the Colima warbler’s forested canyon.