In Texas, Seeing the West as It Was

A VISIT to Guadalupe Mountains National Park is a vivid reminder that not all of the West was won and an illustration of why that’s a very good thing. The untamed West in all its cranky, craggy, dusty, arid majesty seems to have been frozen in amber in this park, a windswept wedge of 86,000 acres of West Texas mountain desert on the border with New Mexico. For the latter-day pioneer willing to find and make peace with this remote and inhospitable place, the rewards stimulate the senses and challenge the imagination. The park is a repository of Texas superlatives that even most Texans are not aware of: the state’s highest point, Guadalupe Peak, at a challenging but climbable 8,749 feet; what is commonly referred to as its most beautiful single spot, postcard-picturesque McKittrick Canyon; and one of the most striking geological formations anywhere, an imposing slab of limestone known (like its more famous granite cousin at Yosemite National Park) as El Capitan. The one amenity that Guadalupe does have is a variety of hiking experiences. On our first day, we took the tame trek through McKittrick Canyon, a two-and-a-half-mile loop. The turning point was at a modest stone lodge built by the oilman Wallace Pratt, who bought 16,000 acres of this land in the early 20th century. Pratt’s holdings, along with those of a rancher named J. C. Hunter, eventually formed the basis of the national park...NYTimes