50 Fun Facts About Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Guadalupe Mountains National Park lies about 90 miles east of which Texas city?

It sits hard against the New Mexico line in far West Texas, roughly 50 miles southwest of Carlsbad.

How high is Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas?

It rises more than 3,000 feet above the desert floor; the 8.4-mile round-trip trail is rated very strenuous.

What marks the summit of Guadalupe Peak?

American Airlines erected it in 1958 for the centenary of the stagecoach mail line that passed south of the mountain; its three faces carry the airline's logo, a Postal Service tribute and a Boy Scouts compass.

Guadalupe Peak is also known by what alternative name?

The peak is about 50 miles southwest of Carlsbad, New Mexico, and the trail to the top climbs some 3,000 feet in 4.25 miles.

El Capitan, the range's southern tip and a landmark to travellers, looms over which highway at the park?

Its thousand-foot cliff is pure Capitan limestone, and its stark outline is one of the iconic images of the Trans-Pecos.

The Guadalupe Mountains are an exposed portion of what?

The Capitan Reef, built by tiny sea creatures around an inland sea, is now considered one of the best-preserved fossil reefs in the world.

The Capitan Reef ringed which vanished inland ocean during the Permian?

When its outlet silted up the sea evaporated, leaving layers of gypsum, halite and potash salts that buried the reef for 150 million years.

Unlike modern coral reefs, the Capitan Reef was built mainly by which organisms?

Tiny colonial bryozoans helped too, and encrusting organisms cemented the whole mass into rock; the end-Permian extinction wiped most of the builders out.

Roughly how long is the Capitan Reef Barrier, of which the Guadalupes are one exposed section?

Other portions surface in the Apache and Glass Mountains; most of it still lies buried under the Permian Basin oilfields.

The Guadalupe Mountains lend their name to which subdivision of the Permian period?

The International Commission on Stratigraphy dates it to roughly 272 to 260 million years ago.

The dark, organic-rich basin sediments in front of the ancient reef eventually turned into what?

That is why the Permian Basin around the park is one of the richest petroleum provinces on Earth.

In which year was Guadalupe Mountains National Park dedicated and opened to the public?

Lyndon Johnson had signed the establishing act in 1966; Congress made 46,850 acres of the park wilderness in 1978.

Which president signed the act establishing Guadalupe Mountains National Park on October 15, 1966?

It came seven years after Wallace Pratt donated nearly 5,000 acres of his McKittrick Canyon ranch to the Park Service.

Wallace Pratt, who donated McKittrick Canyon, was what by profession?

He was Humble Oil's first geologist in 1918 and proved that geology, not luck, found oil; Standard Oil later named a tanker after him.

Wallace Pratt's second house in the park, built to resemble an oil tanker, is known by what name?

He and his wife, the suffragist Iris Calderhead, summered in the canyon until 1960.

The McKittrick Canyon Trail reaches Wallace Pratt's stone lodge after roughly how many miles?

The canyon is a day-use area with limited hours, reached by a 4.2-mile gated side road off the highway.

McKittrick Canyon is famous each autumn for the turning leaves of which tree?

Oaks and ash join in, and the colour is all the more striking against the surrounding desert.

Which unusual tree with red bark that curls and peels off each year grows in the park's canyons?

It grows scattered among yuccas, sotol and ocotillo in the lower canyon before the maples take over.

McKittrick Canyon is thought to be named after Felix McKittrick, who did what there in the 1870s?

He was among the first European settlers in the range; the first permanent ranch house went up nearby in 1876.

What is the only significant surface water in the mostly limestone range?

Rain vanishes into the porous rock, which is why the uplands have almost no streams and why great caves formed nearby.

Which Apache band harvested agave in the Guadalupes and takes its name from that plant?

Mescalero means mescal-maker in Spanish; their agave roasting pits can still be found in the park.

Which Army regiment was sent to the Guadalupes after the Civil War to stop raids on the mail route?

These Buffalo Soldiers under Lt. H.B. Cushing destroyed two Apache camps in the winter of 1869.

The Pinery, whose ruins stand near the Pine Springs visitor center, served which stage line?

Built in 1858, it was the highest station on the 2,800-mile St. Louis to San Francisco route.

How long did stagecoaches use the Pinery Station before the route moved south past Fort Davis?

The new road was better protected from Apache attacks; ten Guadalupe-route stations were abandoned and 16 added on the Fort Trail.

What meal did the Pinery Station famously serve to stage drivers and passengers?

Passengers rode three abreast with knees interlocked, baggage on laps and mailbags under their feet, covering about 120 miles a day.

How thick were the limestone-and-adobe walls of the Pinery Station, built to withstand raids?

They stood 11 feet high around a corral and a three-room station house; the site had been a military camp since 1849.

Which restored 1876 ranch in the park houses a museum and is the Smith Spring trailhead?

It served as the region's community center and post office from 1916 to 1942 and is the most complete early ranch complex in the range.

Who built the first permanent ranch house in the Guadalupes in 1876?

Later occupants the Smiths called it Spring Hill Ranch and ran a truck farm; the complex joined the National Register in 1978.

In which year was the park's Williams Ranch House, reached only by a rough 4WD road, built?

It is named for James Adolphus Williams, one of its inhabitants; a Van Horn judge later consolidated most local ranches into one spread.

The dunes on the park's west side are made of what?

They lie in the Salt Basin below the western escarpment, where a fault dropped the valley floor about 1,000 feet relative to El Capitan.

Which desert surrounds the Guadalupe Mountains?

The mountains rise more than 3,000 feet above its floor, and the park has three ecosystems, from salt flats to montane forest above 7,000 feet.

Roughly how big is Guadalupe Mountains National Park?

About 46,850 of those acres have been designated wilderness since 1978.

Which other national park lies about 25 miles north in the same mountain range?

Groundwater dissolving the reef limestone carved its caves, as well as Lechuguilla Cave nearby.

Dog Canyon, the park's remote northern campground, is reached via Carlsbad or which tiny Texas town?

There is no road across the park, so getting from Pine Springs to Dog Canyon means a long drive around through New Mexico.

How many species of bat live in the park?

They share the range with elk, javelina, black bears, mountain lions and hog-nosed skunks.

Which rare flower, endemic to the park, is named for the range?

Viola guadalupensis is one of over 1,000 plant species recorded in the park.

Which conifers dominate the park's alpine areas above 7,000 feet?

Southwestern white pine, alligator juniper and small stands of quaking aspen grow with them, a sky island above the desert.

Roughly how long have people lived in the Guadalupe Mountains, judging by archaeological evidence?

Projectile points, baskets, pottery and rock art turn up in the range's many caves and alcoves.

Who was the only through passenger on the first westbound Butterfield stage in September 1858?

He wrote that nature had saved all her ruggedness to pile it up in the form of Guadalupe Peak.

Before the Butterfield line, how did mail reach California from the East Coast?

The stage cut the trip to a maximum of 25 days, running biweekly with about 200 stations along the way.

How high is Guadalupe Pass, which the Butterfield stage crossed beside the Pinery?

That made the Pinery the highest station on the entire route.

El Capitan is the seventh-highest peak in Texas; how tall is it?

The uplift that exposed the reef about 80 million years ago left the peak towering 1,000 feet above the salt-flat graben to its west.

What is the tectonic event, beginning about 80 million years ago, that lifted the buried reef into today's mountains?

Later faulting along the western escarpment raised the block more than two miles from where it lay below sea level.

Which pair of creatures went extinct at the end of the Permian, leaving the Capitan Reef community unique?

The end-Permian event was the greatest mass extinction of all time; sponges nearly vanished too and most reef-building algae died out.

Roughly how many acres of the park did Congress designate as wilderness in 1978?

That is more than half of the park's roughly 86,000 acres.

Geologist Wallace Pratt worked for which oil firm when he bought McKittrick Canyon land in 1921?

He and his family used the two houses he built as summer homes until 1960, then donated about 6,000 acres to the park.

Frijole Ranch House was the region's community center and what else from 1916 to 1942?

Built by the Rader brothers in 1876, it was the only major building in the region and houses a cultural museum.

Which Van Horn judge consolidated the area's small ranches into the Guadalupe Mountain Ranch?

Williams Ranch House, built in 1908, was named for one of its inhabitants, James Adolphus Williams.

How does the Köppen system classify the climate of Guadalupe Mountains National Park?

Summers are relatively hot, winters bring snow, sleet and frequent high wind warnings, and late-summer monsoons produce thunderstorms.

Which lieutenant destroyed two Mescalero Apache camps in the Guadalupes in the winter of 1869?

The Mescalero were eventually driven out of the mountains and onto US reservations.