Sight · Big Bend National Park
Towering dagger yuccas make the long dirt-road detour count.
Overview
Dagger Flat Yucca Forest is the remote grove at the end of Dagger Flat Auto Trail, in the Deadhorse Mountains. It is the best place in Big Bend to see the largest concentration of giant dagger yuccas, and it is worth the detour if you like unusual desert plants. The road turnoff is 13 miles north of Panther Junction; the dirt-road tour is seven miles each way, or 14 miles out and back, and takes at least two hours. The first two miles suit any vehicle; high clearance is recommended beyond them. Sandy, rocky stretches can become difficult or impassable after rain, so check conditions before setting out.
Parkwolf’s verdictWorth the dirt-road detour?Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Big Bend Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Big Bend National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Big Bend audio tourRecorded for this place
Dagger Flat Yucca Forest“You're approaching Dagger Flat Yucca Forest, the grove at the end of the auto trail. Stop for a few steps among the plants; there's no separate hike to reach them.”
Plays as you drive up to Dagger Flat Yucca Forest in the Parkwolf Big Bend Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
The self-guided drive has 19 numbered markers, and this is the last one: the road ends beside the grove. You do not need a separate hike to reach the yuccas; a few steps take you among them. This is a place to slow down and look at the trunks and crowns rather than hurry straight back to the car.
Giant dagger yucca (Yucca faxoniana) grows thickly in the Deadhorse Mountains and is rare elsewhere in the park. It favors the limestone soil here. These are tree-like succulents: large specimens can reach 30 feet tall and two feet across, giving the grove the scale of a small forest rather than a patch of low desert plants.
Late spring is the best bet for bloom, roughly April through June. The yuccas send up branched stalks with hundreds of creamy white flowers, each as long as four inches; a stalk carrying flowers can weigh up to 70 pounds. The pronuba moth is part of the story: the female carries pollen between flowers as she lays eggs, and the larvae eat some developing seeds while leaving enough for the next generation of yuccas and moths.
Walk a few steps into the stand and put a tall yucca or flower stalk in the foreground, with more of the grove and the slope behind it. That gives the plants scale and shows why this endpoint is known for the largest concentration, instead of turning the photo into a close-up of one rosette.
Wildlife
377 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
329 sightingsCollared PeccaryMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
500 sightingsWhite-tailed DeerMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
985 sightingsRoadrunnerMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
228 sightingsRavenMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
264 sightingsTurkey VultureMost seen around noonSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Big Bend. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Parkwolf’s Big Bend ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
