Sight · Big Bend National Park
A roadside arrival photo on a route used for centuries.
Overview
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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 area
The Comanche Trail at Persimmon Gap“The low pass at Persimmon Gap carried the Comanche Trail long before it carried a paved road. In the eighteen hundreds, Comanche raiding parties traveled through this opening toward settlements in northern Mexico.”
Plays on the road 0.1 mi from Persimmon Gap Entrance Sign 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
Persimmon Gap Entrance Sign marks Big Bend's northern entrance on Highway 385, about 40 miles south of Marathon. Set at the base of a low saddle beside a paved pullout, it's an easy arrival or departure photo stop. The separate Persimmon Gap Visitor Center is farther south, so use the sign's location if this is the stop you want.
Open country stretches north and east from the sign. From the pullout, frame the sign with the road and low hills; a tight crop loses the sense of a pass. The stop is listed as wheelchair accessible.
Persimmon Gap is a low pass through the Santiago Mountains. The corridor has carried people into and out of Big Bend country for centuries; before the modern road, feet and hooves wore the route through. That long history gives this small entrance marker more of a story than a quick arrival photo.
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.
Keep exploring
ModerateDog Canyon Trail4 mi · 2.5 hr · 4.2 mi awayA mostly level desert walk to the limestone walls of Dog Canyon.
ModerateDevil’s Den Trail7.5 mi · 5 hr · 4.2 mi awayA narrow limestone slot from a long desert rim walk.Parkwolf’s Big Bend ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
