Visitors to Big Bend National Park will now have another fall and winter to enjoy the popular Chisos Basin area before it closes for a yearslong construction project.
Park officials announced Wednesday that a project to tear down and rebuild the Chisos Mountains Lodge, originally set to begin this month, has been pushed to May 2026.
“The beginning of May generally marks the start of Big Bend’s hot season, and visitation to the park traditionally begins to greatly decrease at that time,” the park said in a statement.
The $22 million plan, unveiled in 2022, was initially set to begin earlier this year but has been delayed multiple times. The project includes a complete rebuild of the more than 60-year-old lodge and water infrastructure upgrades within the Chisos Basin. It’s expected to take at least two years to complete.
When construction begins, the majority of the basin area – including its campground, trails and visitor services – will be closed.
Park officials also said Wednesday “lodging options” would reopen in the Chisos Basin in the coming months, though details were not immediately clear. The existing lodge, operated by Aramark, has been closed since June, and the park referred visitors to the company’s lodge website for further announcements. An Aramark spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the plan.
The latest delay comes after the park opened the project to bids from private contractors in July.
Don Corrick, Big Bend’s chief of interpretation and visitor services, said in an email officials decided to move the project’s start date to allow more time for the bids process and to gear up for building.
Given the expected time it will take to review bids, award a contract, hire subcontractors and take other steps toward construction, Corrick said the National Park Service “determined that it was in the best interest of all stakeholders to keep the Chisos Basin open to the public for the high visitation season this coming winter and spring.”
Contractors currently have until August 29 to submit proposals. Corrick said the park won’t know how many bids were submitted until after the deadline, but officials did host several construction firms in July and have heard from multiple interested companies.
Brewster County Judge Greg Henington, the county’s top elected official, said he’s not surprised by the string of delays, given the inherent challenges of construction in one of the nation’s most far flung regions.
“We’ve kind of joked internally that everything takes twice as long in Big Bend as it does anywhere else on the planet,” he said.
Henington, who ran a local river outfitter for more than three decades, said keeping the Chisos Basin open for another busy season will no doubt benefit the local tourism economy. Still, he said he thinks the eventual closure of the popular mountain area of the park won’t significantly slow tourist traffic to the broader region.
“I don’t think it has a major impact on people’s interest in visiting the Big Bend [area],” he said. “Certainly, the Chisos is a wonderful place, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it makes a blip on the radar.”
Park officials have said that whenever the project does start and the basin area closes to visitors, they will assess which areas can be safely reopened as construction moves along.
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