Guadalupe Mountains

Frijole Ranch, Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Today our primary touristy thingy was to visit Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Our trip to the Panhandle and Plains Museum proved to be a good introduction to this park. The Guadalupe Mountains are a limestone formation which used to be a reef built up with algae and other small crustaceans. This was at the edge of a vast sea that engulfed most of Western Texas. We took a couple of short hikes here – the first explained the geology and vegetation of this area. This is also the site of the Pinery Stagecoach Station – one of the stations positioned every 20 miles on the Butterfield Overland mail route between St. Louis and San Francisco. The stages would cover this 2100 mile route in 25 days, delivering the mail (before the Pony Express). Our second site was the Frijole Ranch, which at one time had a orchard with quite a few varieties of fruit – apples, cherries, etc. Here there is a natural spring and some protection from the winds, since the mountains rise nearby.