Big Bend National Park

Visit Big Bend
Lajitas, Texas (Brewster County)
Photo Credit: TEXScout / Texas Film Commission

In the Big Bend area of West Texas, craggy canyons tower over the mighty Rio Grande, separating the United States from Mexico. The national park offers a blissful coexistence of mountain terrain and desert plains, with entire mesas covered with branchy ocotillo plants and blooming yucca reaching sky high. More than a national park and state park, Big Bend is a region and a way of life.

Visit Big Bend

Films Featured

Barbarosa (1982)
- In the film, an inexperienced farm boy, Karl Westover (Gary Busey), runs away from home after unintentionally killing a neighbor whose family pursues him for vengeance. His life is saved in the desert by the legendary gunman Barbarosa (Willie Nelson), and we soon find out that Barbarosa himself is in danger of enemies in pursuit. The unlikely pair must team up in order to survive the wilds of West Texas.
All the Pretty Horses (2000)
- The beautiful, unforgiving Texas landscape is as much a character as John Grady Cole (Matt Damon), Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas), or Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black). The filmmakers made it a priority to capture the essence of the novel's love of landscape. The majestic mountains, craggy rock formations, deep gorges and twisting arroyos of the Big Bend terrain provided the perfect background for the first leg of John Grady and Lacey Rawlins' journey southward towards the Rio Grande and their fateful encounter with Jimmy Blevins.
Three Burials (2005)
- Much of Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was filmed on-site in Big Bend National Park. In one scene, after Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), a border patrol officer, shoots Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo), an illegal immigrant and friend of Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones). Pete kidnaps Mike and leads him out into the vast expanses of Southwest Texas in search of Melquiades' hometown, Jimenez.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
- After stumbling upon the aftermath of a shootout in the Texas desert and taking the cash he finds, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) returns to the scene to give water to one of the wounded men. When he arrives, he is pursued by two assailants but manages to escape into the wilderness. Big Bend was used as the setting for the suspenseful chase, which ends after Moss swims across a river, barely escaping to safety.