Texas state parks map

The park system follows water and rock. In the east, parks sit on reservoirs and bayous — Caddo Lake, Lake Livingston, Martin Dies Jr. In the Hill Country they sit on spring-fed rivers: the Frio at Garner, the Guadalupe at Kerrville, the Pedernales below Johnson City. West of the Pecos the parks are large and dry, and the two biggest — Big Bend Ranch and Franklin Mountains — together cover more ground than the rest of the western parks combined. The Panhandle parks are cut into the Caprock Escarpment, where the plains drop several hundred feet in a few miles.

Several sites are state historic sites rather than parks: Goliad, Fort Griffin, Seminole Canyon and Hueco Tanks all preserve a specific structure, rock-art panel or battlefield rather than a landscape. Admission works the same way at all of them.

Day-use entry is charged per person, and at the busy parks — Enchanted Rock, Garner, Palo Duro Canyon, Pedernales Falls — the day passes for weekends and holidays are gone well before the gate opens. Reserving a day pass online before driving is the difference between getting in and being turned around. Camping is reserved separately and can be booked months out for spring weekends.

The Texas State Parks Pass is an annual pass covering entry for everyone in one vehicle. It does not reserve anything: at a park that has reached capacity a pass holder still has to wait. Hueco Tanks and Seminole Canyon limit numbers year round, and parts of both are open only on a guided tour.

Park hours, fees and closures change; check the Texas Parks & Wildlife site before a long drive.

Texas has little federal land compared with other western states, which is why the state park system carries so much of the load. The national units — Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, Padre Island and the rest — are listed on the national parks map. Several state parks sit right beside federal ground: Huntsville SP is surrounded by Sam Houston National Forest, Martin Dies Jr. is inside the Big Thicket, and Big Bend Ranch SP shares the river road with Big Bend National Park.

For water-based parks it helps to read the lakes map and the rivers map alongside this one, since most park lakes are reservoirs built for water supply or flood control rather than recreation. The elevation map explains why the western parks sit thousands of feet higher than the eastern ones.