If you are looking for a wild west experience, Big Bend Ranch State Park has an abundance of options. Currently the park offers more than 66 miles of trails with many more in development. In addition to primitive roadside and backcountry campsites, the park also has food, lodging and Wi-Fi available at the Saucedo Complex. The three-bedroom "Big House" provides luxury accommodations that sleep eight and has a full kitchen. Meal service can also be arranged. Larger groups can be accommodated at the casual Sauceda Lodge Bunk House.

With twenty-three miles of Rio Grande/Rio Bravo frontage Big Bend Ranch makes an excellent starting point for paddling excursions. Multi-use recreational activities such as hiking, backpacking, horseback riding and mountain biking is available on trails along River Road and in the interior. You can fish in the Rio Grande. The dark skies offer amazing stargazing opportunities. With over 300 bird species the area is a birders paradise.

The park has picnic areas along the scenic River Road and offers guided jeep/four-wheel and horseback tours. Mountain bike and horse rentals are available at Sauceda. In addition to many other events the park also offers a semi-annual longhorn cattle roundup.

Permits are required for use of Primitive Road and Front Country Campsites and for Backcountry Zone Camping. Day Use visitors are required to obtain a free permit for motorized entry into the Primitive Road Zone.

Big Bend Ranch Sate Park offers some of the most interesting archeology and history in the region. There are presently over 500 documented sites on the park. Many of the known sites are located near water sources but sites also occur on upland areas away from any obvious drainages, springs or tinajas. There is both need and potential at BBRSP for additional archaeological research to be conducted.

The earliest artifacts identified within BBRSP indicate that Native Americans traversed the area as early as perhaps 11,000 years ago, and continued to do so well into the 19th century. Native American site types attributable to the prehistoric era include open campsites, open camps associated with rock shelters, rock shelters, quarries, lithic scatters, Late Prehistoric Cielo complex (ca. A.D. 1250-1680) sites, rock art sites (primarily pictographs, or rock paintings) and special-use or ritual sites.

Many pictographs that have been recorded within the Park are monochromatic red, black, or white. Bichrome and polychrome (red, black, yellow, white) figures also occur. The figures include humans, animals, insects, tally marks, double zigzags, hourglass chains, star patterns and various other abstract motifs. Most of these pictographs were probably painted during the Late Archaic (ca. 1000 B.C. - A.D. 1000) or Late Prehistoric (A.D. 1000 - 1535) periods. Other pictographs represented by human figures on horses, longhorn cattle, Spanish saddles and crosses date to the Protohistoric (ca. A.D. 1535-1700) period or later.

By the 1880's several area ranches had been established and cattle, goats and sheep became a common sight on the landscape. The local communities of Terlingua and Shafter quickly sprang up in the late 19th- and early 20th centuries with the discoveries of silver and cinnabar. No silver was mined within the boundaries of present-day park, but there are several former cinnabar mines and prospects in the area. Another industrial endeavor pursued in the area was rendering of wax from the native candelilla plant. The ruins of wax-rendering operations, most of which probably date to the first half of the twentieth century, can be seen in the eastern portion of the park.

In addition to archeological sites, a number of extant historic structures are located within BBRSP. Among these structures are the buildings at the La Sauceda Ranch complex. The Sauceda ranch house or the "Big House" as it is known today, was constructed in 1908 and remodeled in the 1940's. Other structures of the historic Sauceda Ranch complex include a former bunkhouse, wool barn, tack barn, stock tank, corrals and various other features.