Big Bend is my favorite place in Texas. So I checked 48 lodging websites around it.

I try to get out to Big Bend National Park or Big Bend Ranch State Park three or four times a year, almost always between October and March. After spring break it's too hot to be in the desert, especially if you're camping, and we usually are, with our small off-road trailer. Some trips are the whole family. Some are just my wife and me, and a few of those we've skipped the trailer for a yurt, a cabin or a cave in Terlingua. Every September I'm also out in Fort Davis for Cycle Fest.

So this study is personal. The hikes and rides we keep going back for are at the end, after the numbers.

For the study, I looked at every property the way a guest planning a trip would, on a phone. Out here, that phone often has one bar or none, which makes a heavy homepage cost even more.

Big Bend National Park takes in the Chisos Mountains, a huge stretch of Chihuahuan Desert and a long run of the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. To the west is Big Bend Ranch State Park, the largest state park in Texas. FM 170, the River Road, runs along its southern edge past Closed Canyon and the Hoodoos. Most of the park sits north of the road, in rugged backcountry around the Sauceda Ranger Station and the Solitario, reached by 27 miles of dirt road.

It's also one of the darkest places you can go. Both parks are International Dark Sky Parks, and both sit inside the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, which DarkSky International designated in 2022 and calls the world's largest. For a lot of guests, the night sky is the reason they come.

Terlingua and Study Butte sit between the two parks. Terlingua grew up around quicksilver mining, and its Ghost Town is now a mix of ruins, restaurants and places to stay. Lodging out here is almost all independent: casitas, cabins, old motels, glamping, RV parks and a few historic hotels. The nearest bigger towns, Alpine, Marfa and Marathon, are an hour or more north, where many visitors stay on the way in.

This is the second-largest study in the series, after the Hill Country, but still small, so I'm giving counts instead of percentages. Speed was middle of the pack, and the Book buttons were the best of any area so far. The gap is the same quiet one as everywhere else. Very few of these sites tell Google or AI tools what they are.

The biggest surprise was the split. The websites in Terlingua and Study Butte, the towns right outside the park, were faster and lighter than those in Alpine, Marfa and Marathon. Every site that scored 90 or higher was near the park. In the gateway towns, the median homepage took nearly twice as long to show its main content.

The heaviest homepages were in the gateway towns, especially Marfa, where a lot of places sell a look as much as a room. One Marfa homepage weighed 32.2 MB and took 100 seconds to finish loading in Google's phone test, the heaviest in any study so far. Big, beautiful photos and background video are part of selling a stay like that. They just need to be sized for a phone.

The median phone score was 63, the same as the Buffalo River. 11 of 47 scored under 50, and 3 reached 90 or higher.

The main content was slow to show up on most sites. Google wants it on screen within 2.5 seconds, and only 3 sites made it. The median was 10.4 seconds, and 25 sites took more than 10.

The median homepage weighed 3.4 MB. 11 came in at 2 MB or less, and 3 weighed more than 10 MB, including that 32.2 MB homepage in Marfa.

That matters more here than almost anywhere. Cell service around Big Bend is spotty, and a guest checking dates from the road may be on one bar. My note on why a vacation rental website loads slow shows how to lighten a homepage without losing the view.

This was the best result of any study so far. Of the 40 homepages with Book links, none were broken. 35 sent every one to a booking page or a page on their own site. The check flagged four links as going nowhere, and I tapped each one by hand. All four worked: one jumps to a booking section further down, one opens a booking pop-up, and two open a menu or a question.

The other 5 sent guests from the property's own website to Airbnb. A guest who already found your site and wants to book is the last person you want to hand back to Airbnb, where other listings are one tap away.

A few smaller things showed up too. One site's Book links still open on check-in dates from 2022 and 2023, which is what happens to a link with dates baked in. The free booking link builder covers that. Another property's homepage redirects to a WordPress staging address instead of its own domain.

The booking software varied, and most of it was easy to spot. Several places use Cloudbeds, innRoad or ResNexus. The RV parks use Campspot, and others use Lodgify or ThinkReservations. Like every study so far, the booking software wasn't the problem. The website around it was.

Most set a page title and description. 26 of 47 had a tap-to-call phone number and 17 had an email link, but 17 had neither, so a guest on a phone had no one-tap way to reach them. Only 3 had a phone link, an email link and lodging details all together.

Just 8 of 47 homepages had the small piece of structured data that tells Google and AI tools this is a place to stay. In Terlingua and Study Butte it was 3 of 30. When someone asks ChatGPT where to stay near Big Bend, those few lines of code are the difference between being understood and being guessed at.

This is the fourth study in the series, after 97 Hill Country lodging websites, 31 around Fiery Gizzard and 41 around the Buffalo River. Big Bend tied the Buffalo River for the best median phone score, 63, and on their own, Terlingua and Study Butte would be the fastest area yet, at 67.

The Book buttons were the best of the four, with none broken. The code that tells Google what you are is still missing almost everywhere, the same as in every other area.

If you run a casita, cabin, motel, glamping site or RV park near Big Bend, start here:

1. Tell Google what you are. Add lodging details to your page code. Only 8 of 47 sites here did, so it's an easy way to stand out to Google and AI tools.
2. Build for one bar of service. Size photos for a phone, skip background video, and keep the homepage light. Your guests are often checking from the road.
3. Send your Book button to your own booking page. If a guest found your website, don't send them back to Airbnb.
4. Answer the Big Bend questions. How far to the park entrance, whether there's Wi-Fi or cell service, where to get gas and groceries, and how check-in works after dark. Those are the questions guests and AI tools are asking.

These are a few favorites from our trips, with the GPS tracks from my watch.

The Window Trail drops from the Chisos Basin to a narrow pour-off where the basin drains out toward the desert. I hiked it the morning after a heavy rainstorm. Creeks that are usually dry were running, and water was seeping and spilling off the sides of the mountains in small waterfalls.

Distance

4.56 miDistance

Time

1:39Time

And sunny

72°And sunny

The big one was the South Rim and Emory Peak in a single loop from the Basin. We went counterclockwise, up the Laguna Meadows Trail to the South Rim Trail, and had lunch on the edge of the rim. From there we followed the South Rim Trail to Boot Canyon, climbed out of the canyon to the junction with the Emory Peak and Pinnacles trails, went out and back to the top of Emory Peak, and came down the Pinnacles Trail to the Basin.

Distance

16.01 miDistance

Time

8:33Time

Climbing

3,932 ftClimbing

In the interior of Big Bend Ranch, we camped at Rincon 1 and Rincon 2 in Fresno Canyon and rode mountain bikes down the canyon and back. The route passes the Crawford-Smith Ranch, an old homestead. Brothers James and Guy Crawford ranched there from 1914 to 1930, and the Smith family ran it until 1946, growing fruit and vegetables, raising goats and rendering wax from candelilla plants. Farther along, the singletrack climbs high where it meets the Epic Trail, then drops back down near a set of seasonal falls. I've seen them dry, and I've seen them running. This time there was enough water to filter.

Distance

8.96 miDistance

Time

2:40Time

Climbing

494 ftClimbing

North of the parks, Fort Davis hosts Cycle Fest, a supported ride we do every September. The big day leaves the Prude Ranch, a guest ranch just outside Fort Davis, and follows the Davis Mountains Scenic Loop, one of the best-known drives in Texas. It runs through Fort Davis, heads south toward Marfa, turns right and circles the west side of the mountains out toward Valentine, then climbs up and over past McDonald Observatory and drops back to the ranch.

Distance

74.83 miDistance

Time

4:53Time

Climbing

4,824 ftClimbing

Which properties. I started with the lodging directory from Visit Big Bend, run by the Brewster County Tourism Council, Visit Marfa's Stay page and Visit Alpine's hotel and B&B listings. Then I ran Google searches for lodging, cabins, casitas, glamping, RV parks and vacation rentals in Terlingua and Study Butte. I kept independent properties with their own website: 30 in Terlingua and Study Butte, including the Ghost Town and Terlingua Ranch, 11 in Marfa, 5 in Alpine and 2 in Marathon. I left out Airbnb- and Vrbo-only listings, booking and listing sites, chains, lodging inside the national park, Big Bend Station (run by the park's concessioner), a few larger resorts and hotels, one hotel that's part of a multi-state group, RV parks with no website of their own, and three sites that were down or couldn't be reached when I checked.

What I checked. Each homepage went through the Firsthand Stays website check, on November 1 and 2, 2026. It runs Google PageSpeed Insights on a simulated phone, then reads the homepage like a phone browser would, and follows each Book, Reserve and Availability link to see where it leads. When Google's speed test didn't finish, I ran it again, then ran it directly in PageSpeed Insights. I tapped Book buttons by hand where the check couldn't follow them.

The limits. It's a small sample, so a few sites can move the numbers. Scores also move a few points between runs. Google's speed test never finished on 1 site, and 1 homepage couldn't be read because the site turns away automated visitors, so totals use 47 sites. It only looks at the homepage. As in the earlier studies, I didn't count llms.txt files, because many website builders now add one automatically. None of the properties are named.