History

Barton Warnock Environmental Education Center consists of 99.9 acres located in Brewster County. The land was acquired in 1990 and was already open to the public.

The Center was built in 1982 by the Lajitas Foundation as the Lajitas Museum Desert Gardens. Texas Parks and Wildlife purchased it in October 1990 and renamed the center after Dr. Barton Warnock, a well-respected botanist, specializing in the Big Bend region. Dr. Warnock passed away June 9, 1998. The Center serves as the eastern entrance gateway to Big Bend Ranch State Park and interprets 570 million years of geological history and the five biological landscapes of the Chihuahuan Desert, a region better known to most West Texas travelers as the Big Bend.