Not long ago, a couple showed up at Devils River State Natural Area, a remote park in Southwest Texas best known for the ribbon of turquoise-colored water that twists through its heart.

Rangers briefed the visitors on basic information: location of campsites, hiking trails and critters they might encounter. Then they offered directions to the river, where most guests head to fish, paddle or swim.

“There’s a river here?” the visitors asked, surprised.

The couple had sought out the park not to dip a fishing rod, paddle or toe in its clear, spring-fed waters, but to admire the stars in an area recently designated a Dark Sky Sanctuary by the International Dark-Sky Association.

“I wanted to laugh, but I was so proud of that,” says Beau Hester, site manager and police officer at the state natural area between Sonora and Del Rio. “The ‘why’ people come here has changed. It’s not all for the river.”

Nobody stumbles onto this park. It’s remote, and the land bites back. I’ve nearly stepped on a tarantula, had my campsite invaded by raccoons and snagged my legs on cactuses that left behind a quiver of tiny spines as a calling card.

But a hike to the top of a ridge to take in the view of what Texans will tell you is the most pristine river in the state is worth the blood that it might leave trickling down your calf. Each time I’ve made the climb, forging my own path among the cat claw and Spanish dagger, I’ve felt a wave of peace wash over me. Cellphones don’t work out here, you can’t order fast food within an hour’s drive, and the only sounds are chirping birds and the rush of the wind.

“The Devils is one of the last remaining areas where you can get a taste of wild, scenic Texas,” Hester says. “You really get to catch that special feeling of solitude that you don’t get too many places. You can go to your tent campsite at night and lay under crisp, clean stars, and I challenge you to hear a car driving by.”

And then there are those stars. With a rating of a 2 on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (1 is darkest, 9 is the bright lights of the inner city), Devils River’s sky provides the perfect velvet backdrop for the Milky Way.

“The purpose of the sanctuary is to create awareness of some of most fragile resources we have,” Hester says.

Since the designation, campsite bookings have increased. Between 3,500 and 4,500 people — precise numbers are difficult because many are paddling through and don’t register their visit — went to the park last year.

The park is open to the public just four days a week, Friday through Monday. It’s made up of two separate but nearby properties. Together, the Del Norte Unit, which most visitors see, and the Dan A. Hughes Unit, which is used primarily for paddling access, encompass 37,000-plus acres in Val Verde County, about 35 miles as the crow flies north of Del Rio.

“Devils River State Natural Area has the river itself — a crystal-clear, spring-fed desert river— and the landscape on top of that,” says Devils River State Natural Area complex superintendent Joe Joplin. “It’s a unique situation where two resources come together.”

First, some background.

E.K. Fawcett drove a herd of sheep up from Del Rio in 1883, stopping in this area. He lived in a rock shelter while he built a cabin, and the smokestacks from the old homestead, which burned in the 1990s, still stand near the park gates. The property served, in turn, as a sheep ranch, goat ranch and hunting camp.

The “park,” where the emphasis is on conservation instead of recreation, has seven drive-up campsites and two hike-up spots. There’s also a rustic, five-bedroom barrack where you can rent a single bed for the night.

Today, no one just stumbles onto the place. You have to be headed here. It’s a long way to help, too, in case of snake bite, vehicle breakdown or any other form of camping or paddling disaster.

I come here to reset, after too much time spent tapping on my smartphone, buzzing around the city and staring at a computer screen. The area’s ruggedness and distance from large urban centers help tamp down visitation.

A gate a mile from the river also blocks visitors from driving all the way down to the water. Joplin explains that too much traffic could harm the fragile ecosystem. Anyone who wants to put in a canoe or kayak has to haul it manually along a hilly gravel road to water’s edge.

That’s OK with me.

The river at the state natural area flows wide and beautiful. Springs flow in just a 15-minute paddle upstream, and water spills over a spaghetti bowl of eroded limestone at gorgeous Dolan Falls a mile or two downstream. (The land adjacent to the falls is owned by the Nature Conservancy and not open to the public.)

But there’s plenty to see and do right here.

You can pitch a tent, waking early to photograph the sunrise against the backdrop of a creaky old windmill. You can hike beneath pink- and yellow-hued cliff walls, into a shallow canyon shaded by sprawling trees. If you’re lucky, like I was once, you can find a hummingbird nest in the tree branches above where you’ve hung your hammock.

Hester, the manager, says plans are in the works to open a new campsite sometime in the next year. Crews also recently completed an assessment of the park’s limited trail system in preparation for possibly blazing some new trails.

“Del Norte should be a destination where people come to hike,” Hester says.

But the area faces threats. Pipelines transporting natural gas and oil are being installed just a few miles from the park’s boundaries, and developers are eying a nearby parcel of land for potential wind turbine development, Joplin says.

When a nearby pump station started using bright lights at night, Hester worried about the park’s coveted darkness. He visited with company officials, who agreed to turn them off, except during emergencies.

“When you're as dark as we are, it’s a big deal,” Hester says.

He hopes he can help keep the place as pristine as it is today and one day take his son, now 5, on a paddle trip down the river.

“The only way to do that is if everybody pitches in and protects the Devils,” he says. “The Devils is hard to get to, and it sounds and taste good on the tongue, but we’ve got to really continue to monitor and proactively pursue measures that keep it the way it is.”

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