Big Bend
Big Bend may refer to:
Places
United States
Australia
Canada
- the Big Bend Gold Rush of the 1860s in the same area
Big Bend (Florida)
The Big Bend region of Florida, U.S.A., is an informal region of the state with no official surveyed boundary. It generally includes the counties of the Florida Panhandle east of the Apalachicola River. The Big Bend Coast is the marshy coast without barrier islands that extends along the Gulf of Mexico coast of Florida from the Ocklockonee River to Anclote Key.
Private agencies that self-identify as serving the Big Bend region often include Franklin, Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Taylor and Wakulla counties in their service areas. The principal city in the region is Tallahassee.
The Big Bend Coast is the marshy coast extending about 350 kilometres (220 mi) from the mouth of the Ocklockonee River around Apalachee Bay and down the west coast of peninsular Florida to Anclote Key. This stretch of coast includes the coasts of Wakulla, Jefferson, Taylor, Dixie, Levy, Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties. The Big Bend Coast is a drowned karst region, covered with salt marsh. It includes freshwater springs, oyster reefs, and the delta of the Suwannee River. There are barrier islands west of the Oklockonee River and south starting with Anclote Key, but there are no barrier islands between those places. The Big Bend Coast has little or no sand or mud. The karst topography has produced an irregular, frequently exposed, bedrock surface. Due to the width of the adjacent continental shelf (over 150 kilometres (93 mi)), low gradient slope of the coast (1:5000), and shelter from the usual wind direction of storms, the Big Bend Coast is generally subject to low wave energy. The coast is subject to storm surges.
Big Bend (Texas)
The Big Bend is a colloquial name of a geographic region in the western part of the state of Texas in the United States along the border with Mexico, roughly defined as the counties north of the prominent northward bend in the Rio Grande as it passes through the gap between the Chisos Mountains in Texas and the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico. It is sometimes loosely defined as the part of Texas south of U.S. Highway 90 and west of the Pecos River. The region includes three counties in Texas: Brewster, Jeff Davis and Presidio.
The region is sparsely populated, arid, and rugged, containing the Chisos and the Davis Mountain ranges. The region has more than one million acres (4,000 km²) of public lands, including Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park along the north side of the Rio Grande. It is also the home of the McDonald Observatory.
The largest towns in the region are Alpine, Presidio, Marfa, Sanderson, Terlingua, and Marathon.
