A desert reservoir where the Rio Grande, Devils River, and Pecos River meet, on the United States-Mexico border.
Amistad National Recreation Area
Amistad National Recreation Area is a National Park Service site in Val Verde County, Texas, centered on the Amistad Reservoir near the city of Del Rio. The reservoir sits on the Rio Grande at the United States-Mexico border, across from Ciudad Acuña in Coahuila, Mexico, where the Devils River and the Pecos River also join the Rio Grande. The park protects a landscape of arid canyon country and reservoir shoreline that serves as the setting for boating, fishing, scuba diving, and other water-based recreation on the lake.
The recreation area is well known for the prehistoric rock art that lines its cliffs, including the renowned Panther Cave petroglyphs, and for the seasonal spectacle of monarch butterflies that pass through each fall on their long migration to central Mexico. Its name, drawn from the Spanish word for friendship, reflects the cross-border character of the site, with the Amistad Dam tying Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña together as a shared place. Managed as a unit of the National Park System, Amistad blends water recreation, cultural heritage, and Chihuahuan Desert scenery into a single protected landscape.