Alpine, Texas — Months after Congress approved billions for infrastructure across one of the least-trafficked stretches of the southern border, bulldozers arrived at Big Bend National Park, West Texas's wild crown jewel. What followed was an unlikely revolt against President Trump's decade-old promise to build a wall. Cattle ranchers, environmentalists, sheriffs, Republican senators and country singers united around a distinctly Texas argument: Secure the border, but don't tread on us.Images of bulldozers scraping through the 801,163-acre expanse of Big Bend National Park — a preserve larger than the state of Rhode Island — erupted across social media, turning a construction project in one of America's most remote landscapes into a political flashpoint. The pictures left residents and visitors in disarray. They showed heavy machinery driving through scenery defined by an absence of infrastructure, a place boasting thousand-foot cliffs, empty desert and communities so isolated that some residents drive over an hour for groceries or to see a doctor.More than half a million people visit Big Bend every year. The park hugs 118 winding miles of the Rio Grande, nearly a quarter of the international boundary patrolled by Customs and Border Protection in the much larger Big Bend Sector. The sector itself marks 517 miles along the river — from far West Texas east toward the Del Rio region — and its immense area of responsibility stretches across 77 Texas counties.