Starting soon, popular parts of Big Bend National Park in West Texas will be closed for two years as part of a massive construction project.

Work is expected to begin on May 1 on two large construction projects in the Chisos Basin, according to the National Park Service.

One project will replace the park’s aging Chisos Mountains Lodge, which was built in 1964, with a new building on the same footprint. The original lodge, built onto clay soils, has suffered from years of foundation movement, and has seen damage to its walls, roof, window and vital systems.

Another project will replace water infrastructure in the area, which dates back to the 1950s.

”When construction begins, the Chisos Basin Road will be closed at the bottom of the hill,” the park service wrote on its website. “There will be no visitor access to the Chisos Basin developed area. This includes the store, restaurant, lodge, visitor center, and campground.”

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The basin, which features a popular desert view known as “The Window,” is often accessed via a single access road, which will be blocked during the ongoing construction project.

Large parts of the 801,163-acre park along the Rio Grande River will remain open during the construction, per park officials.

Visitors will still be able to access “hundreds of miles of scenic drives (paved/unpaved), developed and primitive campsites, river access, and over 150 miles of hiking trails,” the park service said.

The construction, supported by $22.63 million from 2020’s Great American Outdoors Act, was originally slated to begin in May of last year.

Some have taken issue with the decision to close parts of the park.

“I really believe you can stage the traffic,” Rick LoBello, who was a Big Bend ranger then executive director of the Big Bend Natural History Association, told Texas Monthly. “And if you don’t want people around the construction site, you put up a fence.”

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An online petition from LoBello, which has over 900 signatures, says the decision “risks depriving visitors of one of the park’s most iconic sites.”

The park attracted more than 52,000 visitors in January, according to the park service, about 4,000 of whom stayed at lodging or campgrounds.

The Trump administration has floated building a new segment of its border wall through the park, which shares a 118-mile border with Mexico via the Rio Grande River.

The proposal has generated significant pushback, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol appears to have taken the wall off an online map outlining border infrastructure plans.

“Based on decades of combined experience working this terrain, we believe the construction of a continuous physical border wall in the Big Bend region would not represent the most practical or strategic approach to border security in this area,” a group of area sheriffs wrote in a joint statement this month.