Acting as a gateway to the border, the rest area sits in a 12.5-acre site with one thousand oak trees strewn between the travel lanes of a busy highway. The collection of restrooms, picnic pavilions, garden walls, and pathways, designed for the Texas Department of Transportation, transitions visitors on their way south to the Rio Grande through the skillful use of vernacular shapes and materials that conjure images of early ranching settlements along the river. Using both Mexican brick and recycled concrete chunks to create irregularly coursed walls, the informally arranged, flat-roofed, naturally ventilated buildings tightly nestled below the oak groves epitomize context-sensitive design.