In the western panhandle of Texas lies a vast 32,000 sq mile area tabletop mesa best described by what it lacks rather than what it contains, which is pretty much nothing. When the Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado described it in a letter to the King of Spain, he wrote he had "reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went...with no more landmarks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea. [T]here was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by." More than 300 years later, the leader of an U.S. Army expedition sent to find the headwaters of the Red and Canadian Rivers described the land as "very smooth and level" and "without a tree, shrub, or any other herbage to intercept the vision." The mesa is the Llano Estacado or Staked Plain and it is an almost featureless region with one very big exception...Palo Duro Canyon.
A view of the upper canyon from the end of the CCC Trail.
Described in true Texas fashion, Palo Duro Canyon is the largest canyon in the United States that does not have the word "grand" in its name, which is to say it is the second largest canyon in the U.S. It extends 120 miles long with a maximum width of 20 miles and average width of about 6 miles. Its average depth is 800 feet. At the head of the canyon is situated one of the crown jewels of Texas' system of state parks: Palo Duro Canyon State Park.
Geology and Geography
The canyon was carved down by a river most people have never heard of: the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red River, which is the main tributary of the Red River. In less than one million years, the river cut through the Ogallala, Truijillo, Tecovas and Quartermaster Formations down to, in some places, the Cloud Chief Gypsum Formation.
The most prominent layers, the Quartermaster and Tecovas, are also the most colorful. The Quartermaster consists mostly of red sandstone and red claystone with bands of white gypsum and quartz. The Tecovas is mostly sandstone, shale and mudstone and is easily distinguished from the Quartermaster stone by its bright yellows, grays, lavenders, maroons and oranges.
The bright colors of a side canyon along the CCC Trail.
In several locations throughout the park there are formations displaying the multi-colored layers of rock known as the Spanish Skirts, which are exposed triangular shaped slopes of the Quartermaster and Tecovas formations protruding from the canyon walls.
One of the Spanish Skirts visible from the overlook on the canyon rim near the interpretive center.
The canyon is topped by the hard caprock of sandstone and siltstone in the Ogallala Formation, the same layer of rock that stores the Ogallala Aquifer that provides drinking water and irrigation water for most of the western High Plains from the Texas panhandle to Nebraska.
The head of the canyon begins near the appropriately named town of Canyon, Texas just south of Amarillo. The canyon ends when it meets the Caprock Escarpment at the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado's mesa.
Unlike the stark surrounding landscape, the canyon is comparatively an oasis, supporting mesquite, cottonwood and juniper trees, sumac, tall grasses and shrubs and a wealth of wildflowers. The mesquite is actually what prompted the Spanish to name the canyon Palo Duro, meaning hardwood. With this plant diversity comes wildlife. Today the canyon is home to wild turkey, white tail deer, mule deer, bighorn sheep, coyotes, cottontail rabbits, roadrunners and rattlesnakes and countless kinds of birds including several species of raptors.
Some wild turkeys lineup in a row waddling up a trail and a white tail deer navigates the slope of one of the canyon walls.
Native American Inhabitation
The Clovis people were the first known inhabitants of the canyon, approximately 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, hunting mammoths with their trademark large fluted stone point spears. The Folsom people with their shorter fluted point weapons, hunted bison up until about 10,000 years ago. More advanced native Americans from the Meso period hunted game and foraged in the canyon. About 2000 BCE, agriculture emerged and the nomadic hunter/gatherers settled down into village communities. The dominant tribe during the early days of Spanish exploration were the Apache, but by about 1700 they were displaced southward by the nomadic bison hunting Comanche. The Comanche became excellent horsemen once they acquired horses. When the Kiowa tribes entered the area they initially fought the Comanche for control of the region but a peace offering between the tribes in 1790 ushered in an era of toleration of each other and cooperation against their mutual enemies.
Relocation and Inhabitation by White Man
The most formidable of the Comanche and Kiowa's mutual enemies was the U.S. Army. In 1874, the Mackenzie expedition entered the canyon, surprising the tribes and forcing a hasty retreat by the people. The Army then set about capturing the natives' 1,200 head herd of horses, destroying the herd, the food stores and dwellings of the native Americans. With no horses, shelter and food supplies to sustain them in the coming winter months, the tribes surrendered and were relocated to reservations in Oklahoma.
Two years later, Col. Charles Goodnight and John Adair had established the JA Ranch in the canyon and surrounding area. Goodnight was an experienced cattle driver. A decade earlier, he and fellow rancher Oliver Loving had blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail from the Texas Panhandle to Denver, Colorado to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Adair, an Irish immigrant, provided the capital for starting the ranch and Goodnight ran it. He herded out the bison and brought in the cattle. The ranch reached 1.3 million acres of land and over 100,000 head of cattle at its zenith.
Movement Towards Park Status
By the late 1880's, ranching was beginning to decline and the canyon became a favorite place for campers to visit. In 1906, the local chamber of commerce for the town of Canyon proposed turning the canyon into a national park. Mind you at the time there were only 7 national parks in the United States and that list did not yet include the Grand Canyon. Efforts to have the canyon designated a forest reserve failed in 1908, 1911 and 1915 due to disputes between the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. Dispute over the land's proper ownership and the potential cost to the Federal government of acquiring the land also stood in the way of any park designation.
In this time period, the head of the art department at the West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) in Canyon began regularly visiting the canyon. Inspired by the view, she began painting what she saw, producing dramatic, colorful and abstract paintings and charcoals of the place she describes as "a burning, seething cauldron, filled with dramatic light and color." The artist was a young Georgia O'Keeffe. Her most famous work of Palo Duro Canyon, "Special No. 21, Palo Duro Canyon," was stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe in December 2003 and has not been recovered. While O'Keeffe's later works were much more realistic and detailed, taking on an almost photo level of detail, this piece was more abstract.
Special No. 21, Palo Duro Canyon (1916) by Georgia O'Keeffe
Locals in the area continued to push for a park in the canyon. In 1929, community and business leaders from 15 counties in the Panhandle formed the Palo Duro Park Association and began meeting to map out a strategy. Meanwhile, Chicago businessman Fred Emery purchased 15,000 acres of the canyon and offered to give it to the state in exchange for a loan to be repaid by income from the park's operation. Funding for park development was secured in 1933 through the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs working to improve national parks, national forests and state parks. The land was conveyed via liens to the state with the state repaying the debt to Emery through the park fees. On July 4, 1934, Palo Duro Canyon State Park was officially established and opened though CCC construction in the park would last until 1937.
The establishment of the small state park also laid to rest the much grander scheme the National Park Service had for a million acre "National Park of the Plains" centered around Palo Duro Canyon that was envisioned as a "Great Plains Yellowstone." A 1939 plan to convert the 15,000 acre state park into a 135,000 acre national monument was also scrapped for lack of NPS fund to purchased the private ranches that would constitute most of the monument.
The CCC in the Park
Seven companies of the CCC were dispatched to the new Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Four consisted of veterans of the Great War (World War I), two were "colored" companies of African-Americans and one was a youth company. The first order of business for the CCC was improving access to the canyon floor via a paved road. The CCC carved out the one mile switchbacked stretch of road descending 800 feet along the western wall of the canyon.
The lower switchbacks of Park Road 5 descending 800 feet from the canyon rim to the canyon floor.
The road was extended into the canyon crossing the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red River at several improved low water crossings. In total, 11 miles of road were built. On the canyon rim near where the road descends into the canyon, a headquarters building, a lodge and three cabins were built. At the end of the loop road in the canyon, four more cabins were constructed. Picnic and camp areas were built along with culverts, bridges and other structures.
The El Coronado Lodge built by the CCC stands on the canyon rim overlooking a grand view. Today, the lodge serves as a interpretive and visitor center for the park.
The Table Rock stands at the end of the CCC Trail and offers sweeping views of the park.
The cabins on the rim and in the canyon are still available to rent by overnight visitors. The lodge was retooled as an interpretive and visitor center.
The Park maintains part of the state's official herd of Longhorn cattle along the canyon rim. Here, one steer gets a drink of water.
Song and Dance
One of the most popular attractions in the park is the production each summer of one of the Official State Plays of Texas (yes plays, plural...there are four of them), the musical Texas presented each Tuesday through Sunday night from June through August at the Pioneer Amphitheater in the canyon.
The Pioneer Amphitheater as seen from above along the CCC hiking trail.
Modern Threats and Protection
Since the 1930's, more and more land has slowly been added to the park. In the 1960's, a scenic area with several hoodoos, including the park's signature natural formation, the Lighthouse Rock, were acquired.
In the early 2000's, the opportunity to acquire two ranches in the canyon presented themselves. In 2002, local businessman and philanthropist Peter Gilvin left the 2,036 acre Cañoncita Ranch to the Amarillo Area Foundation along with a $1.19 million endowment to fund educational programs and maintenance in the park. The foundation provided the state with the money to add the acreage to the park. In 2005, the foundation again stepped forward for Palo Duro State Park giving the park a $300,000 grant to purchase the 7,837 acre ranch that had belonged to the Harrell family for over a century, increasing the park's area by 43%. The ranch included the site of the 1874 battle between the U.S. Army and the Comanche and Kiowas.
But one of the most worrisome threats presented itself three years later. The city of Amarillo is growing and gobbling up ranch land for housing and subdivisions. While the city is still some distance away (15 miles), park managers and supporters were jolted in 2008 when the Tub Springs Ranch overlooking the eastern rim of the canyon was put up for sale and a prospective buyer expressed interest in subdividing the ranch for building multimillion dollar homes on the canyon rim. Luckily the ranch CEO was conservation minded and contacted conservation groups about acquiring the property. The Trust for Public Land responded by buying the land in cooperation with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for $5.22 million. The 2,912 acre ranch was renamed the Fortress Cliffs Ranch and the most critical areas of the ranch were added to the park, increasing the park's size by 10%. The uplands of the ranch not added to the park are to be sold with legally enforceable conservation easements with the proceeds of the sale to be used by the Texas Park and Wildlife Dept to acquire properties of importance to the TPWD. As a result, the view from the canyon floor of the four tenths of a mile long cliff will not be marred with any visible structures. The land added brings the total area within the park to 29,187 acres.
The Fortress Cliffs from the canyon floor.
However, the threat of high dollar subdivisions lining the canyon rim has already come into fruition. In the last decade, two gated communities have been built on the rim of Sunday Canyon, a side canyon to the main canyon channel with access to the subdivisions via a road a half mile from the park entrance. Both subdivisions and the state park had to be evacuated temporarily this past summer when an out of control grass fire that started near the interstate seven miles away was flamed by high winds, spreading very close to the homes. The 16,800 acre fire did get down into Sunday Canyon and entered the western edge of the park scorching 192 acres of a rather inaccessible area of the park. The park was closed as a precaution because the only means in and out of the park is the CCC constructed road along the canyon's western wall.
A view of Palo Duro Canyon below the state park where state Highway 207 traverses the canyon floor. The highway and Park Road 5 in the state park are the only two public roads in the canyon. All the land in this area is privately owned ranch land, but it was once envisioned to be part of a national park or national monument.
Note: I'm going to try jumpstarting the Park Avenue Daily Kos group on National and State Parks again. As much as I enjoyed doing the series last year, I just don't have the kind of time to write on a regular basis, but I hope others will contribute. Instead of trying to adhere to a schedule, we'll handle things more free-form. If you want to contribute features, drop me a Kosmail and we'll set you up with an invite and hopefully we'll get enough interest to at least irregularly publish more national and state park features.