Texas’ Best-Kept Secret: The Second-Largest Canyon in the U.S.

 

(Daily Beast) The history of this area is game changing,” Phyllis Nickum says as I stare into Palo Duro Canyon, a 120-mile-long chasm slicing through the level landscape of the Texas panhandle just south of Amarillo. Palo Duro marks the southern border of Nickum’s Los Cedros Ranch, a 3,000-acre spread where she raises cattle, horses, and harvests wheat and water. It’s also home to “Cowgirls and Cowboys in the West,” the ranch’s tourist arm, which celebrates Western heritage through history on horseback tours, eco-tourism, and chuckwagon events complete with singing cowboys. Continued

"Thundering Sounds of the West" opens in Palo Duro Canyon

Show or not, Palo Duro is always worth a visit.

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1965, the Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation opened a sound and light show entitled "Thundering Sounds of the West" in an outdoor amphitheater in Palo Duro Canyon. The foundation was organized in 1961, with Margaret P. Harper as president, to increase tourism to Palo Duro Canyon State Scenic Park through the presentation of a historical drama. Continued

Coronado departs Culiacán in search of Seven Cities of Cíbola

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1540, an expedition led by Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado left Culiacán in Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cíbola, concerning which wondrous tales had been brought to Mexico by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
There was no gold at Cíbola (the Zuñi villages in western New Mexico), but the explorer was led on by stories of great rewards to be found in Quivira, a region on the Great Plains far to the east.
Chasing this chimera occupied Coronado until the early part of 1542; along the way he apparently marched across the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, passing through present Palo Duro Canyon. Continued

Bad Hand's Sad End

(Texas Day By Day) On this day in 1883, Ranald Slidell (Bad Hand) Mackenzie, hard-driving cavalry officer, was diagnosed as suffering from "paralysis of the insane."
... he became one of the leading cavalry commanders on the frontier, leading the Fourth United States Cavalry in a number of campaigns against varous Indian tribes. In Texas he is best known for his victory against the Comanches at Palo Duro Canyon and for the extralegal Remolino raid into Mexico in pursuit of Kickapoo raiders. Continued

County government comes to a new area of the Panhandle

Conner's T Anchor Ranch.

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1888, Randall County was organized. It had first been settled by Lincoln Guy Conner and his wife, who moved their cattle to the vast Palo Duro Canyon area in the Panhandle.
The Conners bought their land for three dollars an acre, built a half dugout, and established a general store and post office. When the county was organized, the dugout was a polling place. Continued