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

T. Boone Pickens

(Wikipedia) ... Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of Grace (née Molonson) and Thomas Boone Pickens. His father worked as an oil and mineral landman (rights leaser).
During World War II, his mother ran the local Office of Price Administration, rationing gasoline and other goods in three counties. Pickens was the first child born via Caesarean section in the history of Holdenville hospital.
At age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers. He quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his boyhood job as an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition", a business practice he favored later in life.
When the oil boom in Oklahoma ended in the late 1930s, Pickens' family moved to Amarillo, Texas. Continued

Harry W. Brown

Courtesy of The
475th Fighter Group
Historical Foundation

Harry Winston Brown (May 19, 1921 – October 7, 1991) was an Army Air Corps second lieutenant assigned to the 47th Pursuit Squadron at Wheeler Field on the island of Oahu during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. He was one of the five American pilots to score victories that day.
Brown was awarded a Silver Star for his actions, and was the first Texan decorated for valor in the war. By the war's end, he was a flying ace. Continued

Leaks notwithstanding, new Capitol dedicated in Austin

The capitol building was financed by the sale of lands that became the XIT Ranch.

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1888 began a week-long celebration dedicating the present Capitol building of Texas.
Unfortunately, the Capitol Board refused to accept the structure because its copper roof leaked and because of several other minor problems. Continued

Cyclone hits Mobeetie

Photo courtesy of the Texas State Historical Association

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1898, the Panhandle community of Mobeetie was devastated by a cyclone.
The community, considered the "mother city" of the Panhandle, developed from Charles Rath and Bob Wright's supply store on Sweetwater Creek at a buffalo-hunters' camp called Hidetown in 1874, and grew to 150 residents the following summer as a trading post for nearby Fort Elliott. The village was located at the southern end of the Jones and Plummer Trail and was a center of activity for the buffalo-hide trade. Continued

First county in Texas Panhandle organized

Photo: wheelertexas.org

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1879, Wheeler County became the first organized county in the Texas Panhandle.
The Kiowas and Comanches, who displaced the earlier Apache peoples around 1700, dominated the area until the mid-1870s. By that time buffalo hunters had already established a settlement, called Hidetown or Sweetwater, in the area. Continued

New carbon black plant opens in Panhandle

Carbon black worker, Sunray, TX
(Library of Congress)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1926, the Texas Railroad Commission allowed the Phillips Petroleum Company to construct a carbon black plant in the Panhandle. ...
Carbon black, produced from natural gas that has more than 1 ½ grains of hydrogen sulfide, became in demand in the early twentieth century, especially in the production of automobile tires. Continued

Signage: P.G.C. CO-OP Feed

Wildorado, Texas (Sixgun Siding)

(Special Collections Library, Texas Tech) The Producers Grain Corporation (PGC) was a regional grain marketing cooperative headquartered in Amarillo, Texas.
It was organized by twenty-nine country elevators in April 1938. It opened international trade markets for the Great Plains sorghum production primarily to Japan (Zen Koren) and Mexico (Conasupo) during the 1950's and 1960's.
PGC collected grain from Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico.
It had corporate operations in Lubbock, Fort Worth, Plainview, Corpus Christi, Texas and Colton, California.
Feed mill operations beginning in 1945 served the ranchers and farmers of West Texas, western Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1988. After financial difficulties in the early 1980's, PGC sold to Agri Industries. Link

Wildorado Grain Elevator 1

Wildorado, Texas

Wallie Criswell

(Wikipedia) Wallie Amos Criswell (December 19, 1909 – January 10, 2002), was an American pastor, author, and a two-term elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1968 to 1970.
Supporters have described him as one of the 20th century's greatest expository preachers and the patriarch of the "Conservative Resurgence" within the SBC.
... Criswell grew up in Texline in Dallam County, the most northwesterly community in the Texas Panhandle, where his cowboy-barber father moved the family in 1915. Continued

Panhandle rancher accidentally shot on train

 

(Texas Day by Day) … On this day in 1901, William Riley Curtis, well-known Panhandle rancher and owner of the Diamond Tail Ranch, was accidentally shot on a train headed for Memphis, Texas. A fellow passenger's gun fell to the floor and discharged.
The stricken rancher was taken to Fort Worth, where he died a few days later. Continued

First Battle of Adobe Walls

Kit Carson

(Wikipedia) The First Battle of Adobe Walls was a battle between the United States Army and American Indians. The Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache (Kiowa Apache) tribes drove from the battlefield a United States Expeditionary Force that was reacting to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle, on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides but was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
Continued

Cavalry column launched against Panhandle Indians

 

Fort Bascom Ruins c1907

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1868, the Canadian River Expedition was launched as part of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's winter campaign against the Indians of the southern plains. Maj. Andrew Evans left Fort Bascom, New Mexico, with more than 500 officers and men.
Following the left bank of the Canadian, the column encountered a blizzard two days later, but despite deep snow, sleet, and freezing temperatures the troops trudged their way over the Fort Smith-Santa Fe route across the Panhandle and established a supply depot probably in what is now Hemphill County, Texas. Continued

The Cowboy Strike of 1883

 

(Encyclopedia of the Great Plains) From 1880 to 1883 a new corporate ownership spread throughout the Texas Panhandle. Ranch cowboys no longer knew the owners by name, had any particular trust in the new company, or saw any signs of loyalty or tradition. The cowboy lost his place as a valued member of the ranch family and became only an employee.
... In the spring of 1883 the cowboys went on strike. Wagons and men from three of the biggest ranches in the Canadian River valley came together for a meeting. The three wagon bosses were not malcontents. They were all respected top hands who had earned their positions only to see their influence diminished. Continued

Legendary West Texas historian dies

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1995, legendary West Texas historian J. Evetts Haley died in Midland. Haley, born in Belton in 1901, graduated from West Texas Normal College at Canyon in 1925 and subsequently received a master's degree in history from the University of Texas, where he studied under Eugene C. Barker.
His book The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado (1929) established him as a premier interpreter of the western range cattle industry. The book was also the subject of libel suits totaling $2.2 million, and set the tone for an often controversial career. Continued

The Battle of Lyman's Wagon Train

Painting by Frederic Remington

(The Handbook of Texas Online) … On the afternoon of September 10, Lyman, seeing that the situation was critical not only for his own men but for Miles's column, penned a formal message to the commander at Camp Supply, telling of his plight and requesting reinforcements.
In the meantime Tehan slipped away and went back to his adopted people. He probably advised the Kiowas to fortify the waterhole, and the besieged train endured nearly two days without sufficient water as the Indians, whom Lyman estimated to be nearly 400 in number, continued taking potshots at the whites. 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

Second Battle of Adobe Walls

Map courtesy of Legends of Dodge City

"There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. In after years I was glad that I had seen it. Hundreds of warriors, the flower of the fighting men of the southwestern Plains tribes, mounted upon their finest horses, armed with guns and lances, and carrying heavy shields of thick buffalo hide, were coming like the wind. Over all was splashed the rich colors of red, vermillion and ochre, on the bodies of the men, on the bodies of the running horses. Scalps dangled from bridles, gorgeous war-bonnets fluttered their plumes, bright feathers dangled from the tails and manes of the horses, and the bronzed, halfnaked bodies of the riders glittered with ornaments of silver and brass. Behind this headlong charging host stretched the Plains, on whose horizon the rising sun was lifting its morning fires. The warriors seemed to emerge from this glowing background." - Billy Dixon

JA Ranch Founded

Photograph shows cowboys tending a herd of watering cattle on the JA ranch in the Texas panhandle. To the left in the background is a photographer's wagon with a sign, "W. A. Harper, Special Photographer, St. Louis Exposition 1903." (Library of Congress)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1876, Charles Goodnight and John G. Adair drew up the contract that brought the JA Ranch into being. The JA is the oldest privately owned cattle ranch in the Panhandle.
Goodnight had met Adair, an English aristocrat interested in going into the cattle business, in Denver. Adair agreed to furnish the capital Goodnight needed to build up his "Home Ranch" in Armstrong County. Continued

Texas legislature establishes evanescent Wegefarth County

Photo: Wikipedia

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1873, the Texas legislature declared the existence of Wegefarth County.
Like several other defunct Texas counties, Wegefarth County was never more than an idea of the state government. Though it had boundaries, it was never organized, and was abolished three years after it was named. Continued