Palo Duro Canyon State Park

Texas

From the Park Entrance Road, Approaching the Canyon Floor at

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

South of Amarillo, Texas

Some 800 feet deep, often more than three miles wide, and about 100 miles in length, the Palo Duro Canyon served as a winter campground for Comanche, Kiowa, and occasionally Apache tribes for centuries. The canyon was a welcome sight for the Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado whose party arrived there in 1541 in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. The grateful Coronado conducted a thanksgiving service in the canyon that preceded the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony’s first thanksgiving celebration by some eight decades.

After Col. Ranald McKenzie’s command captured the canyon’s Native American inhabitants in 1874 and forced them onto Oklahoma reservations, Col. Charles Goodnight ran cattle and bison in the canyon for many years as part of the JA Ranch. Goodnight’s earlier trailblazing adventures with Oliver Loving were the basis for Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

In 1934 the canyon’s 16,000 northernmost acres became the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Today, the park’s visitors take advantage of hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, and camping facilities accessible from several miles of paved roads that loop through the park. During the summer, the park’s large amphitheater becomes the site for presentation of dramas portraying the history of Texas and the Panhandle.

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