Texaswithall: All About Texas

Texas With All: Everything About Texas

The inhabitants of the Panhandle, the southernmost portion of the Great Plains, call it the real Texas; it certainly fulfills the fantasy of what Texas should look like. When Coronado's expedition passed this way in the sixteenth century, the gold-seekers drove stakes into the ground across the vast and unchanging vista, despairing of otherwise finding their way home. Hence the name Llano Estacado, or staked plains, which still persists today.

Once the buffalo - and the natives - had been driven away from what was seen as perilous and uninhabitable frontier country, the Panhandle began, around the 1870s, to yield great natural resources . Helium - especially in Amarillo - and oil, as well as agriculture , have brought wealth to the region, home to some of the world's largest ranches.

The Panhandle may hold few actual tourist attractions, but what appeals are its rural charm, its quirkiness and its distance from the eastern cities. Music has particular significance in an area famous for songwriters such as Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Mac Davis, Joe Ely and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, although most musicians relocate to cosmopolitan centers like Austin. Above all, the exceptionally hospitable people of the Panhandle make it special, along with the starkly romantic landscape, strewn with tumbleweeds and mesquite trees.

 

Amarillo may seem cut off from the rest of Texas, up in the northern Panhandle, but it stands on one of the great American cross-country routes I-40, once the legendary Route 66 roughly 300 miles east of Albuquerque and 250 miles west of Oklahoma City. The name comes from the Spanish for yellow, the color of the soil characteristic in these parts. An early promoter of the city was so delighted with its potential as a site for lucrative buffalo hunting (for those who braved the Apache and Comanche threat) and as excellent ranching land that he painted all the buildings bright yellow.

Today, sitting on ninety percent of the world's helium and hosting a world-class cattle market, Amarillo is a prosperous but surprisingly uneventful city. The small old town consists of a few tree-lined streets and staid old homes; some of the less twee antique stores along Sixth Street (the old Route 66, known locally as Old San Jacinto) serve equally well as museums of pioneer life. Following I-40 six miles west to exit 60 (Arnot Road) brings you to Cadillac Ranch. An extraordinary vision in the middle of nowhere, ten battered roadsters stand upended in the soil, their tail fins demonstrating the different Cadillac designs from 1949 to 1963. Since the cars were installed in 1974, they have been subject to countless makeovers at the hands of graffiti artists, photographers and members of the public (encouraged by owner and patron, eccentric helium millionaire Stanley Marsh III, on whose land the cars are planted); occasionally they're shiny blue or red after having been painted for a photo shoot. In 1997 the whole installation was moved two miles west to this present site as the city had begun to encroach and spoil the horizon.

If you enjoy playing cowboys, it's fun to visit one of the many grand old Panhandle ranches to have diversified into tourism. Some just open for the day; others provide (usually expensive) accommodation. The ranchers who entertain you are often natural showmen and women, whose welcome is utterly genuine, though they'd rather be working the animals for real than running a theme park.

Lubbock, the largest city in the Panhandle, has long been the center of its commerce and transportation, roughly one hundred miles northwest of Abilene and the same distance south of Amarillo. At first this was cattle-grazing land, but the discovery of copious underground water made agriculture profitable.

The prosperity of the city was built on cotton. In recent years, while farmers have been perpetually plagued by economic struggles, the town's economy now also relies on manufacturing and retail outlets; you may, however, still see solitary cottonfields standing defiantly on the outskirts, where farmers have refused to sell out.

With its fields, farms, lumpen bungalows and faceless block buildings, Lubbock is relentlessly ordinary-looking, its muted downtown area dotted with fading 1950s shopfronts. Which is not to say that it's dull; though Southern Baptism has left its mark, Lubbock has a uniquely Texan sense of fun, clearly evident in its love of music, rodeos, and having a good time.

Palo Duro Canyon, twelve miles east of Canyon and twenty miles southeast of Amarillo, is one of Texas's best-kept secrets. Plunging 1000 feet from rim to floor, it splits the plains wide open and offers breathtaking views and colors, especially at sunset and in spring, when the whole chasm is scattered with wild flowers. Pillars of sturdy sandstone loom over the flame-colored rocks, which Coronado's explorers named Spanish Skirts on account of their resemblance to stripy flounces.

The park itself is located in the most scenic part of the 130-mile canyon (park daily 8am-10pm, visitor center and interpretive center daily 9am-5pm; $3 per person). You can explore the depths on horseback ($12 per hour; reservations tel 806/488-2180), though backpackers and hikers may want to escape the tourist busloads by following the Prairie Dog Town fork into more remote sections of the park. To camp, advance reservations are recommended (tel 806/488-2227).

---

Cannot find it here? Search the Internet with the power of Google:

Web Texas only