The Texas Panhandle, Part 5: Trucks

On the highways of the Texas Panhandle, big trucks travel day and night, hauling freight, cattle, chickens, onions, fruit, equipment, you name it . . . east and west along I-40, south and north on I-27 to Lubbock, and on US 287 to Wichita Falls, Ft. Worth, and beyond.

Nothing profound here . . . just the wheels of commerce rolling, with the ubiquitous wind turbines as backdrop.

To see these images in a larger format, visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Next up:  grain elevators.

The Texas Panhandle, Part 4: Palo Duro Canyon

Palo Duro Canyon, where Charles Goodnight established the JA Ranch, is the second-largest canyon in North America (yes, really!), and its walls form the northeast boundary of the Llano Estacado.

Palo Duro Canyon (circled)

Palo Duro Canyon

 
The canyon is 120 miles long; 20 miles wide at its widest; and 800 feet at its deepest.  This is small compared to the Grand Canyon (277 miles long; 18 miles wide; 6,000 feet deep), but it's still big enough to get lost or die in.  The canyon claims a couple of lives a year from falls or dehydration.

Archaeological studies indicate that the canyon has been occupied by humans since as long as 10,000 - 15,000 years ago.  More recently, in the 18th century the canyon was used as a major campground for the nomadic Kiowa and Comanche tribes, until they were routed in the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon on September 28, 1874, and sent to reservations in Indian Territory -- now Oklahoma.  Two years later, Charles Goodnight drove a herd of 1,600 cattle into the canyon and started the first commercial ranch in the Panhandle.

Quanah Parker circa 1890

The most famous of the Comanche leaders was Quanah Parker, son of Comanche chief Nocona and his Anglo wife, Cynthia Parker, who at age 9 was captured by the Comanches in 1836 and lived with the tribe for 24 years.

Quanah led the last band of Comanches to be rounded up and sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, the Army post adjacent to Lawton, OK, where I grew up.  I went to school with Quanah Parker's great-great-granddaughter. 

Because I was alone and not provisioned for a long hike, I did not spend a lot of time in Palo Duro Canyon, but made a few images on one of the many hiking trails.

One odd footnote:  driving away from the canyon, I noticed a rusting miniature railroad train in a field, with a sign that said "Retired Sad Monkey Railroad."

The train was guarded by an indifferent donkey and a curious llama with a scarred nose and mouth:

Turns out the Sad Monkey Railroad was an attraction in Palo Duro Canyon from 1955 to 1996 that took people on a two-mile off-road loop further into the canyon.  It got its name from a geological formation on the top of Triassic Peak in the canyon.  You can read more about it here or on pp. 35-36 of this interesting monograph on the geology of the canyon.


You can view these images and more in a larger format at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Next:  trucks!

The Texas Panhandle, Part 3: Cemeteries

Cemeteries are one of my favorite photography subjects in any territory.  In the Texas Panhandle there's one for every little town, and some just out in the middle of nowhere:  flat open spaces surrounded by chainlink fences, filled with headstones and curb stones, maybe some windblown trees, and always a few flowers.

This one (below) is the family cemetery of Charles Goodnight, the "father of the Texas Panhandle," who founded the first commercial cattle ranch in the Panhandle south of Amarillo in 1876.

Image made on an earlier trip, August, 2014.

Goodnight was the original, and in many respects quintessential, Texas cattle rancher.  With his partner John Adair, he formed and managed the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon (about which more in my next post), growing it to over one million acres and 100,000 head of cattle by 1885.  Goodnight was the inspiration for the characters in Larry McMurtry's novel, Lonesome Dove.  A brief biography can be found at the Texas State Historical Association website here.

As celebrated in a song by Ian Tyson (of Ian and Sylvia, for those of you old enough to remember), those who visit Goodnight's grave traditionally bring a bandana and tie it to the fence surrounding the family plot:


                                                    On the Llano Estacado
                                            Not far from Amarillo
                                            Big trucks roll and the wind blows
                                            Mostly all of the time
                                            Way out on the prairie
                                            In a lonely cemetery
                                            Wild rags flutter and the winds sigh
                                            Over Charles Goodnight's grave.

                                            Bandanas blue and yellow
                                            All the shades of Palo Duro
                                            Where they come from I do not know
                                            Maybe riders on the wind
                                            All along the fence line
                                            Like some old time cowboy's shrine
                                            Wild rags flutter and the winds sigh
                                            Over Charles Goodnight's grave.

The song mentions a couple of other significant features of the Texas Panhandle:  trucks and Palo Duro Canyon.  I'll do the next two posts on these topics, with the Canyon first.

In the meantime, if you would like to see these images in a larger format, visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

The Texas Panhandle, Part 2: Windmills

When you drive up the Northwest Escarpment on I-40 and come out onto the Llano Estacado you see windmills to the north and east . . . hundreds of  windmills, mostly the new wind turbine variety, to harness the wind that blows unobstructed across the plain for energy generation:

These gigantic windmills generate electric power in the range of thousands of kilowatts . . . some upwards of 5 megawatts.  The Wildorado Wind Ranch (pictured above right) has 70 Siemens Mk II turbines each capable of generating 2.3 MW at peak wind speeds.  These turbines have the capacity to power more than 50,000 households.  Of course, as "green" as these windmills are, they have their own elements of controversy:  noise pollution; bird kills; etc.  In other places, such as Massachusetts, the NIMBY ("not in my back yard") opposition is vocal, but apparently not here -- the cows don't mind.

There are also the old windmills, constructed to pump water for people and livestock . . .

. . . sometimes standing in the same field with the new ones, which, at 85 meters high, are tall enough to require aircraft obstruction warning lights:

I even came across a windmill in a cemetery:

For these images (and more) in a larger format, visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Next: cemeteries.

The Texas Panhandle, Part 1: Wide Open Spaces

        I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I travelled over them for more than 300 leagues ... with no more land marks 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.

                                                          -- Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in a letter to the King of Spain on Oct. 20, 1541, describing the Llano Estacado, somewhere in the Panhandle of Texas



        When we were upon the high table-land, a view presented itself as boundless as the ocean. Not a tree, shrub, or any other object, either animate or inanimate, relieved the dreary monotony of the prospect .... it is a region almost as vast and trackless as the sea ---- a land where no man, either savage or civilized, permanently abides; it spreads forth into a treeless, desolate waste of uninhabited solitude, which always has been, and must continue, uninhabited forever.

                                                         -- Captain Randolph Marcy, recording his first impressions of the Texas Panhandle in his diary, 1847

During my drives through the Panhandle to and from Oklahoma over the past three years, I was struck by the same oceanic vastness of the space noted by Coronado in 1541 and Capt. Marcy three hundred years later.

I was also intrigued by the things that people have constructed there since it was first explored.  In early April I spent three days photographing the old and the recent features of the high plains of the Panhandle within a 60-mile radius of Amarillo.

This is the first in a series of ten posts about various features in the Panhandle.  Following this post about geography, I'll share images and stories about windmills, cemeteries, trucks, Palo Duro Canyon, grain elevators, religious icons, Route 66, old buildings, and the Cadillac Ranch.

The Texas Panhandle consists of over 25,000 square miles of wide open space -- enough to easily contain the entire state of Massachusetts . . . twice!

Massachusetts shown on the same scale as TX, NM, and OK

The western half of the Texas Panhandle is an enormous grassy plain, the Llano Estacado, which on the east and west rises 200 to 300 feet from the surrounding land as escarpments.  Here's a relief map image:

Llano Escatado (circled)

And here's a road map with the Llano and its defining escarpments shown (ignore the line in the upper left; that escarpment is not related to the Llano):

I crossed the New Mexico-Texas border on I-40 35 miles east of Tucumcari, NM, and 62 miles west of Amarillo.  

The Llano Estacado doesn't begin at the border in this location; it begins 15 miles further east where the Northwest Escarpment rises 200 feet above the eastern edge of the Pecos River watershed.  (If you look closely at the image above, you can see the cliffs of the Northwest Escarpment in the distance right at the horizon.)

Here's what the escarpment looks like from I-40 at a closer distance:

(Can you spot the three antelope in this image?  The most obvious one is very near the center of the image.)



Once up on the Llano, it's wide open space as far as the eye can see . . .

. . . populated mostly by cattle . . .

. . . and some frisky calves:

These and additional images in a larger format are available for viewing at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

More posts about the Texas Panhandle are forthcoming. Next up:  windmills.

Enjoy!