Palo Duro Canyon State Park — Public Lands Institute

Public Lands Institute

Geological age: ~252-201 million years ago (exposed strata).
Epoch: Triassic (Carnian-Norian); Tecovas Formation (~225 Mya) and Trujillo Formation (~218 Mya); canyon incision began Pliocene (~5 Mya).
Native lands: Comanche (Nʉmʉnʉʉ) · Kiowa · Southern Cheyenne · Arapaho; earlier Apache; canyon occupied 12,000+ years; Battle of Palo Duro Canyon 1874 ended Comanche and Kiowa presence on the Southern Plains.
Displacement & Tenure: Cession 478: Treaty with the Comanche and Kiowa (Little Arkansas Treaty, 1865); Cession 511: Agreement with the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache (Jerome Agreement, 1892, ratified 1900); on September 28, 1874, Col. Ranald Mackenzie's troops entered Palo Duro Canyon at dawn, destroyed the winter encampments of Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne bands, and slaughtered approximately 1,000 captured horses, breaking organized resistance; the canyon passed to private ranching, most prominently the JA Ranch established by Charles Goodnight and John Adair in 1876; approximately 15,000 acres purchased in 1933 from Fred A. Emery using a Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan; the park was developed 1933 to 1937 by seven companies of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Shadow History: CCC Companies 2875 and 2876, composed of African American enrollees transferred from East Texas, arrived at Palo Duro in August 1935 and performed the same construction labor as four white companies already on site; the Texas State Parks Board chairman selected Palo Duro specifically for Black enrollees because its canyon location 13 miles from Amarillo made geographic isolation easier to enforce; Black Texans were legally barred from entering the park they built until the Texas State Parks system was desegregated under federal pressure in 1964; Texas Parks and Wildlife acknowledges that most of the canyon's archaeological sites have been picked over and many artifacts removed.
Ecology: Chihuahuan Desert transition; juniper-mesquite canyon scrub; cottonwood riparian corridor; pronghorn, mule deer, aoudad sheep.
Hydrology: Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River; ephemeral tributaries; canyon springs.
Acreage: 29,182 acres
GPS: 34.8873° N, 101.6713° W

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