Palo Duro Canyon State Park

Palo Duro has sheltered people for many thousands of years, drawn by its water, shade, and game in a land otherwise short on all three. In the centuries before European contact and after, it was a stronghold of the Southern Plains peoples, above all the Comanche and Kiowa, who wintered in the canyon and knew every spring and side draw. The Apache had ranged the region before them. The canyon was a heartland, not a backdrop.

That way of life ended violently here. In 1874, during the Red River War, United States cavalry under Colonel Ranald Mackenzie descended into the canyon in a surprise attack, destroyed the Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne camps and stores of food and shelter, and slaughtered the tribes' great herd of horses, more than a thousand animals, on the plains above. Deprived of horses and provisions on the edge of winter, the free bands soon surrendered to the reservations. The battle is remembered as a turning point that ended the era of the free Southern Plains tribes.

The canyon was cut by water, specifically the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, working down through the layered rock of the Llano Estacado over roughly the last million years. The plains here are made of soft, easily eroded sediments, and once the river began to bite into them it carved fast and deep, opening the great gorge and its many side canyons.

The exposed walls read like a book of deep time, banded in colors that mark different ages of rock, from bright red-orange claystones to pale layers of gypsum and caliche. Hoodoos, pinnacles, and spires stand out where harder rock has resisted the erosion, the most famous being the Lighthouse, a slender rock column that has become the symbol of the park and the goal of its best-loved hike.

The park is threaded with trails for hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders, ranging from easy strolls along the canyon floor to longer routes climbing toward the rims and buttes. The signature hike is the Lighthouse Trail, which leads out across the canyon to the base of that iconic spire, an exposed and unforgettable walk best done in the cool of morning. Riding stables in the park let visitors explore the canyon on horseback, as people have for centuries.

On summer nights the canyon hosts an outdoor musical drama staged against the towering rock walls, a long-running Panhandle tradition that tells the story of Texas settlement with music, horses, and fireworks under the stars. Watching a performance with the red cliffs glowing in the last light and then darkening overhead is a Panhandle rite of passage.

The canyon is an oasis of life in the dry plains. Wild turkey, mule deer, and roadrunners are common, along with the small, curved-horn Texas longhorn cattle kept as part of the state herd, and the endangered Texas horned lizard turns up in the sandy washes. Golden eagles and hawks ride the updrafts along the rims, and songbirds fill the cottonwoods along the river.

Spring and fall are the finest seasons, mild and clear, ideal for hiking the exposed trails. Summer is hot down in the canyon, where temperatures run higher than on the rim, so early starts and plenty of water are essential, and afternoon storms can send flash floods down the washes. Winter is cold and often quiet, with the low sun deepening the red of the rock and a chance of snow dusting the canyon into something strange and beautiful.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.