By Noah Dawson
I’ve taken several friends down to Palo Duro Canyon, many of whom grew up here in the panhandle yet have never visited. I’ve been to the canyon more times than I can count, but each time I come back, I still get goosebumps upon arriving. Here’s sort of how it usually goes when I take somebody there for the first time:
Take a drive with me. We’ll head south on Washington, leave the city limits, and keep going for while, past the loop, and even past the intersection with the old claude highway. We’ll drive through the high golden plains, past the farms that cover the vast open lands of the Llano Estacado. Continuing south, we’ll meet a taste of what’s to come, when, out of nowhere, we meet a small canyon. The road winds down into and up out of the canyon for about a mile, passing by Camp Don Harrington. Soon enough though, we’re back atop the rim, and the plains once again take over, dominating every direction of eyesight, as if they stretched on forever, to the ends of the earth.
Eventually, our road meets a stop sign. Just before the stop sign, we see a sign showing that WTA&M Ranch and Happy lay further down this road, Canyon lays to the right, and Palo Duro Park lays to the left.
We take a left, but the land is still as flat as before. We continue for a mile, two, five. It’s just more of the same. Empty land, part of what pioneers once called The Great American Desert. The miles continue to go by, until you think you see something on the right. Steep rock faces angle straight down, leaving a gash in the ground. Maybe it’s just another part of the little canyon we drove through before. Soon enough, though, the cliffs fade into the distance. The road goes on a few more miles, hardly ever changing in elevation. Maybe we made a wrong turn. Maybe the sign was wrong.
You begin to notice, though, that the land isn’t quite as empty as it was. There are a few more buildings here, and the land itself is a bit more green. Slowly, the shape of the land becomes a little more rough, but it’s still fairly flat. Then, to the side of the road, you see a wooden sign with the words “Palo Duro Canyon State Park” written in white.
What canyon? The land is still almost perfectly level, aside from some slight roughness and the cliffs we saw a few miles ago.
We continue ahead, stopping at a window on a building on the side of the road. We each pay 5 dollars to enter the park, and continue on. That’s when you notice the horizon. It’s still flat, but it has a small lip to it, off in the distance. We continue down the road, and I pull to the right to stop at an overlook.
Before you know it, the land bursts open right before your eyes. It seems impossible that this could have been hiding in the middle of such a flat and empty land. The walls of the canyon plummet down hundreds of feet., colored in vivid shades of red, orange, yellow, and green, reaching a floor dotted with natural formations no mortal architect could dream of.
To call Palo Duro Canyon beautiful, breathtaking, or awe inspiring is to understate the emotion it provokes. The canyon is sudden. It stands, in all it’s glory, hidden beneath the horizon, until you stand upon its rim. The only kinds of words in the English language which come close to truly describing the emotion it conjures are ones like surprising, shocking, or even jarring.
One could attempt to compare the stark contrast between the plains atop the rim of Palo Duro Canyon and the canyon itself to the contrast between the plains of eastern Colorado and the sudden heights of the edge of the Rocky Mountains to the west, but that wouldn’t do Palo Duro justice. You can see the mountains coming from far away. The same can’t be said of the canyon.
We get back in the car and continue on. We wind on for a ways, until the road itself begins to slope downwards. The road eventually becomes quite steep, heading down to the floor of the canyon, clinging to the side of the cliff to our right. It can be a scary descent, but you keep your eyes open, the majesty of your surroundings pulling you in. We make it safely to the bottom, and the cliffs we had just been looking down upon now tower above us.
Further down the road, I point out some of the landmarks I grew up learning about. There’s the steep edges of Fortress Cliff, more daunting than any European castle. There’s Capitol Peak, named for its resemblance to the Capitol. There’s the huge mud caves, and the humble Red River winding its way through, still carving the canyon one pinch of dirt at a time. I tell you about how the bridges at the water crossings are a recent addition. I point out the trailheads for some of my favorite hikes, such as the Rock Garden Trail, the Rojo Grande Trail, and the famously daunting Lighthouse Trail. I tell you that we need to come back someday with our hiking shoes and a few gallons of water and walk one of the trails. We could maybe even take the unofficial trek up to the top of Mesquite Mesa, and cross it to see a whole other side of the state park, unknown to most park visitors.
In fact, I tell you, the state park itself is only a fraction of the canyon. I tell you about how we should at some point find the time to take the highway south of Claude that goes through an even wider part of the canyon.
But not today. Today, we need to get back to town. The Sod Poodles are playing, and everybody knows that our only real local attraction is baseball.
