Day 6 The Southern Plains

Others might disagree, but to me the southern plains begin west of Oklahoma City. this is oil country and has recently received an economic boost from shale development. I saw several billboards along the highway recruiting class A CDL drivers for the shale industry. What you see from Route 66 is ranching. Cattle and hay dominate but there is also irrigated grain.

Map courtesy of d-maps.com/

One spot off a gravel road summed up western Oklahoma perfectly: a feed lot, a wheat field, and oil tanks.

In the past, this was the range of the vast southern Bison herd and of the aboriginal bands that followed them. to the north of Elk City lies the Black Kettle National Grassland, a reminder that this area was occupied by the Southern Cheyenne. Custer City and Custer County also serve as reminders that the white settlement of the west came at great cost to the Indian nations.

Elk City is interesting in spite of its tacky Route 66 Museum. The first thing that greets the traveler from the east is a completely intact oil rig.

Right next door is a poorly maintained vintage hotel which once held a Route 66 Association convention but now appears derelict. It does look as if they are beginning some renovation so it may be functioning again in the future.

It continues to surprise me that such an immediate change in terrain occurs when you cross state borders. As Route 66 and Interstate 40 leave green, intensively cultivated Oklahoma, they pass through a very parched part of Texas. The difference is most likely due to state managed irrigation projects in Oklahoma or a lack of water rights in this area of Texas, but the difference is startling.

Shamrock, Texas contains one of the real gems of the "Mother Road", a combination filling station and cafe that is well preserved and right out of the twenties.

Unfortunately it was closed so I didn't get to see the inside. 

This dry country lies in the very heart of the Dust Bowl. It's easy to appreciate the hardships endured by people immigrating to California along this dry, hot, windy road. Amenities here are few and far between and would have been beyond the financial ability of most of the immigrants. It may be good for us to be reminded that a lot of people whose families had lived in the U.S. for many generations were refugees of a natural disaster not so long ago.

        McLean, Texas looks like a Dust Bowl town or maybe the town in the Last Picture Show.

Moving west toward Amarillo, the scenery transitions from parched plains to grassland. This is the "llano" the most featureless landscape I have ever seen. Before agriculture, this region was uniformly yellow-brown, treeless, and windswept. It was home to possibly millions of Bison and to the Comanche. The actual borders of the "Llano Estacado" are the Canadian River to the north and Levelland to the south and it is considered to start west of Amarillo but the grassland to the east are equally amazing.

          There is relatively little cultivation in this region, mostly the land is used for grazing.

At Amarillo, I took a side trip to the legendary Palo Duro Canyon. This canyon was the often used winter refuge of the Comanche and the sight where the last of the independent bands met their demise at the hands of Ranald McKenzie and the U.S. Cavalry. In 1874 McKenzie and his troopers pursued a large band of Comanche and Kiowa who retreated into the canyon. It was an often used tactic for the natives to enter the canyon, cache all but their most portable valuables and abandon their horses before dispersing and working their way out of the canyon on foot. The cavalry would then round up the horses and begin to transport them back to their base. Thus burdened, the troopers were easy prey for the Comanche who would little by little steal back their horses by stealth and retrieve their lodges and other valuables from the canyon. From there they would regroup in another location.

McKenzie was aware of this tactic and determined to thwart it. He had his troops transport the captured horses, some 1200 in all, to another canyon where they were all slaughtered. This effectively removed the natives mobility, without which they were helpless in this open country. In the end, these independent bands were forced to surrender to the army or face starvation.

From descriptions I had read, the canyon was virtually invisible until you stood right at its edge, and this proved to be true. Approaching from the northwest I could not see anything other than grassland until I passed through the entrance of what is now a state park.

The canyon is 120 miles long but the park only covers sixteen miles of the most scenic stretch.

The erosion is caused by the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River which like other prairie rivers is sometimes a trickle and other times a flood.

This relative abundance of water permitted large groups of Comanche and their allies to congregate in a single area.

After Palo Duro and Amarillo the road traverses more grassland and encounters more wind until reaching New Mexico. Route 66 did not take me through the stockyards like Interstate 40 so I was grateful for that favor.

Harvesting the wind on the llano.

Ironically, there are thousands of wind turbines in this state whose oil companies keep telling us it's not practical.

The Comancheria extended west to the Pecos River, though the Comanche traded with the Pueblos even farther west. Much of this trade was in slaves captured from other tribes or Mexican villages. This was New Mexico's "dirty little secret" since this slavery continued well past the Civil War.

     New Mexico includes the west end of the llano which begins to include sage brush and scrub.

       The Comanche somewhat overlapped territories with the Mescalero Apaches in this area.

By the time you reach Tucumcari it is possible to see table land to the south and some rolling hills to the north.

The Tucumcari Railway station is another gem of Route 66. It has been restored and contains a small railroad museum. In the future I think it will see more use as a native cultural center.

West of Tucuncari the plains give way to higher country and the region of the pueblos and Route 66 begins its rolling, twisting path through the southern Rockies.