This stretch of the Llano Estacado — the high, flat, treeless caprock that the Spanish called the "staked plains" — was Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache country, crossed by Coronado's expedition as early as 1541 in search of the cities of Cibola. For centuries it was open range: bison herds, then the great cattle drives. The town itself begins in 1887, when the railroad arrived and surveyors laid out a settlement near Amarillo Lake. It was called Oneida at first, then renamed; two years later the rancher Henry B. Sanborn — the "Father of Amarillo" — moved the whole town to higher ground, where it stuck.
Today Amarillo is the capital of the Texas Panhandle — a high-plains city of cattle, energy, the self-styled "Helium Capital of the World," and a steady stream of Route 66 travelers passing through on the way across the country. Just to the south, Palo Duro Canyon opens 800 feet into the plains, the "Grand Canyon of Texas." Our Amarillo designs gather that identity into wearable form — the Yellow City, the longhorn-and-star, the Quarter Horse, the Mother Road. From the cattle sidings to the canyon rim — wear a little of the high-plains Panhandle.
Why People Visit Amarillo Texas
Amarillo draws visitors with a mix of Western heritage, natural wonder, and Mother Road Americana. Travelers find it both a marquee stop along historic Route 66 and the gateway to Palo Duro Canyon, with deep cattle-ranching and Quarter-Horse traditions and the wide, plainspoken character of the high plains. It is proud, practical, and unmistakably Texan.
