The city itself arrived with the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway in 1887. A tent camp on the right-of-way grew into a townsite platted by J.T. Berry beside Amarillo Lake — called Wild Horse Lake by the cowboys — and on August 30, 1887 it won the Potter County seat election. Two years later, after flooding soaked the low ground, Henry B. Sanborn — partner of barbed-wire magnate Joseph F. Glidden and remembered as the Father of Amarillo — moved the town to higher ground, and the boom began: by the 1890s Amarillo was shipping more cattle than any point on the planet, over 100,000 head a year.
For centuries before the rails, the Llano Estacado — the Staked Plains — was Comanchería: the homeland of the Comanche, and of the Kiowa and Apache before and beside them. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado crossed these plains in 1541 hunting the Seven Cities of Cíbola, and for three centuries afterward the high plains belonged to the horse nations and the great bison herds. The 1874 Red River War, whose decisive engagement came at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, ended the Comanche era; within two years Charles Goodnight had driven cattle into the canyon to found the JA Ranch, and the open-range ranching age began.
Why People Visit Amarillo Texas
- Drive a stretch of historic Route 66 through the Sixth Street Historic District, with vintage storefronts, antiques, and diners.
- Visit Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the "Grand Canyon of Texas" and the second-largest canyon in the country.
- Tour the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum, honoring the West's working horse.
- See Cadillac Ranch, the famous row of nose-down Cadillacs along Interstate 40.
- Stop at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, a Route 66 icon of Panhandle cattle country.
