The Pioneer Amphitheater and the deeper canyon — home of the outdoor musical 'TEXAS,' and the country where Charles Goodnight ran the first great Panhandle cattle ranch. (Boone's Goodnight tale dwells here.)
As we drive on deeper into the canyon, watch for the turnoff to the Pioneer Amphitheater — a big outdoor stage built right into the base of a five-hundred-foot canyon wall. On summer nights since nineteen sixty-six, they've put on a rousing outdoor musical drama called simply 'TEXAS' here, with music and fireworks and horses thundering across the stage, all against that floodlit red cliff for a backdrop. If you're here of a summer evening, it's a genuine Panhandle institution, worth the ticket.
And this whole floor around you was, not so very long ago, one of the greatest cattle ranches in America. After the canyon's original people were driven out in the eighteen seventies, a tough old cattleman named Charles Goodnight rode down into this sheltered gorge, saw good water and shelter and grass, and in eighteen seventy-six he started the JA Ranch right here on the canyon floor. It grew into an empire — over a million acres, a hundred thousand head of cattle — and Goodnight became the father of the whole Texas Panhandle. Boone's got his story for you.
This is about as far as the road takes us into the canyon. When you're ready, we'll turn around and climb back up to the rim — but stay put here among the old ranch country a moment first, and let Boone tell you the tale of Charles Goodnight.
Photo: Eric T. Gunther · CC BY 3.0
