Boone's tale at the Lighthouse — the many peoples who, for twelve thousand years, found shelter and life in this hidden canyon below the harsh plains.
Rest here in the shade of the Lighthouse a spell — Ranger Merrick — and look out over this hidden green world tucked below the flat and furious plains, because I want you to feel how old the human story is in this canyon. You are not the first to be glad of this place. Not by a long, long way.
Reach back twelve thousand years, near to the end of the last Ice Age. Even then, there were people here — we know it, because they left their spear points in this canyon, points they used to hunt animals that are long extinct: giant ancient bison, and mammoths that once walked this country. Twelve thousand years, friend. People have been finding refuge in Palo Duro Canyon since before there were pyramids, since before there was writing anywhere on Earth.
And you can see plain as day why they all came. Up top, the Llano Estacado — the Staked Plains — is one of the hardest landscapes in North America: dead flat, treeless, no landmarks, no shelter, the wind never stops, and water is scarce as gold. A body could die of thirst or exposure up there in a day. And then the ground opens into this — and down here there's water year-round, and wood, and shade, and game come to drink, and these high red walls to break that endless killing wind. This canyon is a green miracle in a brown ocean. It is an oasis, a larder, and a fortress, all in one.
So they came, all of them, down the long centuries — the ancient hunters, then the Apache, and then the Comanche and Kiowa who made it their heartland. Coronado's Spaniards likely crossed this country in fifteen forty-one, chasing rumors of gold. Comancheros traded here. And every one of them, standing about where you stand, felt the same rush of relief and wonder you probably felt driving down into it: out of the wind at last, into the shelter of the red rock.
That's the thing to carry away from this old stone tower, friend. This canyon has been a haven for human beings for a hundred and twenty centuries. You're just the latest one to climb down out of the hard flat world and be glad of the shelter. There's a deep old kinship in that, across all that time — every soul who ever came down into Palo Duro looking for refuge, and found it. Drink your water. Then start the long walk home, one of a very great company.
Photo: George Catlin · Public domain
