Canyon, Texas

Everything Canyon is known for

8 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Canyon

Songs About Canyon

Canyon Song
Tim Heintz
80%
"Song about Canyon"
Canyon Song
Scott Wilkie
80%
"Song about Canyon"
Canyon Song
Oregon
80%
"Song about Canyon"
Canyon Song
Adam Simons
80%
"Song about Canyon"
Canyon Song
Native Spirit
80%
"Song about Canyon"
Red River
Guy Clark
39%
"From Palo Duro Canyon outside Amarillo, Texas"
Heaven
Kevin Fowler
6%
"Purple sage sunrise over Palo Duro Canyon"
Lay of the Land
Emily Nenni
4%
"Straight into the Palo Duro canyon"

Artists From Canyon

R
Rī Wolf
country Pop: 18

Rivers & Roads in Song near Canyon

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Canyon.

Highway I 40 20 songs U.S. Route 66 17 songs Canadian River 7 songs

Musical Heritage

Canyon RoadyGoat

Head due south out of Amarillo and you'll hit Canyon — fifteen thousand people and the front door to Palo Duro Canyon. It's a West Texas A and M town, ninety-six hundred students who mostly clear out come summer, which is exactly when the canyon fills up. The railroad reached here in 1898. A three-story courthouse with a working clock tower still anchors the downtown square, and every Fourth of July a parade of floats rolls down Fourth Avenue and loops around it. But the real reason to come: out in the Palo Duro amphitheater, the outdoor musical Texas plays nightly all summer long, canyon walls for a backdrop. A small town that knows how to put on a show.

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Texas (outdoor musical) RoadyGoat

Six nights a week, June through August, the walls of Palo Duro Canyon turn into a backdrop for a show simply called "Texas." Thirteen hundred seats, open sky, a story set in the 1890s — a cattle baron named McLean, drawn straight from Charles Goodnight, going to war with a farmer over a railroad. There's a love triangle, a hoedown, two fever dreams. But the man to watch rides a white paint horse named Spirit. Benny Tahmahkera plays Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief — and Quanah Parker was his own great-great-grandfather. Sixty-two years old, twenty years a United States Marine, retired now to Cache, Oklahoma, and he's summered in Canyon a dozen years to put on that war bonnet. Some roles you don't audition for. They're already in your blood.

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History of Canyon

Georgia O'Keeffe and the Panhandle Sky RoadyGoat

When a 28-year-old Georgia O'Keeffe stepped off the train in Canyon in 1916, she found a landscape that would change her life and the course of American art. Hired to teach at the local college, she was mesmerized by the stark beauty of the Panhandle. She took long, solitary walks, especially into Palo Duro Canyon, which she called 'a burning, seething cauldron'. She filled sketchbooks with the shapes of the cliffs and the jaw-dropping sunrises. It was here that she began to move away from realism and toward the powerful abstractions that would define her career. Writing to her friend Anita Pollitzer that year, she gushed, 'Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful.' She loved this hard, open country, later calling it 'terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness' — the only place she ever felt she truly belonged. For two years, this place was her muse, and the spirit of the canyon and the vast Texas sky is forever embedded in her work.

How the Great JA Ranch Began in Palo Duro Canyon RoadyGoat

1876

This canyon is where one of the most famous ranches in the West was born. In 1876 the trail driver Charles Goodnight brought roughly 1,600 longhorns down off the Colorado plains and into Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the country, whose sheltering walls and spring water made fine cattle country. He owned no land and had no money. Only a year earlier the U.S. Army had driven the Comanche and Kiowa from the canyon in the Red River War, throwing it open to ranchers. In 1877 Goodnight partnered with a wealthy Irishman, John George Adair, who put up the money while Goodnight ran the cattle and the country. They branded their stock with Adair's initials, J and A, and built the JA into a giant: about 1.3 million acres of range and more than 100,000 cattle by the mid-1880s. Remarkably, the JA is still owned and worked by Adair's descendants today, five generations on, under Ninia Ritchie and her son Andrew Bivins, making it the oldest continuously family-run ranch in the Panhandle. (Sources: TSHA Handbook of Texas; Texas Historical Commission.)

12.3 mi away

Comancheria: The Empire That Rose and Fell on These Plains RoadyGoat

1706

The High Plains around Palo Duro Canyon were once the heart of Comancheria, an Indigenous empire historians now rank among the great powers of early North America. The Numunu ('the People,' the Comanches' own name for themselves), a Shoshone offshoot, entered the southern plains from the west through passes of the Sangre de Cristo range in small bands alongside their Ute allies. New Mexico's Spanish officials first recorded their arrival in 1706 and dismissed it as a minor event. Within half a century the Comanches had fought a long war that displaced the Apaches from the southern plains and had built a new way of life on the triad of grasses, bison, and horses: specialized mounted bison hunting. They became the dominant military and commercial power of the lower midcontinent, rearranging trade and alliance networks among neighboring tribes and European colonies; historian Pekka Hamalainen argues their rise marks the beginning of the long decay of Spanish imperial power in what is now the American Southwest, and calls their conquest of the southern plains the largest and bloodiest the American West would see until the United States' own expansion a century and a half later. The canyonlands cut into the Llano Estacado, Palo Duro foremost, were Comancheria's shelter and wintering ground. The end came on September 28, 1874, when Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's 4th U.S. Cavalry descended into Palo Duro Canyon during the Red River War, burned the villages' lodges and winter food stores, and captured about 1,400 horses, shooting most of them near Tule Canyon. Within months the last free bands, including Quanah Parker's Quahadis, surrendered at Fort Sill, in June 1875. (Sources: Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire, winner of the 2009 Bancroft Prize; Texas State Historical Association Handbook.)

15.0 mi away

Goodnight, The Charles Memorial Trail

1876

The highway from this museum to the Palo Duro State Park (12 miles east) approximates course used by Charles Goodnight, outstanding Texas cowman and trail blazer, when he trailed 1600 cattle from Colorado to found first ranch on the staked plains of Texas in 1876. He entered precipitous Palo Duro Canyon by way of old Comanche Indian trail; drove thousands of buffalo from what is now park area; established his home ranch a few miles farther down canyon. Goodnight was born in Illinois, March 5, 1836. At age of 9 he rode bareback to Texas behind covered wagon driven by his parents; he hunted with Caddo Indians beyond the frontier at 14; guided Texas Rangers fighting Comanche and Kiowas at 25; blazed cattle trails about 2,000 miles long with Oliver Loving at 30. In partnership with John G. Adair, he expanded his original Palo Duro ranch into the giant JA and other holdings of more than a million acres and 100,000 cattle. He preserved the buffalo, founded a college, encouraged the settlement of the plains and led in a long fight for law and order. This foremost plainsman died March 12, 1929; and is buried at Goodnight, Texas. (1968)

Historical Marker →

Palo Duro Canyon

1874

Palo Duro Canyon is the most spectacular and scenic landscape feature in the Panhandle of Texas. The Spanish name Palo Duro means "hardwood" and refers to the hardwood shrubs and trees found in the canyon. Palo Duro Canyon was carved into the eastern Caprock escarpment of the High Plains during the past ninety million years by the headwaters of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River and by attendant weathering. The head of the canyon lies fifteen miles southeast of Amarillo in Randall County, and the canyon extends sixty miles southeast through Armstrong County and into Briscoe County. It reaches depths of 800 feet from rim to floor (approximately 3,500 feet to 2,400 feet above sea level) and average widths of more than six miles. The steep sides of Palo Duro Canyon consist of bright, banded layers of orange, red, brown, yellow, grey, maroon, and white rocks that represent four different geologic periods and a time span of more than 240 million years. Fossils of long-extinct animals and plants have been found embedded in the rock layers. Adding to the canyon's scenic grandeur are numerous pinnacles, buttes, and mesas, each protected by a cap of erosion-resistant sandstone or other rock. The natural vegetation of the canyon consists of a variety of grasses and other xerophytic vegetation such as prickly pear, yucca, mesquite, and juniper. Cottonwood, willow, and salt cedar grow along the banks of Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. Because of the availability of wood, water, game, edible wild plants, raw materials for weapons and tools, and shelter from harsh winter winds, Palo Duro Canyon was a favorite camp site for both prehistoric peoples and later Indian tribes. The first known inhabitants, who date from the period between 10,000 and 5,000 B.C. were big-game hunters of now-extinct giant bison and mammoths. Archeologists have found projectile points, stone tools, mortar holes, paintings, carvings, and other artifacts of these and later prehistoric people at numerous sites throughout the canyon. The first Europeans to see Palo Duro Canyon were probably the members of the Coronado expedition , who may have camped and rested there in the late spring of 1541 while searching for Quivira and the treasures it reputedly contained. The region was occupied at that time by bands of pre-horse-culture Apache Indians who depended heavily on buffalo for food, clothing, and shelter. In the eighteenth century, after the Plains Indians had acquired horses, the canyon became a major campground of the Comanches and Kiowas. Traders from New Mexico called Comancheros frequently came to Palo Duro to trade with the Indians. The first Anglo-Americans to explore Palo Duro Canyon were members of Capt. Randolph B. Marcy 's 1852 expedition in search of the sources of the Red River. The Comanches and their allies continued to camp there until 1874, when United States Cavalry troops under Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie made a surprise dawn attack on a large encampment of Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes, forcing them to return to their reservations in Indian Territory. In 1876 a group of army engineers, teamsters, and civilian draftsman was in the area to explore the headwaters of the Red River and conduct a topographic and scientific survey. Their report was the most detailed report compiled up to that time on the central Panhandle region, including Palo Duro Canyon. That same year, Charles Goodnight drove a herd of cattle into Palo Duro Canyon to begin the first commercial ranch in the Panhandle, the JA . Although the canyon remained the domain of the cattlemen for the next half century, it also became a popular picnicking and camping place for residents in the surrounding area. In 1933 the state of Texas purchased land in the upper canyon to establish Palo Duro Canyon State Scenic Park . Initial improvements, including construction of a road to the floor of the canyon, were made by the Civilian Conservation Corps under the direction of the National

Tsha Handbook →

J. Evetts Haley

1901

(July 5, 1901 - October 9, 1995) A noted historian, writer and public figure in Texas during the early 20th century, J. Evetts Haley was born in Belton (Bell County). He grew up in Midland, working on area ranches and competing in rodeos. Haley attended Midland College and West Texas Normal College in Canyon, where he earned a degree in history. He went on to earn his master's degree at the University of Texas in Austin in 1926, focusing on post-Civil War Texas cattle trails. In 1925, Haley was appointed the first field secretary of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society and Museum in Canyon. During his time at the museum, Haley reveled in interviewing ranchers and farmers regarding old trail drives and the initial development of the cattle industry in west Texas. He began collecting artifacts and documents of early ranches and pioneers which have been installed in numerous museums and collections throughout the region. Haley was also a prolific author, writing articles and numerous acclaimed books chronicling the lives and times of early west Texas, most notably Charles Goodnight and the XIT Ranch. Haley was an original member of the Texas State Historical Survey Committee (now Texas Historical Commission). He received many honors throughout his life, including induction into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center (1990) and the Heritage Hall of Fame at the State Fair of Texas (1994). His library and personal papers became the initial collection of the Haley Memorial Library & History Center in Midland. Haley passed away in Midland and is buried in Moffat Cemetery (Bell County). (2019)

Historical Marker →

Georgia O'Keeffe in Canyon

1916

Renowned artist Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to Francis and Ida (Totto) O'Keeffe. The family moved to Virginia, where O'Keeffe and her siblings attended school. She studied art at various schools before enrolling in the Art Institute of Chicago and later the Art Students League in New York City. She then worked as a commercial artist before attending classes at the University of Virginia. In order to gain teaching experience, she taught art in Amarillo between 1912 and 1914. The Texas Panhandle attracted her as an artist because of "the openness. The dry landscape. The beauty of that wild world." In 1914, O'Keeffe returned to the East, studying at Columbia University in New York, and teaching in Virginia and South Carolina. At Columbia University, she met Arthur Wesley Dow, who greatly altered her vision of art. Influenced by east Asian painters and the British Arts and Crafts movement, he inspired her to approach painting in a more abstract manner. O'Keeffe returned to Texas in 1916 as a faculty member at West Texas State Normal College, now West Texas A&M University, where she held classes in Old Main. Inspired by the landscape, particularly Palo Duro Canyon, she began incorporating themes from nature in her work, moving away from Representationalism. O'Keeffe showed many of her Texas pieces at Alfred Stieglitz's New York City gallery in 1917. The following year, she moved to New York and in 1924 married Stieglitz, a noted photographer. Both artists produced large bodies of acclaimed work. Following Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico, where she continued to explore her creative vision and unique style, shaped in part by her Canyon years. Today, she remains a major influence in American Art.

Historical Marker →

Conner, Lincoln Guy

1887

Lincoln Guy Conner, rancher and founder of Canyon, was born on March 4, 1860, near Boonville, Missouri. Earlier, his father had established a flour mill, and the community that grew up around it was known as Conner's Mill. After suffering severe economic losses during the Civil War the family moved to Grayson County, Texas. There Conner met Queenie Victoria Younger, whom he married on January 19, 1884. They made their home on a 600-acre tract in Clay County near Bellevue, east of Henrietta, where Conner had previously built a small herd of cattle. In the summer of 1887 the Conners moved their 350 cattle into the Panhandle , stopping first at Quitaque, near the future site of Plainview. On Christmas Day 1887 Conner surveyed and located section 34, block B5 in Randall County, near the T Anchor Ranch headquarters. He bought this land from the state for three dollars an acre on April 2, 1888, and constructed a half-dugout ( see DUGOUT ) from logs hauled from nearby Palo Duro Canyon . Here he established a general store and post office, and in the spring of 1889 he laid out the townsite of Canyon City. When Randall County was organized on July 27, the Conner dugout served as a voting place. Conner's daughter Mamie, the oldest of three children, was the first White child born in the county. To attract settlers to Canyon City, the Conners began donating town lots to anyone willing to built a home or business building. Conner opened the town's first real estate office and gave thirty acres to the Santa Fe Railroad for a depot and cattle pens. He also donated lots for a county courthouse, schools, and churches. In 1891 he built the two-story Victoria Hotel, which he named for his wife. Conner expanded his ranching and real estate ventures steadily over the next two decades and became one of Canyon City's most prosperous citizens. As a charter member of Canyon's First Baptist Church and Masonic lodge, Conner contributed generously to the improvement of his community's civic and educational institutions and sought to have Palo Duro Canyon made a national park ( see PALO DURO CANYON STATE PARK ). His crowning achievement was the donation of forty acres near his residence and $2,000 for the establishment of West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) in 1910. He died on December 30, 1920, and was buried in Dreamland Cemetery, Canyon. Victoria Conner continued her husband's philanthropic works and was the undisputed leader of the local Pioneer Club until her death on March 27, 1946. Conner Park, Canyon's first city park, is named for the Conners. In 1967 a historical marker was placed on the site of the original Conner dugout in Canyon.

Tsha Handbook →

Canyon, TX (Randall County)

1887

Canyon is at the junction of U.S. Highway 60 and Interstate Highway 27, near the center of Randall County and southwest of the old T Anchor Ranch headquarters. In December 1887 Lincoln Guy Conner surveyed and settled at the site. He laid out the town in the spring of 1889, his dugout serving as home, general store, and post office. A. L. Hammond established the second business and a blacksmith shop, and suggested the name Canyon City, after nearby Palo Duro Canyon, when Conner refused to have the settlement named after himself. When Randall County was organized in July 1889 Conner's home was the voting place for that precinct, and Canyon City was chosen as the county seat. Lumber for commercial buildings was hauled from Quanah by mule-drawn freight wagons. A temporary, two-room frame building served as a courthouse, where church services and other community gatherings were held. Conner established the town's first real estate office and built the Victoria Hotel. Beginning in August 1890 several newspapers, the Echo , the Keystone , the Headlight , and the Battleship , appeared briefly. In 1896 Mrs. R. W. Morgan began publishing the Stayer ; George A. Brandon renamed this paper the Canyon City News after buying it in 1903. The first telephone line reached Canyon City from Amarillo in 1896. The arrival of the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway in 1898 made Canyon City a major shipping point for cattle and cotton and a receiving center for such necessities as coal and lumber. Acres of cattle pens were built on land donated by Conner; W. C. Kenyon ran a wagonyard and seven saloons. The population reached 530 by 1904. That year L. T. Lester opened the Stockman's National Bank, later the First National Bank of Canyon. A telephone exchange was installed in 1902, and construction boomed in anticipation of further rail service. By 1910 ten real estate firms, including the Texas Land Company and Keiser Brothers and Phillips, were operating in Canyon City. A brick school building and several churches were built, and on September 29, 1906, residents voted to incorporate, with Jasper N. Haney as first mayor. The Commercial Club and other civic and social organizations were begun at that time. In 1907 the completion of the Santa Fe line from Canyon City to Plainview marked the retirement of the mail hack and stage line between the two towns. The following year a volunteer fire department was organized and an electricity and ice plant installed. C. O. Keiser purchased the Canyon City News and began calling it the Randall County News ; R. A. Terrill was editor. In 1909 a waterworks and sewer system were installed, and a brick courthouse replaced the original frame building. Since many of Canyon City's settlers were Confederate veterans, annual reunions of the Stonewall Jackson Camp of United Confederate Veterans were staged there for ten years. In 1910 the Santa Fe's Llano Estacado line connected Canyon City with Floydada. West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) opened on a forty-acre site donated by Conner, but classes were held in the courthouse until the completion of the college's first building in 1911. That year the town was renamed Canyon. By 1915 the population was 1,500, and industries included two banks, grain elevators, a tannery, and the twenty-five-room Palace Hotel. The Ford Motor Company established Canyon's first automobile dealership in 1919, and in 1920 Clyde W. Warwick, editor of the Randall County News since 1910, bought the paper; he later renamed it the Canyon News . On December 2, 1921, fire destroyed several buildings on the south side of the town square. Nevertheless, during the 1920s Canyon enjoyed new growth because of above-average rainfall. The first American Legion post in the Southwest completed its headquarters at Canyon in 1921. Streets and highways were paved, streetlights added, and natural gas piped in from the Panhandle oil and gas field north of Amarillo. The Santa Fe Railroad erecte

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Canyon

quirky 14.8 mi away
Cadillac Ranch

Ten Cadillacs buried nose-down in a Texas field since 1974. Bring spray paint.
nature 9.8 mi away
Palo Duro Canyon

Second-largest canyon in the US. The Grand Canyon of Texas with stunning red rock walls.
nature 14.9 mi away
Lighthouse Rock

Lighthouse Rock is the signature hoodoo of Palo Duro Canyon -- a three-hundred-foot pillar of red sandstone with a harder caprock balanced on top. The caprock…
quirky 15.1 mi away
Palo Duro Canyon

The second-largest canyon in the United States cuts straight through the flat Texas Panhandle like somebody took a knife to a pancake. A hundred and twenty…
food 16.6 mi away
The Big Texan Steak Ranch

Home of the free 72-oz steak challenge since 1960. Giant cowboy out front.

Sports in Canyon

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 4A · Girls Basketball · 2017–2021

Canyon — UIL 4A Girls Basketball State Champions — 2 titles

Most recent: 2021 4A

Canyon High School in Canyon, Texas, stands as a proud Class 4A institution with a distinguished record in girls' basketball. The Lady Eagles have captured two UIL state championships, showcasing their consistent excellence on the court. These titles represent significant achievements for the school and its community.

The Canyon High School girls' basketball program has established itself as a force within Texas high school sports. Their state championship victories in 2017 (Class 5A) and 2021 (Class 4A) highlight a sustained period of top-tier performance, bringing pride to the Panhandle region.

State titles
2 (2017–2021)
Most recent
2021
Class
4A
The moment

The 2021 Class 4A state championship marked a significant moment for Canyon High School girls' basketball.

Sources: UIL State Championship Archives

Everything Near Canyon

224 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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