Palo Duro Canyon

The canyon runs about 190 kilometres long and up to twenty wide, with a depth of around 250 metres, cut by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River into the Llano Estacado - and the approach is the striking part, because the plain is dead flat and the canyon does not appear until you are at the rim. The rock is banded red, orange, yellow and white through four geological layers. The Lighthouse, a hoodoo about twenty metres tall, is the park's emblem and reached by a trail of about ten kilometres round trip. In 1874 the army destroyed a Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne encampment here and killed over a thousand of their horses, which effectively ended resistance on the southern plains.

What you actually see

• A canyon invisible until the rim - cut into flat plain.
• Banded rock in four layers - red, orange, yellow and white.
• The Lighthouse hoodoo - about twenty metres, a ten-kilometre round trip.
• The 1874 campaign site - where the horse herd was destroyed.

When to go

March to May and September to November; summer exceeds forty degrees. A full day.

Honest expectations

Summer heat in the canyon is dangerous - the floor is hotter than the rim. There is no shade on the Lighthouse trail. Flash floods close the road across the river. Winter can bring ice on the descent.

Nearby

Amarillo is north; Caprock Canyons is south-east.