#2: [08-May-04]

#3: [18-Feb-04]

14-Jan-2001 -- There's not much to see at N35 W102.

I hate to admit that since I grew up in Canyon. Perhaps it's a sort of residual favoritism toward the place where I spent the first 18 years of my life. The views from the confluence, just a few dozen feet north of a bar ditch along Hale road, look very much like the views you'd find at most locations within a hundred miles of here. Flat fields or pastures. Open sky. The vista broken only by strings of barbed wire on fence posts or the ups and downs of power and phone lines running from pole to pole across the vastness. But there is one notable exception to the simple near monotony of the landscape, and Canyon itself has some notable aspects. Beginning just a few miles east of town is Palo Duro Canyon. "The Canyon" lags far behind the Grand Canyon and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in depth but makes up for it in overall size. Formed by the Prarie Dog Town fork of the Red River, it stretches out over about 110 miles. Canyon and "the Canyon" were home and inspiration to Georgia O'Keeffe from 1917 to 1919 while she was teaching at West Texas Normal College, later West Texas State University, and now West Texas A&M University. Part of the university, the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum claims to be the largest history museum in Texas with exhibits ranging from paleontology and geology to textiles and fine art. It includes a recreation of a frontier town, an oil rig, large collections of native american artifacts, and the obligatory life size dinosaur. Every true Texas town also has a great BBQ joint. In Canyon, it's "Fat Boys".