Postcard from Palo Duro Canyon

Palo Duro Canyon

In the Texas Panhandle you'll find the second largest canyon system in America, Palo Duro Canyon (the Spanish name "Palo Duro" means "hardwood" and refers to the hardwood shrubs and trees found in the canyon). At 70+ miles long, up to 1,000 feet deep and up to 20 miles across, it is known as the Grand Canyon of Texas. 

Humans have been living in and around the canyon for 15,000 years, but the first Europeans to lay eyes on it were members of the Coronado Expedition in 1541. At that time, the Apache Indians were the dominant tribe, but in the mid-1600's, the fierce Comanche and Kiowa drove them out. These nomadic people were kings of the plains until 1874 when the American military rode into the Texas Panhandle with the intention of driving the Indians onto reservations in Oklahoma and making the land safe for the white man. It was in the Palo Duro Canyon where the Comanche and Kiowa were finally defeated and driven from the area. 

On that fateful early morning of September 28, 1874, a column of blue-uniformed soldiers under the command of Colonel Ronald S. Mackenzie made its way silently down the canyon’s steep walls and just before sunrise, attacked a large Indian camp. The Indians were still asleep as they had been told by Maman-ti, a Kiowa medicine man, that no bluecoats could possibly penetrate the canyon. Startled into a panic, the warriors tried desperately to protect the women, children and their large horse herd, but it was too late: Mackenzie’s men killed several of the warriors and captured 1,400 animals. The fleeing Indians were forced to leave behind their clothing, lodges and all of their winter food supplies. Mackenzie ordered 1,100 of the horses killed and gave the remaining 300  to the Tonkawa scouts who led them to the Comanche and Kiowa camps. Without food, winter supplies, shelter or horses, the Indians were forced to accept defeat and moved to the Oklahoma reservations. A huge pile of bleaching horse skeletons remained for years to document the end of two hundred years of Comanche dominion and still to this day, sounds of a herd of phantom ghost horses galloping through the canyon are reported.

After the Indians left, cattleman Charles Goodnight laid claim to the canyon to raise his vast cattle herds. He co-founded the Panhandle’s first ranch—the JA Ranch—and erected some of the first buildings in the region. Within a few years he had acquired more than a million acres, much of it in the canyon, along with a herd of 100,000 cattle. Soon he was stringing barbed wire in the draws and side canyons where the Comanche had once hunted buffalo. 

Though most of the canyon and surrounding area is now private land—including part of the still prosperous JA Ranch—the 28,000 acres that make up Palo Duro Canyon State Park are breathtaking, an abrupt, uneven landscape made all the more dramatic by the layers of rocks that vary in color: the bright reds of the Quartermaster shale, the yellow and lavender mudstones, the sculpted sandstone that has been stained over millions of years by iron oxides.



Palo Duro amphitheater

Most of the Texas Panhandle is dead flat, but Palo Duro State Park has become a mecca for people who enjoy the outdoors and the beauty of nature. Hiking is the main activity in the park along with horse riding, camping and cycling. For off trail exploration the park has a sizeable backcountry area. An excellent summer musical pageant, Texas, is presented annually in the outdoor amphitheater. The pageant has become so popular that reservations are required weeks ahead of time and even longer for holiday performances.

Plan a camping trip and before you go, read Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynne’s interesting history of Quanah Parker and the Comanche. As you drive across the High Plains, listen to songs by Don Williams who was born in nearby Floydada. Most places in the Texas Panhandle are so far from anywhere that you have to take a bus to catch a bus, but when you are sipping your coffee early one quiet, peaceful morning on the canyon floor, listening to the whippoorwill's morning song and watching a hawk soaring overhead, you'll find bliss.
 

Postcard from the Historical Fleming Oak

The Fleming Oak in Comanche, Texas

Martin Fleming and his father arrived in the frontier settlement of Comanche, Texas from Georgia in 1854. They spent their first night under a large live oak tree. The next day, the family was set upon by Comanche Indians. Young Martin survived the deadly fight by hiding in the space between 2 large trunks of the tree.

In 1910, Comanche's city fathers decided to pave the courthouse square. The workmen were busily clearing tree's from the area when "Uncle Mart," as he was by then affectionately known, stopped them as they approached "his tree" and told them he had been tying his horse to that tree for years and he was used to seeing it there. In the exchange of words that followed, Uncle Mart threatened to use his "No. 10's" on them if they even approached the tree with an axe. Not sure whether he meant his size 10 boots or his 10 gauge shotgun, the workers backed down and the tree was spared.

Fleming Oak providing shade for an historical log
cabin on the town square.

In 1919, Uncle Mart once again came to the defense of his tree when some "uninformed" newcomers in town started discussing cutting down the old oak. After he visited with them and "got them informed," the discussion stopped and their plans were dropped. Then in his 80's, he was quoted as saying, "They now pay due respect to that old tree."

The old tree's protector has been gone for the most part of a century now, but his love for "his tree" lives on in the hearts of Comanche's citizens who proudly point to this living memorial as a symbol of their pioneer heritage.

Jacob & Sarah Walker - Poineers & Heroe's of Texas

 

Jacob Walker was born in Columbia, Tenn. in May 1805. His cousin and close friend was Sam Houston. In 1825, Jacob moved to Louisiana where he met and fell in love with Sarah Vauchere. They were married in 1827, bought a farm and quickly had two children. Jacob then sold the farm and moved his family to Nacogdoches, Texas were they had five more children by 1835. That same year, Sam Houston stopped for a visit and persuaded his cousin to join the Texas army because they were giving land to the soldiers.

 

In December, 1835, Jacob fought in his first battle, the storming and capture of Bexar. The siege of Bexar resulted in Santa Anna bringing his large army to retake San Antonio and Texas. His actions and the way the settlers were treated made men indecisive about their future as Mexican citizens or Texans move solidly onto the side of freedom.

 

After the Siege of Bexar, Walker remained as a member of Carey’s artillery company carrying out his duties as a gunner in San Antonio. As Santa Anna's troops approached, the small contingent of Texas soldiers entered into the Alamo. For 12 full days, the men withstood assault after assault until on the 13th morning, The Mexicans attacked in overwhelming numbers.  
 
According to accounts by Susanna Dickinson, one of 20 women and children who were spared by Santa Anna as well as Mexican Army records, Jacob fired his cannon until he ran out of cannon balls. By then he had been wounded several times, but he plugged his cannon with scraps of cast iron and broken pieces of chain and rocks and fired once more at the Mexican soldiers. A Mexican officer trained a force of muskets on Walker and his few surviving me and fired a terrible volley.

Somehow, although wounded again, Walker managed to jump from the ramp and limp to the side of Mrs. Dickinson who had by then been moved into one of the chapel side rooms with the other women and children. Jacob had spoken to Suzanna several times during the siege "with anxious tenderness" about his wife and children and now he begged her to take a last message to his Sarah. Within moments of his entry into the room though, the Mexican soldiers broke through the old doors. It is believed that Walker was attempting to ignite the main powder magazine to keep the Mexicans from getting it, but because of his injuries, he only managed to crawl to Mrs. Dickinson. When the doors were broken open, he stood and turned to face the Mexican hordes. Mrs. Dickinson said he was standing in front of her as if to protect her when four Mexican soldiers "bayoneted him and tossed him up in the air as you would a bundle of fodder." They then shot him as he lay on the ground dying. After that, all was silent. On March 6, 1836, Jacob Walker was the last combatant to die at the battle of the Alamo.

The youngest child of French aristocrat Joseph Vauchere, Sarah Ann Vauchere was born on April 16, 1811 in Louisiana. At 16, she married Jacob Walker and two years later moved to East Texas with him. Sarah had three girls and four boys in the nine years before the Texas Revolution.

After the fall of the Alamo and the death of Sarah's husband, in the dark days when General Sam Houston and a rag-tag band of volunteers were being chased by the mighty Mexican army, it seemed that any additional difficulty might prove to be the end of the revolution altogether. The widowed Sarah answered the call for a volunteer at a patriots meeting held in Nacogdoches. The patriots needed General Sam Houston warned that the Cherokees had been incited by the Mexicans to ambush the Texas army from the rear as it retreated from the forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. At only four feet eight inches tall and twenty-five years old, Sarah believed she could pass through enemy lines disguised as a boy. After changing her clothes and stuffing her long hair under a cowboy hat, she set off on horseback. She rode for days across a sparsely settled area where hostile Indians hunted, Mexican solders marched, and many other dangers for a lone woman existed. Three hundred miles later, Sarah reached the town of Gonzales, located Houston and his army, and gave him the intelligence that allowed his army to avoid the Cherokees.

After the Texans won their independence, for the valiant sacrifice made by her husband Jacob, a grateful Republic of Texas issued to her Headright Certificate Number One, deeding to her “a league and a labor” (about 4,416 acres). The certificate was signed by President David G. Burnet, who held the office of President from March 16, 1836 to Oct. 22, 1836. The certificate did not locate the grant of land until Feb. 1, 1841. Col. Leonard William’s, first Indian Commissioner of Texas, located the grant of land for her. The Walker Grant was east of the Brazos River, beginning at a point slightly north of the mouth of the Bosque River and extending past White Rock Creek. The property also stretched east beyond Tehuacana Creek.

Sarah's tombstone

After marrying Jacob's cousin, Jim Bob Walker, Sarah birthed two more children and then moved to her land in the late 1840's. Before Sarah could establish her family on the new land though, her second husband died. It was not unusual for survivors in the West to marry three or four times, but Sarah chose not to remarry again. With considerable fortitude, Sarah assumed responsibility for settling her nine children in the wilderness of Central Texas. She built her log cabin on high ground facing the Brazos River and enjoyed the benefits of fresh water from nearby springs, fertile black soil and native fruit trees. The 1850 Census listed her as “family head, occupation farmer.”
A few years later with so many people looking for land, Sarah began to lease a few parcels of her land grant. Family records tell of how she rode horseback to collet rent from her tenants.

Sarah Walker not only survived as a single woman and mother in these hard times, she prospered and eventually replaced her cabin with a two-story Greek Revival structure with large porches in the front and back. For years, hers was the only house north of the Waco Indian Village on the Military Road, and travelers frequently stopped to drink from the cool spring waters and rest their horses. Indians frequently came by also, but did not attack because they admired her bravery and because Sarah made it a point to always give them gifts of food.

Sarah Ann Walker continued alone while the Military Road became the old Dallas Highway and the family cemetery behind her house filled with her children and grandchildren. As hardy a pioneer as the West had, Sarah witnessed the extension of the frontier into Texas, participated in the Texas Revolution, saw Waco born, and almost lived to see the turn of the 20th Century. She died peacefully at home on Dec. 10, 1899, at 88. She was buried behind her house in the family cemetery, known today as the Stanfield-Walker Cemetery.