DUANE
Duane's take
Now, this here's my telling of what the official marker has to say — so let's let the land speak for itself. Pull off the road and look east. Go ahead, I'll wait.
What you're seeing stretching across that horizon — that wall of flat-topped terrain rising up like nature drew a hard line in the dirt — that's the Cap Rock Escarpment. Eastern boundary of the Llano Estacado. The Staked Plains.
The Llano Estacado is one of the world's most perfect plains regions. That's not Texas bravado talking — that's just geography. It's an elongated oval, running north to south, and about three quarters of it — twenty million acres — sits right here in Texas.
The rest spills over into eastern New Mexico. The surface is naturally treeless, unbroken save for a handful of canyons, and it slopes — gradual, almost imperceptibly — from around twenty-seven hundred feet at its eastern edge up to more than four thousand feet out along the New Mexico border. Now that Cap Rock you're eyeballing?
It didn't just show up one morning. Surface erosion started carving this land back in the Early Pleistocene period, some seven hundred and fifty thousand years ago. The Cap Rock itself is composed of tough caliche — and that toughness matters, because it has protected the softer materials underneath it, resisting erosion with varying success over all those long millennia.
The escarpment begins down in Borden County, twenty-five miles south of this very point, then sweeps northward in a long arc — a hundred and seventy miles — up into the Texas Panhandle. Along the way it rises anywhere from three hundred to a thousand feet above the lower plains at its base. No wonder it gives the impression of having been thrust upward right out of the surrounding land.
The first white man to lay eyes on the Great Plains was the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Coronado, who crossed them in 1541 on his search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado was especially struck by the sea of grass — so complete, so unbroken was its cover of the soil that the tracks of his entire expedition left no permanent mark. Just... swallowed whole by the prairie.
Now, it is said — and I want to be clear, the marker says it is said — that the Spaniards staked their route so they could find their way back. Hence: the Staked Plains. For all its grandeur, the Llano had a reputation for being inhospitable.
Surface water was scarce, and because of that scarcity, even the buffalo and the Indians generally shunned it — until settlers pressing in from the lower areas drove them up onto the Llano. After the buffalo were gone, those native grasses that had once stretched unmarked before Coronado's eyes ended up supporting an immense ranching empire. And more recently still, this same vast plain has become one of the nation's leading producers of cotton, wheat, and grain sorghum.
Twenty million Texas acres. Seven hundred and fifty thousand years in the making. One hard, flat, magnificent truth of a landscape.
The Llano Estacado doesn't need any embellishment. It just needs you to look.
What the marker says
Stretching across the horizon as a range of flat-topped mountains is the Cap Rock Escarpment, eastern boundary of the vast Llano Estacado or 'Staked Plains.' The Llano, one of the world's most perfect plains regions, is an elongated oval extending from north to south. Some three quarters of it, 20 million acres, are in Texas. The remainder is in eastern New Mexico. Its naturally treeless surface, unbroken except for several canyons, slopes gradually from an altitude of 2,700 feet at its eastern edge to more than 4,000 feet along the New Mexico border. The Cap Rock Escarpment is the result of surface erosion that began in the Early Pleistocene period some 750,000 years ago. Composed of tough caliche, the Cap Rock has protected the softer materials underlying it, thus resisting the erosive factors with varying success. The escarpment begins in Borden County 25 miles south of this point and extends northward in a sweeping arc 170 miles into the Texas Panhandle. It rises from 300 feet to 1,000 feet above the lower plains at its base, giving the impression of having been thrust upward out of the surrounding land. First white man to visit the Great Plains was the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Coronado who crossed them in 1541 on his search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. He was especially impressed by the sea of grass which covered the soil so completely that the tracks of his expedition left no permanent mark. The Spaniards, it is said, staked their route so they would be guided on the return-trip-- hence the term 'staked' plains. Because of the scarcity of surface water, the Llano was generally shunned by buffalo and Indians until the encroachment of settlers in the lower areas drove them onto it. The native grasses supported an immense ranching empire following the extinction of the buffalo. More recently the Llano has become one of the nation's leading cotton, wheat and grain sorghum producing areas.