DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, picture the Texas Panhandle, sometime in the depths of the Great Depression — not exactly the moment most folks were pooling their money for real estate deals. But that's exactly what a group of Amarillo businessmen did.
They combined resources, purchased 320 acres of Henry Clay Harding's Ranch, and then turned around and donated the whole thing. Three hundred and twenty acres, sitting in the upper reaches of Palo Duro Canyon, designated as Palisades State Park. In hard times, that is no small thing.
Then came 1933, and with it, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 856. They set to work building a concession building for visitors to the park. Now, the man tasked with designing that building was a local architect by the name of Guy Anton Carlander, and he wasn't about to plop down something that looked like it had been dragged in from somewhere else.
Carlander designed the structure in what's called NPS rustic style — a way of building that harmonizes the structure with its surroundings through natural local materials, natural colors, low horizontal lines, and something that might sound simple but isn't: the deliberate loss of demarcation between the building's foundation and the ground itself. The canyon just... keeps going, right into the walls. That building doesn't interrupt Palo Duro Canyon.
It belongs to it.
What the marker says
In the midst of the Great Depression, a group of Amarillo businessmen combined resources and purchased for donation 320 acres of Henry Clay Harding’s Ranch. Located in the upper reaches of Palo Duro Canyon, the acreage was designated as Palisades State Park. In 1933, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 856 began construction of the concession building for visitors to the park. Local architect Guy Anton Carlander designed the building in “NPS rustic” style which harmonizes the structure with its surroundings by the use of natural local materials and colors, low horizontal lines, and the loss of demarcation between the structure’s foundation and the ground. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 2014