The Sand Hills

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll let the land do the talking. Out here in Winkler County, you're rolling through something that has stopped travelers in their tracks for longer than Texas has been Texas. These are the Sand Hills.

A hundred-mile belt of sand stretching across Winkler and four other Texas counties and reaching on into New Mexico. Width varies from three miles to twenty, depending on where you cross it, and plenty of those dunes climb more than seventy feet high. That's not a sand trap.

That's a wall. A heavy, shifting, natural wall that has turned back more than a few ambitious souls who thought they could just push through. Now, the U.S.

Government mapped these hills in 1849 for gold seekers and settlers, which tells you something right there about who was heading this direction and what they were hoping to find. But the Sand Hills were known long before any government survey. Indians knew them.

Spanish explorers knew them. The dunes were a campsite, a game reservation, a place where life concentrated itself out in all this wide open. The outer dunes are held by dwarf oaks, stubborn little things gripping the sand like they have a point to prove.

And here's the part that catches people off guard. Get down just two feet into that sand and there is water. Enough water to support willows, cottonwoods, and a plum thicket.

Those plums gave food to early settlers, so the very barrier that slowed a traveler down might also be the thing that kept them alive. Today the Sand Hills sit inside expansive cattle ranges and rich oil fields. The land that once turned travelers away is now very much at work.

But those dunes are still shifting, still moving, still not asking anyone's permission.

What the marker says

Mapped by U. S. Government, 1849, for gold seekers and settlers. Known earlier to Indians and many Spanish explorers. A 100-mile belt of sand in Winkler and 4 other Texas counties and in New Mexico. Width varies from 3 to 20 miles; outer dunes are held by dwarf oaks. Water at 2' depth supports willows, cottonwoods, and a plum thicket. (The plums gave food to early settlers.) Many dunes more than 70' high. Heavy, shifting sands a natural barrier to travel. Campsite and game reservation for Indians. Now part of expansive cattle ranges and rich oil fields.