DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Wild Horse Lake, out here in Potter County. Now, some places earn their keep quietly, doing the same good work century after century, and never once asking for credit. This lake is one of those places.
At various times — and we're talking a long stretch of various — this playa lake served as a reliable water source for buffalo, wild horses, nomadic Native Americans, explorers, cattle drivers, traders, and pioneers traversing the high plains. That is a guest list. Every kind of creature and traveler the Panhandle could throw at a landscape, and this lake just sat here, patient, doing what water does best.
The locals also called it Amarillo Lake, which turns out to be a name with some weight behind it. Because in 1887, this lake area became the original townsite of Amarillo itself. That's right — the city you may have driven through this very day got its start right here, tucked in around the edges of this playa.
Now here's where the story turns, the way stories on the high plains tend to do — sideways and fast. Frequent flooding caused the town to pick itself up and relocate to higher ground, one mile east, and by 1890 that move was done. Amarillo didn't sulk about it.
It developed on that higher ground and grew into the cattle and agricultural railroad shipping center of the Texas high plains region. Meanwhile, the lake that started it all? Modern development has diverted its natural drainage system and reduced its size.
A place that once watered buffalo and pioneers and everything in between, quietly shrinking at the edges. That's not a tragedy the marker makes loud, and neither will I. Some things deserve to be said plainly: this lake carried a lot of the high plains on its back, and the high plains moved on without it.
What the marker says
At various times this playa lake served as a reliable water source for buffalo, wild horses, nomadic native americans, explorers, cattle drivers, traders, and pioneers traversing the high plains. The lake area, also called Amarillo Lake, became the original townsite of Amarillo in 1887. Frequent flooding caused the town's relocation to higher ground one mile east of here by 1890. Amarillo developed there to become the cattle and agricultural railroad shipping center of the Texas high plains region. Modern development has diverted the lake's natural drainage system and reduced its size. (1994)