La Pista de Vida Agua

Coyote Lake, the first lake the plaque names, lies ten miles southwest of Muleshoe and is one of the largest natural salt lakes in the Texas Panhandle. It was a favorite campsite for Comanche bands and early buffalo hunters, and in the 1880s it watered the XIT Ranch. Loose, mostly barren sand surrounds it, holding scrub brush, tall grasses and vine mesquite. The county around it sits 3,800 to 4,400 feet up, drained by small playas, with a range of sand hills running northeast to southwest just south of Muleshoe.

What the plaque says

La Pista de Vida Agua (Trail of Living Water) crossed the Llano Estacado, linking several lakes in the region. Three lakes in Bailey County lie along the trail: Coyote Lake, where the Mackenzie Expedition camped; Monument Lake; and White Lake in Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge. By the late 1700s, a trading route, known as the Comanchero Trail, developed along the road. In the late 1800s, the Ft. Sumner Wagon Road, leading from Colorado City (Mitchell Co.) to Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, where it turned north to join the Santa Fe Trail, overlapped La Pista de Vida Agua. By 1881, a mail route followed the trail. Today, the lakes, which had been used since prehistoric times, no longer provide water, as there is only seepage from springs that once flowed freely. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge — 3.3 mi
  The oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas, a ring of salt lakes in the sandhills south of Muleshoe where tens of thousands of sandhill cranes winter in a wet year.

More markers nearby

• Pastores of Bailey County — steps away
• Site of Virginia City — 9.6 mi
• Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 — 12 mi
• Cochran County — 13 mi