The S.P. Hamblen Family

The cedar posts the Hamblens cut came from a canyon whose Spanish name, Palo Duro, means "hardwood," for its hardwood shrubs and trees. The Handbook of Texas lists juniper, mesquite, prickly pear and yucca among the native plants, with cottonwood, willow and salt cedar along the Prairie Dog Town Fork. The canyon runs almost 120 miles from its head southeast of Amarillo into Briscoe County and reaches 800 feet deep through banded rock spanning more than 240 million years. The state bought the upper canyon for a park in 1933; the lower part remains private ranchland.

What the plaque says

The S.P. Hamblen Family Pioneered at this site, in dugout to the west. S.P. Hamblen (1846-1930) and wife Virginia Ann (1861-1950) settled in Lakeview area (9 mi. S of Claude) in 1889. Hamblen helped establish Lakeview School, 1890. He engaged in farming and stockraising, and also dealt in cedar posts cut in Palo Duro Canyon and sold in Amarillo at 3c each. Hauls over the old Indian trail were made with such great effort that W.H. Hamblen (oldest son, who helped his father) longed for good roads and later was designer of Hamblen Drive. Mrs. Hamblen, at home with her children, tended the ranch, courageously protecting family from the prevalent rattlesnakes, and repulsing vicious lobo wolves that attacked the young cattle. The Hamblens lived at this site, known as Mesquite Flat, in 1901-1902. The father and older sons, W.H., David and Claude, put up corrals and a barn, and then built the rockwalled 24 x 36-foot dugout. The tenth child of the family, Luther Ray Hamblen, was born in the Mesquite Flat dugout on March 3, 1902. Moving from this place, the Hamblens sought the best location for educating their children, who in the tradition of their parents became respected citizens of the West. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lighthouse Trail — 16 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Gem Theatre — 17 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 18 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.

More markers nearby

• Hamblen Drive — 4.7 mi
• Dugout of W. M. Dye — 6.0 mi
• The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon — 14 mi
• Vigo Park Methodist Church — 15 mi