Historical Marker
The United States Topographical Engineers in the High Plains of Texas
Amarillo, Potter County · Texas
Erected 1973
The last of the three officers named here died in the war that kept his railroad route unbuilt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, who reported the thirty-fifth parallel line feasible, drew the Union Army's first maps of northern Virginia, served at Bull Run and Fredericksburg and became a friend of President Lincoln. At Chancellorsville a Confederate sniper shot him on May 4, 1863, as he supervised earthworks, and he died in Washington on May 7. Lincoln signed his promotion to major general just before his death, and Fort Whipple in Virginia was named for him.
What the plaque says
The United States Topographical Engineers in the High Plains of Texas This region and much of western America was mapped under adversity, as territory held by hostile Indians. With the dual aims of compiling scientific data and opening the way for settlers, U.S. Army topographers covered ground earlier traversed by conquistadors and mountain men. Earlier travelers mentioned their experiences. The topographers mapped the terrain. The United States Army Topographical Corps from 1838 to 1863 consisted of 36 officers. Barometer, compass, sextant, and pencil were their instruments for handling data on climate, geographical features, soil, feasible routes for wagons or railroads, and sites for towns and industrial developments. Three topographical parties investigated the land that is now Potter County: Lt. James W. Abert invaded this Indian region in 1845 to survey environs of the Canadian and other rivers; Lt. James H. Simpson in 1849 reconnoitered a proposed railroad route from Fort Smith to Santa Fe; Lt. Amiel W. Whipple in 1853 mapped another railroad route from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The United States owes great honor to these and other topographers. (1973)
Where it stands
35.45542, -101.86990 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument — 13 miHand-dug pits on a mesa above the Canadian River where people quarried banded flint for thousands of years and traded it across the Plains, seen on a ranger-led climb.
- Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 17 miThirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
- Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 18 miFour sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
- Cadillac Ranch — 20 miTen Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.