Historical Marker
Wild Horse Lake
Amarillo, Potter County · Texas
Erected 1994
The lakeside town lasted barely three years, but it had its firsts. H. T. (Tuck) Cornelius ran the first livery stable, his father, Dr. J. C. Cornelius, was the first physician, and Tuck's daughter Mayvi, born June 18, 1888, was the first child born in Amarillo. H. H. Brookes began the weekly Amarillo Champion on May 17, 1888, and on May 29 town lots were auctioned, most for $50 to $100, to buyers brought in by excursion train. Henry Sanborn called the site a mudhole, and the Corneliuses and Brookes moved their businesses east to Polk Street.
What the plaque says
Wild Horse Lake 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)
Where it stands
35.22158, -101.84987 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 1.2 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 — 3.9 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 — 8.1 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.
- Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 17 miThe Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.