The park takes its name from the gray-green streaks of copper ore that band its red mini-canyons, mesas and juniper breaks along the seasonal Pease River. The country was rich in bison and was Comanche and Kiowa ground for generations. The Comanche hunted and camped along the Pease and held the Medicine Mounds to the east sacred; the mounds are on private land and are not open to visitors. In 1860 Texas Rangers attacked a Comanche camp on the Pease and took Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker's mother, back to her settler relatives, a story the Goodnight Ranch and Oklahoma rows tell in full.
The copper brought a stranger chapter. George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, had seen the deposits on an 1852 expedition, and in 1877 his Grand Belt Copper Company bought 200,000 acres in Hardeman County at 25 cents an acre. He set out from Fort Worth with engineers, miners and wagons, and a full-size metal bathtub among his things. After a pause while he served as governor of New Jersey, mining resumed in 1884, with up to 100 men working steam crushers and a shantytown of saloons nearby. Fuel and water ran short, McClellan died in 1885, and the works closed three years later.
The state bought the land in 1970 and opened the park in 1974. It covers 1,899 acres, keeps part of the Official State of Texas Longhorn Herd in the south pasture, and is an International Dark Sky Park with monthly star parties from April through November.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour