Palo Duro to the Caprock Canyons: Canyon to Quitaque
About 160 miles from Canyon into Palo Duro Canyon, east on US-287 by Claude, the Goodnight ranch and Clarendon, and south by Turkey to Caprock Canyons State Park.
The Route at a Glance
Southeast of Amarillo the High Plains end at the Caprock escarpment, and the forks of the Red River have cut their canyons into it. This drive runs about 160 miles, four hours without stops, from Canyon into Palo Duro, east along the 1887 railroad and south to the canyons at Quitaque. Palo Duro & the Caprock Canyons covers the country.
In Canyon, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum has been closed to the public since March 2025. TX-217 runs twelve miles east to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where Park Road 5 descends to the floor, the summer stage of the TEXAS musical and the start of the Lighthouse Trail. The canyon was a winter home of Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne families until the army destroyed their camps, food and horses in September 1874. The Comanche National Museum and the Kiowa Tribal Museum in Oklahoma tell that history in the nations' own words.
Back out of the park, farm roads cross the plain north of the canyon to TX-207 and Claude. From there US-287 follows the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, built through in 1887, and three stops owe their places to it: the Gem Theatre in Claude, the Goodnight ranch house, where Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight moved in beside the new tracks that December, and Clarendon, which moved six miles south to meet the line and keeps its courthouse and the Saints' Roost Museum.
TX-70 runs about forty miles south to Turkey and the Bob Wills Museum. Turkey's Main Street carried the Bankhead Highway, the southern branch of the Ozark Trail came through too, with an obelisk at Tampico to the northeast, and a railroad branch reached Turkey and Quitaque on the same day, November 20, 1928. TX-86, the old Bankhead line, goes west to Quitaque, where the Comanchero trader José Piedad Tafoya kept a post from 1865 to 1867, and FM 1065 leads north to Caprock Canyons State Park and the state bison herd.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
9 stops along the route, in driving order from Canyon, Texas to Caprock Canyons State Park, near Quitaque, Texas. One of them sits off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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- 9
That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let Palo Duro to the Caprock Canyons: Canyon to Quitaque do what it does best.
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