Palo Duro Canyon, cut by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River through the Caprock Escarpment in the Texas Panhandle, is the second largest canyon system in the United States and one of Texas’s most dramatic landscapes. Its layered walls, mesas, caves, hoodoos, and landmarks such as the Lighthouse preserve a long geologic record and evidence of human presence reaching back ten thousand to fifteen thousand years. Apache, later Comanche and Kiowa, lived here before U.S. campaigns culminated in the 1874 battle that helped force Native removal to reservations. The canyon later drew scientific study and artistic inspiration, including work by Georgia O’Keeffe and Samuel Jones.