LLANO ESTACADO

'Llano Estacado' (Sp. , “Staked Plains”) is a region in the southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. It is a large mesa, or tableland, and relatively flat over most of its terrain. It is dotted by numerous small playa lakes or seasonal depressions that fill with water, an important source of habitat for waterfowl. It is bounded on the north by the Canadian River, on the east by the Caprock Escarpment and on the west by the Mescalero Escarpment, or between Interstate 40 on the north and Interstate 20 on the south, or, roughly, between Amarillo and Midland. It is bounded on the west by the Pecos valley, and on the east by the red Permian plains of Texas. Its extent is, therefore, about 250 mi. north to south, and 150 mi. east to west, an area of 37,500 sq. mi. Its elevation rises from 3000' in the southeast to over 5000' in the northwest sloping almost uniformly at about 10 feet per mile, although the elevation change is imperceptible to the observer. The Llano Estacado has a semi-arid climate, characterized by long hot summers and cold winters.
Llano Estacado is Spanish for ''Palisaded Plains''. It is the southern end of the High Plains section of the Great Plains and is part of what was once called the Great American Desert. The term ''Palisaded Plains'' arose after Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado and his troops encountered this "sea of grass". Coronado, the first European to traverse the Llano, described it as follows: "I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I travelled over them for more than 300 leagues ... with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea ... there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by."
The distinguishing characteristic of the Llano is the Caprock Escarpment, seen most prominently on the north and west sides, a precipitous cliff usually about 300' in height, seeming to be an almost impenetrable defense for the plain. The cliff on the north facing the Canadian river was seen by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541 on his way east from Cíbola, leading him to name the plateau the Llano Estacado, or Palisaded Plain. The name is usually mistranslated Staked Plain, and fanciful stories have been created to explain this title. The cliffs are easily seen to the south from Interstate 40 just east of Tucumcari. This is probably the best place to view the feature that gave the region its name.
There are several popular explanations of the name, all based on an incorrect translation of the word "estacado," which means "palisaded," not "staked." Some allude to yucca stems, others to actual stakes driven into the ground as landmarks, and still others to similar, even less plausible objects. None of these have ever been evident enough to be responsible for the name, especially not to Coronado riding along the Canadian.
It should be noted that the horses of the conquistadors were the first to return to the Great Plains since their extinction in North America eons earlier. Some horses would escape, thus giving horses to some of the Native American tribes in the succeeding centuries. Before this, the dog was their largest domesticated animal.
The Llano Estacado has an extremely low population density. Most of the area is covered by large ranches and irrigated farms. Important cities on the Llano include Amarillo, Lubbock, Plainview, and Midland/Odessa in Texas and Clovis, Roswell, and Hobbs in New Mexico.
The 'bedrock' of the plain is the indurated top of the Ogallala Group, a hard caliche layer called the Caprock. This was formed when surface drying caused mineral-laden water to rise by capillary action to the surface. Evaporating, the minerals were left behind to cement the otherwise fairly loose sandy sediments of the Ogallala Group. The Caprock is generally covered by sands and soils. Where soils predominate, the land is fertile when irrigated, and is devoted to field crops, including grain and cotton. Irrigation water is mined from the deeper parts of the Ogallala Group by electric pumps, since there is almost no usable surface water. The pumped water is used much more rapidly than it is replenished, so eventually the Llano will return to its natural state of sparse grassland, less its subterranean water, gas, and oil. The average rainfall is less than 20" per year, and the average July temperature above 85° F, so most of the precipitation is lost to evaporation, making dry-land farming extremely difficult.
The Ogallala Group is a late Tertiary (Pliocene) sheet of sediments spread over the area east of the Rocky Mountains from Wyoming to Texas, rather recently in a geological sense, when the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountain regions were elevated from near sea level to about their current elevations, and the eroded sediments (mainly earlier Tertiary rocks) spread over the low plains to the east. The Rocky Mountains had been formed much earlier, at the end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the Tertiary eras, and had been worn down to near flatness before the late Tertiary uplift. In the northern areas, the Ogallala was spread over earlier Tertiary and Cretaceous rocks, but in the Llano Estacado area erosion had removed everything down to the Triassic, and even to the Permian redbeds. At the southern end, some Cretaceous limestone remained, however. The Ogallala was laid down over all of this by lazy, sandy streams near sea level, which produced the flatness of its surface. Subsequently, the uplift to the west progressed to the east, raising and tilting the Ogallala surface to its present position, and changing the environment from depositional to erosional. Some major rivers, such as the Pecos and Canadian, incised their courses deeply as the region was elevated, while others, such as the Red, Brazos, and Colorado, arose on the dip slope. The erosion of these rivers has now defined the area of the Llano Estacado, separating it from its Rocky Mountain sources and from other parts of the High Plains.
Other areas of the Ogallala surface, or High Plains, have the same history. In Wyoming, it is still in contact with the mountains west of Cheyenne (the 'Gangplank'), but elsewhere it is separated from the mountains by valleys of Cretaceous and earlier rocks due to active erosion at these higher levels. Rivers such as the Platte, Arkansas, and Cimarron have sliced it into segments. Only in the Llano Estacado area has the formation of the Caprock given rise to a prominent, distinctive, palisade-like escarpment, as well as to a remarkably flat surface. Another distinctive characteristic is that the surrounding rocks are often red, as in Palo Duro Canyon, making a striking contrast with the light-colored rocks of the plateau. In some other places, the erosional edge of the High Plains is marked by 'breaks' or other abrupt changes of scenery, as in eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. In these areas, the High Plains are usually sandy, rolling plains with normal, branching drainage, not flat surfaces without continuous streams.
General Randolph Marcy described the Llano in 1872 as a "great North American desert" 400 miles from north to south, 250 miles from east to west, at 4000 ft elevation, with "not a tree, bush or water." Travelers had to bring water for themselves and their animals. The Llano was then a refuge for the bands of Kiowas and Comanches who did not wish to be cooped up in Oklahoma. One of the last battles was fought in bitter cold on 2 December 1874 in Palo Duro canyon. The waterless surface was very difficult for the U.S. Cavalry to cope with, and it was easy to disappear into the slight draws of its featureless expanse, or into the labyrinths of canyons like Palo Duro. All the water you see on the Llano today, which makes agriculture possible, is brought to the surface by electrical pumps. Before electricity, grazing was possible and large ranches existed. However, grazing soon destroyed the fragile grass. The scanty rainfall just evaporates or disappears into the porous soil, and cannot refill the perched aquifer at the rate it is being depleted. There are no nearby sources of abundant water, and the Pecos runs nearly dry from irrigation diversions. When the store of water is gone, there will be no more to support the large cities of Lubbock and Amarillo. There was a permanent oasis, Monument Spring, not far from Hobbs, that was one of the rare watering places. The "monument" was a pile of caliche raised by the Indians to guide people to the spot.

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Other meanings

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Other meanings

'Llano Estacado' is also the name of an award-winning winery in Lubbock, Texas.
'"El Llano Estacado"' is a traditional folk song adapted by Tom Russell, which, according to Brian Burns (who has recorded a version of the song with Russell), is a tale in which the "subject falls victim to the whim of a sadistic señorita and decides to take on the West Texas desert to win her hand in marriage."

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