There’s a second Grand Canyon in Texas and almost nobody knows it exists

It’s 800 feet deep and hiding in plain sight

You’ve probably heard of the Grand Canyon. But there’s another one, 120 miles long, up to 20 miles wide, and dropping 800 feet into the Texas Panhandle, just 25 miles south of Amarillo.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park covers about 28,000 acres of layered red rock, juniper trees, and canyon country that most of the country doesn’t know exists.

Once you drop down from the rim and see the walls close in around you, you’ll understand why Texans call it their Grand Canyon.

250 million years of Earth’s history stacked on the walls

The canyon didn’t happen overnight. The Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River spent about a million years cutting through the Panhandle to carve it out.

What it left behind are four distinct rock layers, each a different age and color. The deep red slopes at the bottom date back 250 million years.

Above them, bands of lavender, gray, yellow, and orange shale tell the next chapter.

Hard sandstone caps the top, and where it held firm against erosion, it left behind hoodoos, mesas, and cliffs rising from the canyon floor.

The 310-foot Lighthouse rises from the canyon floor

The Lighthouse Trail is the hike most people come for, and once you see what’s at the end, you’ll understand why.

The trail runs about 5.7 to 6 miles round trip, and most of it is wide and flat, moving through canyon walls that shift color as the light changes.

The final stretch gets steep and rocky before you reach the base of a 310-foot rock pillar.

The Lighthouse is a hoodoo, kept standing because a cap of hard sandstone on top shielded the softer shale below it from centuries of wind and rain.

Thirty miles of trails cut through every corner of the canyon

Past the Lighthouse Trail, the park has more than 30 miles of routes for hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders.

The Rock Garden Trail is one of the harder options, climbing five miles from the canyon floor to the rim. The CCC Trail covers about a mile and a half between the visitor center and the floor below.

Mountain bikers favor the Capitol Peak Trail for its rocky terrain.

If you want a less crowded path to the Lighthouse, the Givens, Spicer, and Lowry Trail gets you there without the weekend traffic.

Drive 16 miles through canyon country without leaving your car

Not every visit has to involve a trail. A 16-mile paved road runs from the canyon rim down to the floor and back up again, dropping about 800 feet along the way.

The road is wide enough for cars, motorhomes, and fifth wheels, so you can take your time.

Along the route, you’ll pass historical markers, hoodoos, mesas, and layered rock walls that make it worth pulling over more than once.

The Pioneer Amphitheater, the Trading Post, and several campgrounds sit along the road, giving you plenty of reasons to stop.

A summer musical plays under open sky with a real canyon as the backdrop

Every summer from June through August, the Pioneer Amphitheater fills with a cast of more than 60 actors, singers, and dancers performing the TEXAS Outdoor Musical.

The show runs Tuesdays through Sundays and tells the story of early settlers in the Texas Panhandle through music, dance, and fireworks.

It was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green and has been running for more than 50 seasons.

The opening scene sends a lone horseman carrying the Texas flag across a 600-foot canyon cliff above the stage. No set designer could build that.

Depression-era workers built this park with picks and wheelbarrows

Between 1933 and 1937, the Civilian Conservation Corps turned Palo Duro Canyon into a state park, and most of the work happened by hand.

Workers cut the winding road from the rim to the canyon floor, built stone cabins, bridges, trails, and picnic areas, and constructed El Coronado Lodge using native stone and canyon wood so the buildings would sit naturally in the landscape.

The park opened to visitors in 1934, before construction even finished. Most of what those workers built is still standing and still in use.

Bobcats, longhorns, and painted buntings all call the canyon home

The canyon’s mix of open grassland, rocky walls, and wooded draws supports a wide spread of wildlife. Wild turkeys, white-tailed and mule deer, coyotes, bobcats, and roadrunners all live here.

Two threatened species are harder to spot: the Palo Duro mouse, found in only three Texas counties, and the Texas horned lizard.

The bird blind behind the Trading Post uses water and feeders to pull in species up close, with identification photos posted on-site.

Near the park headquarters on the rim, members of the official State of Texas Longhorn Herd graze in full view of the road.

Ride through Timber Creek Canyon on horseback

The park sets aside 1,500 acres specifically for equestrian use, with dedicated trails running through terrain that looks like it belongs in a Western film.

You can bring your own horse and set up at one of the equestrian campsites, or book a guided ride through outfitters that work inside the park.

Guided rides take you through Timber Creek Canyon, a side canyon within the park with its own set of walls and formations to move through. Two additional trails open up to horses, hikers, and mountain bikers together.

Sleep on the canyon floor or watch the sunrise from the rim

Overnight options run from tent sites and RV hookups to backcountry zones and fully furnished glamping cabins on the canyon floor.

The glamping sites come with air conditioning, refrigerators, gas grills, fire pits, covered porches, rocking chairs, and bicycles.

Three stone cabins built by the CCC sit on the rim with open views, and four Cow Camp cabins sit down on the floor.

The park fills up, and reservations are worth making well ahead, especially for weekends and summer dates when the musical is running.

The Milky Way arcs over the Lighthouse on dark, clear nights

Get far enough from city lights and the sky changes entirely.

The canyon’s location in the Panhandle, away from major towns, gives it low enough light pollution that the Milky Way shows up clearly over the Lighthouse formation on good nights.

The park runs star parties where local astronomers bring telescopes for visitors to use.

Ranger-led night sky journaling programs teach you to find constellations using rhymes and a technique called star-hopping, moving from one bright star to the next.

Both programs come with regular park admission at no extra cost.

The visitor center sits inside a 1930s stone lodge on the canyon rim

El Coronado Lodge has been the park’s front door since the CCC finished it in the 1930s, and it still looks the part.

Inside, exhibits walk through the canyon’s natural and human history, including photographs and artifacts from the CCC construction years.

Next door, the Canyon Gallery, also built from native stone in 1933, displays Southwest art alongside handmade Native American pottery and silver and turquoise jewelry, all framed by large windows that look straight out over the canyon.

Down on the floor, the Trading Post handles snacks, meals, and anything you might have forgotten to pack.

Visit Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Canyon, Texas

You’ll find the park at 11450 Park Road 5 in Canyon, Texas, about 25 miles south of Amarillo. The entrance gate opens daily at 7 a.m. and closes at 10 p.m. Day use costs $8 per person for anyone 13 and older.

If you’re planning to hike, bring at least one quart of water per person per mile.

Summer temperatures on the trails run five to 10 degrees hotter than on the rim, so plan accordingly and start early if you’re heading out between June and August.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Texas has a dome of pink granite older than most life on Earth — and you can summit it
• Texas is hiding a 260-million-year-old ocean reef inside its tallest mountains
• Texas national park hike takes alarming turn as swarm of tiny creatures surrounds visitor