Where streams have cut back into the Caprock Escarpment they expose bright red Permian mudstone laid down about 280 million years ago, when this was a coastal flat beside a shallow sea that repeatedly evaporated. The red is oxidized iron; the white and gray bands running through it are gypsum, the salt left behind each time the water dried. The state bison herd here descends from animals Charles Goodnight gathered in the 1870s, and it is one of the few genetically distinct southern plains bison populations left.
Getting there
34.4436, -101.0522
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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