The flat farmland here sits on the Ogallala, a layer of sand and gravel washed east off the Rocky Mountains between about 10 and 2 million years ago, and it holds the groundwater that made large-scale irrigated agriculture possible on the High Plains after the Second World War. It is essentially fossil water: recharge across most of the Texas portion is a fraction of an inch a year against pumping measured in feet, and saturated thickness under parts of the southern High Plains has fallen by more than half since the 1950s. The circles of green visible from the air are center-pivot systems drawing on it.
Getting there
34.1848, -101.7068
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
