Texas Panhandle map
Region · 26 counties · 34.3°–36.5° N · Central Time
The Panhandle is the rectangle at the top of Texas, and unlike every other region in the state its edges are survey lines rather than opinions: 36°30′ north against the Oklahoma Panhandle, the 103rd meridian against New Mexico, and the 100th meridian against western Oklahoma. The only argument is at the bottom, where the Panhandle shades into the South Plains around Lubbock.
Amarillo sits near the centre where I-40 and I-27 cross. Palo Duro Canyon is the gash southeast of it.
Where it starts and ends
Three of the four sides are straight. The northern line at 36°30′ was fixed by the Missouri Compromise parallel; the western line at 103° W was settled in the boundary negotiations with New Mexico; the eastern line follows the 100th meridian, which is why Lipscomb, Hemphill, Wheeler and Collingsworth counties all end at the same abrupt edge. The southern boundary is the one people argue about. The conventional count is 26 counties, ending at the line of Bailey–Lamb–Hale–Floyd–Motley–Cottle; that puts Childress, Hall, Briscoe and Swisher inside and Lubbock outside, in the South Plains.
Physically the region is the northern Llano Estacado — flat, treeless tableland at 3,000 to 4,000 feet, broken on the east by the Caprock Escarpment where the plateau drops several hundred feet to the Rolling Plains. Everything here is on Central Time, unlike the far West Texas counties around El Paso. Culturally the Panhandle looks north and west more than it looks toward the rest of Texas: Amarillo is closer to the capitals of New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado than it is to Austin.
The 26 counties
| County | Seat | Population (2020) | Area (sq mi) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Randall | Canyon | 140,753 | 923 |
| Potter | Amarillo | 118,525 | 922 |
| Moore | Dumas | 21,358 | 910 |
| Gray | Pampa | 21,227 | 929 |
| Hutchinson | Stinnett | 20,617 | 895 |
| Deaf Smith | Hereford | 18,583 | 1,499 |
| Ochiltree | Perryton | 10,015 | 919 |
| Parmer | Farwell | 9,869 | 885 |
| Castro | Dimmitt | 7,371 | 899 |
| Dallam | Dalhart | 7,115 | 1,505 |
| Swisher | Tulia | 6,971 | 901 |
| Childress | Childress | 6,664 | 714 |
| Carson | Panhandle | 5,807 | 924 |
| Hartley | Channing | 5,382 | 1,463 |
| Hansford | Spearman | 5,285 | 921 |
| Wheeler | Wheeler | 4,990 | 916 |
| Hemphill | Canadian | 3,382 | 912 |
| Donley | Clarendon | 3,258 | 933 |
| Lipscomb | Lipscomb | 3,059 | 932 |
| Hall | Memphis | 2,825 | 904 |
| Sherman | Stratford | 2,782 | 923 |
| Collingsworth | Wellington | 2,652 | 919 |
| Armstrong | Claude | 1,848 | 914 |
| Oldham | Vega | 1,758 | 1,502 |
| Briscoe | Silverton | 1,435 | 902 |
| Roberts | Miami | 827 | 924 |
Most of these counties were surveyed as squares roughly 30 miles on a side, which is why so many of them come out near 900 sq mi. The wider ones — Dallam, Hartley, Oldham, Deaf Smith — are along the New Mexico line.
Cities and towns
- Amarillo
Pop. 200,393 · Spread across Potter and Randall counties at the crossing of I-40 and I-27; elevation about 3,600 ft
Amarillo is the only city in the Panhandle with its own map page here. The next tier is small and spread wide: Canyon in Randall County, home to West Texas A&M University and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum; Hereford in Deaf Smith County, surrounded by feedyards; Dumas in Moore County; Borger and Stinnett in Hutchinson County, built on carbon black and gas processing; Pampa in Gray County; Dalhart in Dallam County; Perryton in Ochiltree County on the Oklahoma line; and Childress, the last town of any size before US-287 drops off the Caprock toward North Texas.
Highways
- I-40 – the main east–west route, following old US Route 66 from the New Mexico line through Vega, Amarillo, Groom, McLean and Shamrock into Oklahoma.
- I-27 – runs south from Amarillo through Canyon, Happy, Tulia and Plainview to Lubbock; it is the only interstate wholly inside the High Plains.
- US-287 – the diagonal: Amarillo, Claude, Clarendon, Memphis, Childress and on to Wichita Falls and Fort Worth.
- US-87 – north from Amarillo through Dumas and Dalhart toward Raton Pass.
- US-60 – Canyon and Amarillo northeast through Panhandle, Pampa and Canadian, roughly following the Santa Fe rail line.
- US-83 – the eastern column, Perryton south through Canadian, Wheeler and Shamrock.
- US-54 – Dalhart northeast through Stratford and into the Oklahoma Panhandle.
Landscape and records
| Palo Duro Canyon | About 120 miles long and up to 800 feet deep, cut by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River in Randall and Armstrong counties; the state park opened in 1934 |
| Only national monument in Texas | Alibates Flint Quarries, on the Canadian River in Potter County |
| Main reservoir | Lake Meredith, dammed on the Canadian River north of Amarillo |
| Least populous county | Roberts, 827 people in 924 sq mi |
| The XIT Ranch | Three million acres across ten Panhandle counties, granted to the builders of the state capitol in the 1880s |
| Route 66 | Adrian, in Oldham County, marks the midpoint of the old highway between Chicago and Los Angeles |
| Water | The Ogallala Aquifer supplies the centre-pivot irrigation that makes the corn, cotton and feedyards possible |
| Dust Bowl | The Black Sunday storm of 14 April 1935 swept across the region from the north |