Photographs of the Llano Estacado - Texas

The Llano Estacado is steeped in Texas mythology and comes up frequently in historic books, cattle ranching lore, and country songs. To the uninformed eye it can appear as a boring section of flat land, but “The Staked Plains” are a fascinating region of the United States that encompasses 37,452 square miles of the Texas Panhandle and Eastern New Mexico. It’s one of the largest tablelands on the entire continent of North America and feels impossibly flat. So much so that you’d assume it must be at or below sea level, but it’s lowest point is 3,000 ft in the southeast. From there is goes up at a uniform 10 ft per mile, reaching 5,000ft at it’s most northwest point. I’ve personally never been anywhere else in the world that exudes the same kind of energy as the Llano. To be in it makes you feel incredibly small but also free. There would be very little convincing needed for me to do a long term project focused solely on it. For now though, I’m going to do some research to find a wordsmith that somehow managed to describe such a place.

“It’s a long way, round the Llano Estacado” - Colter Wall