Checking Out Dinosaur Tracks and Oklahoma’s High Point While Wandering Through the Epicenter of the “Dust Bowl”

Last week my little dog Sparky and I headed out to the High Plaines in the northeast corner of New Mexico to check out some dinosaur tracks and then continue across the border to Oklahoma’s highest point at Bleck Mesa.

This very area (the northeast corner of New Mexico and the western Oklahoma Panhandle) was the epicenter of the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930s. What had been, prior to European settlement, an unending High Plaines of semi-arid grassland best suited for buffalo was turned into farmland when homesteaders poured into the region in the early part of the last century. (This was one of the last areas in the country to be homesteaded.) The new arrivals were certain that “rain would follow the plow” and went ahead to plow up the grassland. Unfortunately, after a few good rain years in the late teens and twenties, the rains stopped and the now plowed-up grassland turned into dust and catastrophic devastation during the 1930s.

Since the Dust Bowl happened over 80 years ago, there has been plenty of time to repair the land, so you won’t see homes buried in dust or huge dunes of blown soil. What you will see today is an almost unending grassland with some cattle and very few to no people. You may see an occasional empty house that was probably abandoned well after the Dust Bowl-era.  The few active farm fields that you might pass by are now irrigated by water pumped out of the Ogallala aquifer.

Two legacies of the Dust Bowl-era are the many National Grasslands parcels located throughout the area and today’s very low population. The National Grasslands are the result of a New Deal-era program to buy back land from “dusted out” settlers to give them a fresh start elsewhere. As for low population, Union County in the far northeast corner of New Mexico and with a land area of twice the size of the state of Delaware had 11,036 people in 1930. It now has a population of 4,059. More than half of them live in the crossroads community of Clayton. Harding County immediately to the south and west of Union County and with a land area of about the size of Delaware had 4,421 people in 1930. Today it has 657 people.

So if you’re looking to get away from people, you’ve come to the right place. Just make sure you fill up your gas tank before leaving the Interstate and top off the tank again when you see a gas station. And have some food in the car – just in case. It’s very easy to drive a more than a hundred miles without seeing a gas station or for that matter receiving a strong enough cell signal to make a phone call.

Upon reaching the High Plaines, our first stop was to check out the Dinosaur tracks at Clayton Lake State Park. The park was created in 1955 when the state dammed up a creek for a recreational fishing lake and a resting stop for migrating birds. To build the spillway for the dam, several layers of rock were blasted away to expose a layer of sandstone that was deposited over 100 million years ago. When water finally poured over the spillway in 1982, it washed away a layer of debris to expose hundreds of dinosaur tracks.

So what is one the best places to see dinosaur tracks in the country was the result of pure luck. And if you’re passing through the area and have the time, it’s well worth checking out.

After checking out the dinosaur trackway we then headed north and east toward the far northwest corner of the Oklahoma Panhandle. The Oklahoma Panhandle itself is a bit of anomaly as it was ceded by Texas in 1845 when Texas applied for statehood as slave state. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, prohibited future slave states from being located north of the southern border of Missouri at 36° 30’ latitude. As a result the 34-mile tall strip of land between 36° 30’ latitude and 37° was left on its own until claimed by Oklahoma Territory in 1890.

Not too long after leaving the Dinosaur Trackway, we unexpectedly ran into a cemetery literally in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing nearby to indicate a church or any type of settlement. None of the few headstones in the cemetery had a date of later than 1930. Obviously, there had to have been enough settlers in the immediate area prior to the Dust Bowl to support a cemetery. But what was really hard to take was that a large portion, if not most of headstones, were for infants or very young children. So even in the good times of the teens and twenties, life must have been very very hard on the High Plaines.

Very soon after the cemetery, we ran into a Santa Fe Trail crossing. The Forest Service (who manages the National Grasslands) even had an information kiosk and section of the trail staked out so you could walk on it. Since the Santa Fe Trail came to an end in the 1880s, it’s really a challenge now to see the trail on the ground. Even with a drone picture, you still have to do some visualizing to follow the trail.

As we got closer to the Oklahoma high point at Black Mesa, the land abruptly changed. Instead of pancake flat to rolling grasslands, we were now surrounded by tall basalt capped mesas, sandstone formations, valleys, and narrow canyons. There was nothing subtle about the change; it was immediate!

Before hiking to Oklahoma’s high point, there were two other sites we wanted to check out. The first was a set of dinosaur tracks almost immediately across the road from the high point trailhead. The other, the Preston Tripoint Monument marking where Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico meet, was just a 10-minute drive to the north.

With those two items taken care of it was now time for the 8.4 mile roundtrip hike to Oklahoma’s highest point.

After a very complete wandering adventure it was time for Sparky and me to head home. This wandering adventure like most wandering adventures started with an Idea! In this case, the idea came from wife’s nephew when he showed us pictures of the dinosaur tracks across the road from the Black Mesa trailhead. To help make the trip worthwhile I added some Context by including the Clayton dinosaur tracks and deciding that while I was out there I might as well hike to the Black Mesa high point again. (My dog Lucky and I did the hike in 2004.) But a wandering adventure doesn’t begin until you take Action and actually get out there. And once you’re out there you can see what else you might discover! You might even want to leave some “money on the table” so you have a reason to go back.

But perhaps the biggest lesson of this wandering adventure beyond – Idea, Context, and Action – is that you can go to one of the most remote places in the country and find haunting beauty, history, wonderful landscapes, and things you won’t find elsewhere. There is always something wonderful to discover no matter where you go!