Texas Panhandle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Location of Panhandle Texas
City center of Amarillo, the largest city in the Panhandle
The "Lighthouse" ("lighthouse"), one of the sights of the Palo Duro Canyon

The Texas Panhandle (literally: " Texas panhandle ") is a region of the US state of Texas , consisting of the 26 northernmost counties.

geography

The Texas Panhandle is a rectangular area that borders the state of New Mexico to the west and the state of Oklahoma to the north and east . The southern county line of Counties Castro , Swisher , Briscoe , etc. is considered the southern border . The part of the name 'Panhandle' refers to the fact that this area protrudes from the imaginary “pan” of Texas like a pan handle to the north. Several other US states also have panhandles .

The area is 66,883.58 km², which is around 10% of the total area of ​​Texas, plus 162.53 km² of water-covered area. According to the 2000 census , the population was 402,862 people, or 1.93% of the state's total population. Notably, the panhandle is not synonymous with North Texas , which only encompasses the east of northern Texas.

The southwest half of the Panhandle and almost the entire north lie on a low relief plateau (High Plains), which is crossed by the Canadian River in a west-east direction. South of the Canadian River, this high plateau is called Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) or simply Southern High Plains. The largest city in the panhandle is Amarillo . To the southeast of Amarillo, the main source of the Red River , the Prairie Dog Town Fork, along with its tributaries, cut into the plateau and formed the Palo Duro Canyon , the second largest canyon in the United States. The Palo Duro Canyon opens to the southeast into the hill country that occupies most of the southeast and parts of the northeast of Panhandle Texas and the wide valley of the Canadian River. It is less high above sea level than the High Plains, but has a more pronounced relief.

geology

The surface geology in the vast majority of Panhandle Texas is dominated by thin (locally up to 27 m) Quaternary Aeolian sands , silts and loams , known as the Blackwater Draw Formation. Below that lies the late Miocene - Pliocene foreland molasses of the southern Rocky Mountains , the so-called Ogallala Formation . In the upper part it contains a mighty caliche horizon, i. H. Limestone that was precipitated from near-surface soil water during sedimentation breaks in an arid climate . This limestone, which is very erosion-resistant in today's dry Texan climate , acts as a reinforcement for the underlying, less erosion-resistant, red, continental sand , silt and clay stones of the deeper parts of the Ogallala Formation as well as the Upper Triassic and Upper Permian , which means that the Llano Estacado largely before being destroyed is protected. On the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado, this caliche horizon forms a striking stratification called the “Caprock Escarpment”. In the east of the panhandle, this reinforcement is often not (no longer) available, which is why the terrain there is much more granular. While the deeper layers of the Ogallala Formation have been preserved in the northeast, they have been cleared in the southeast. There, the Upper Triassic deposits of the Dockum Group and the upper and middle Permian deposits of the Quartermaster, Whitehorse and Blaine Formations come to light in large areas. Permo-Triassic strata are also biting into the great river valleys of the Canadian River and the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River.

History and politics

Since the Admission Act allowed the state of Texas to self-divide, a Jefferson State Act was introduced into Congress in 1915 to become synonymous with the Texas Panhandle . The legislative initiative did not find a majority.

Politically speaking, this region is one of the most conservative in the entire United States .

Counties

Well-known cities

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vance T. Holiday: The Blackwater Draw Formation (Quaternary): A 1.4-plus-my record of eolian sedimentation and soil formation on the Southern High Plains. Geological Society of America Bulletin. Vol. 101, No. 12, 1989, pp. 1598-1607, doi : 10.1130 / 0016-7606 (1989) 101 <1598: TBDFQA> 2.3.CO; 2 ( alternative download ). Note: Holiday restricts the Blackwater Draw Formation to the Llano Estacado (Southern High Plains), but notes that the Quaternary u. a. north of the Canadian River that of the Southern High Plains is relatively similar. On the current geological map of Texas 1: 100,000, the Quaternary of almost the entire panhandle is shown as a blackwater draw formation (abbreviation Qbd ).
  2. ↑ Entire paragraph, unless otherwise indicated, from William H. Matthews III: The Geologic Story of Palo Duro Canyon. Guidebook 8th Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, 1969, p. 23 ff. ( PDF ( Memento from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 28.5 MB).