Coronado May Have Camped in Palo Duro Canyon in 1541

People have lived in and around Palo Duro Canyon for roughly 10,000 years. The canyon offered shelter, water, and game in an otherwise open and exposed landscape. In more recent centuries, Comanche, Kiowa, and other tribes used it as a winter camp.

In 1541, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led a Spanish expedition across the southern plains. Historians believe his party camped in or near Palo Duro Canyon along the way. The canyon's first major contact with Anglo-American settlement came in 1874. That year, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's forces attacked a Comanche and Kiowa camp here during the Red River War. The attack ended the tribes' use of the canyon as a refuge.