Rita Blanca and Punta de Agua Meet Before Turning East

Rita Blanca and Punta de Agua are intermittent creeks, so their channels can be easier to notice on a map than from a passing car. They meet inside Hartley County, then drain east toward the Canadian River in Oldham County. Around them, jagged dry arroyos cut through 1,488 square miles of level-to-rolling High Plains grassland. The county reaches from the New Mexico line to Moore County, with Dallam County above it and Oldham County below. Channing sits about thirty miles south of Dalhart, which straddles the Hartley-Dallam line.

That drainage sits high. Elevation ranges from about 3,400 to 4,200 feet, and the ground shifts between deep sandy loam and loose sand. Grasses across it have long supported cattle. Rita Blanca Lake catches one part of the system three miles south of Dalhart, but the name belongs to a creek as well as a recreation site. Hartley County's water map is a quiet one: two intermittent channels meet, angle toward the Canadian, and leave dry arroyos as the visible record of where water has moved.