NPS Photo For more than 13,000 years, people have called the Canadian River region of the Texas Panhandle home. The earliest inhabitants were nomadic hunter‑gatherers, moving with the seasons as they tracked game and collected wild plants. Their presence is recorded across the landscape through the archaeological traces they left behind. Around 1150 A.D., a more settled culture known as the Antelope Creek people began building stone-slab homes and quarrying Alibates Flint along the Canadian River. They lived in the region for roughly 300 years, leaving behind villages, tools, and petroglyphs. By about 1450 A.D., the Antelope Creek people had left the Panhandle. When the Spanish arrived in the mid‑1500s, they recorded no trace of them. The arrival of the Apache around 1500 may have contributed to their departure. With the removal of the Plains tribes, pioneers, ranchers, and settlers moved into the Panhandle. In 1876, Thomas S. Bugbee established the Quarter Circle T Ranch—now the second‑oldest ranch in the region—along the creek that bears his name. The following year, the LX Ranch, which included the land that is now Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, was founded by W.H. Bates and David T. Beals. In 1897, David N. McBride and his family settled on a section of land in the center of the LX Ranch. Their stone ranch house still stands in what is now McBride Canyon, and it remains the oldest standing house in Potter County.
Who were the Querechos?Coronado’s Spanish expedition encountered bison‑hunting nomads they called “Querechos,” now known to be ancestors of the Apache. Although the Spanish only passed through, their introduction of the horse permanently transformed life on the Plains and ended the era of hunting bison on foot.
NPS / Nevin Kempthorne |
Last updated: January 28, 2026