Before There Were Boots on the Caprock
- Jody Slaughter
- Jul 23
- 29 min read
Season: 2 \ Episode: 1
Welcome to Season 2 of WTX: A History of West Texas! In this episode, we’re starting at the very beginning. Not the beginning of cowboy stories or Comanche raids — the beginning. Before the first human foot ever stepped onto the Llano Estacado. Before the great herds roamed, before the rivers carved their canyons, before the very Caprock stood sentinel. We’ll come face to face with Columbian mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and even dinosaurs. Each once king of these plains.
Butchering a Mammoth, An older man and two women butcher an Ice-Age elephant. Experimental work suggests that an efficient work group could have carved the beast into manageable pieces in just one day. Many more days work would have been required to dry the meat and prepare the hide.
Mural by Nola Davis displayed at Lubbock Lake Landmark
The Hunt, Archaic hunters spring up from the grass to hurl darts with atlatls at bison at the lake's edge. The hunters disguised themselves as wolves and slowly crept closer before springing. On the horizon family members watch the scene hoping for a successful hunt.
Painting by Nola Davis, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Butchering a Bison, Folsom hunters beginning to carve meat off the hindquarter of a partially skinned bison (buffalo).
This scene combines a sculpture by Mike O'Brien, with a stuffed bison, and a background scene painted by Nola Davis, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Leg bone from extinct bison found in Lubbock Lake Landmark Bed 2, notable for the finely banded layers of diatomite, pond deposits of once-celled, algae-like organisms.
Photo by Glen Evans, 1951, courtesy Texas Memorial Museum.
The spring-fed Lubbock Lake Landmark as it may have once looked.
Artist unknown.
A large mottled-red cutting blade (left) and dart point of white Alibates flint were among artifacts found at the Plainview site.
Photo by Milton Bell.
Premaxilla and dentary of Technosaurus smalli in the collections of the Museum of Texas Tech University.
Photo by Aaron DP
Postosuchus, a basal Triassic archosaur, at the Museum of Texas Tech University
Photo by Dallas Krentzel
SHOW NOTES
Cold Open:
We open in a silent, moonlit canyon where a lone hunter from the Clovis culture crouches, waiting for a mammoth. The chase is on, and the stage is set for a journey across deep time: from mammoth hunts to fossilized seabeds, from prehistoric droughts to ancient ghost towns.
Chapter 1: Permian Period
The story begins in the Permian Period, around 280 million years ago, before dinosaurs.
West Texas was covered by a shallow inland sea, similar to the modern-day Bahamas.
This ancient sea was rich with marine life, including coral reefs, shelled squid, and armored fish.
Over millions of years, the remains of dead sea creatures and plants settled on the sea floor.
These remains were buried under layers of sediment, undergoing intense heat and pressure.
This process formed a subterranean fossil ocean—what we now know as the Permian Basin.
Located beneath Midland, Odessa, and the Guadalupe Mountains, this geological bowl holds vast stores of oil and gas.
These fossil fuels are the remnants of ancient marine life, now powering the modern world.
Chapter 2: Triassic Period
The Permian Sea drained as tectonic plates shifted and sea levels fell.
West Texas was exposed to sunlight for the first time, becoming a cracked, sunbaked landscape.
The Triassic climate was harsh and arid, resembling Australia’s outback more than a lush jungle.
Seasonal rains caused violent flash floods, carving rivers and forming temporary wetlands.
These wetlands supported amphibians and reptilian predators hunting along the banks.
Fossils found near Post, Texas, include early carnivorous and scavenging reptiles:
Postosuchus – a crocodile-like predator.
Coelophysis – a slender, fast-moving dinosaur.
Shuvosaurus – a beaked, bird-like reptile.
Technosaurus – named in honor of Texas Tech University, not EDM.
Chapter 3: Jurassic Period
West Texas transformed from desert to tropical wetland, filled with lush ferns and cycads.
Rivers carved the land, creating new ecosystems for larger and more fearsome creatures.
Giant sauropods, longer than school buses, roamed the floodplains.
Carnivorous predators, including Allosaurus and Dilophosaurus, stalked prey in the dark.
Fossils near the Caprock confirm these massive creatures lived in the region.
Herbivores like Tenontosaurs and early horned dinosaurs grazed in herds.
Pterosaurs with 40-foot wingspans soared silently through the skies.
Though the fossil record is incomplete compared to other states, West Texas held giants too.
This tropical era lasted 100 million years, marked by storms, wildfires, and extinction cycles.
It ended with a dramatic shift—the return of the sea.
Chapter 4: Cretaceous Period
A new ocean, the Western Interior Seaway, covered the central U.S. from the Arctic to the Gulf.
Large parts of West Texas, including the eastern Llano Estacado, Rolling Plains, and Panhandle, were submerged.
The climate was hot, humid, and tropical—no polar ice, high sea levels.
The seaway was home to prehistoric marine monsters, including:
Mosasaurs – massive, flippered predators with double-hinged jaws.
Plesiosaurs – elegant, long-necked swimmers.
Xiphactinus – 15-foot fang-toothed fish that sometimes died mid-meal.
Ancient sharks, giant squid, ammonites, and toothed seabirds.
Scattered islands and marshlands supported the last dinosaurs:
Hadrosaurs, Ankylosaurs, and raptors roamed the scattered land patches.
66 million years ago, a 6-mile-wide asteroid struck near modern-day Yucatán.
The impact vaporized the Gulf, caused tsunamis, firestorms, and global darkness.
The result was mass extinction—75% of species wiped out, including all dinosaurs.
In the aftermath:
Mammals, birds, and lizards emerged as the new dominant lifeforms.
West Texas began to rise, dry out, and transform into something new.
Volcanic activity and erosion shaped the landscape—laying the foundation for the Llano Estacado.
Chapter 5: The Rise of The Llano
The Llano Estacado began forming from millions of years of runoff from the eastern Rockies.
Gravel, sand, and silt built up in thick, porous layers—like a giant thousand-foot-deep sandbox.
This loose material created the Ogallala Formation, a key part of the region’s geology.
Rain and snowmelt filtered through, forming the Ogallala Aquifer—a vast underground reservoir:
Originally held 900 trillion gallons, enough to cover all of Texas in 17 feet of water.
Stretches from South Dakota to the Permian Basin.
In the past 1–2 million years, erosion formed the Caprock Escarpment—the iconic cliffs of West Texas.
Around 2.6 million years ago, the Ice Age brought cooler, wetter climates to the region.
Grasslands spread, and rivers like the White River and Brazos flowed through the canyons.
The Llano became a prehistoric safari, home to megafauna like:
Columbian mammoths with massive tusks.
Giant ground sloths and huge armadillos.
American lions, dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats.
Early camels (which evolved in North America) and small native horses (later extinct).
These ecosystems foreshadowed the modern Great Plains, and set the stage for human arrival.
Chapter 6: The CLovis
Humans originated in East Africa ~300,000 years ago and gradually spread across the globe.
During the last Ice Age (~20,000 years ago), a land bridge (Beringia) connected Siberia to Alaska.
Early people walked into North America across this frozen plain, then migrated south and east.
By 12,000 years ago, humans reached West Texas, with evidence at Lubbock Lake Landmark and Blackwater Draw near Clovis, NM.
These early Paleoindians encountered a rich environment—grassy plains, water, and abundant game.
They hunted:
Juvenile mammoths and mastodons using stone tools and spears.
An extinct bison species one-third larger than modern bison.
Smaller game: ducks, geese, rabbits, turkeys.
Gathered turnips, mesquite beans, and prickly pear fruit.
Predators like sabre-toothed cats, dire wolves, and American lions posed real threats to human survival.
Around 11,500 years ago, the Clovis culture emerged—defined by distinct spear points and successful big-game hunting.
Clovis people:
Hunted mammoths across the Llano Estacado.
Used every part of their kills for food, shelter, tools, and fire.
Were storytellers, parents, and spiritual people who buried their dead with care.
Their dominance lasted for ~500 years, during which they were among the most successful hunter-gatherers on Earth.
As the Ice Age ended, the climate shifted—dryer, hotter, and harsher.
Megafauna like mammoths, sloths, and ancient horses went extinct.
Without prey, the Clovis way of life collapsed, and a new culture emerged in their place—smaller, quieter, and adapted to a changed world.
The Folsom Culture
Folsom people emerged after the Clovis, adapting to the loss of mammoths and mastodons.
Hunted bison antiquus, a massive ancestor of modern buffalo.
Developed refined fluted spear points—thin, delicate, and highly precise.
Hunting was tactical and coordinated, with high stakes and narrow margins for error.
Archaeological evidence found at Lubbock Lake Landmark, Blackwater Draw, and Midland.
“Midland Man” (actually a young woman) is one of the oldest human remains found in Texas.
Transition to Regional Cultures
As the Ice Age ended, Folsom culture faded, replaced by Plainview, Firstview, and Plano cultures.
These groups focused more on gathering (roots, berries, nuts) and smaller-scale hunting.
Plainview culture (4:20 AM – ~5,100 BC) showed signs of larger bands and early social organization.
Invented pemmican—a preserved food made from dried meat, berries, and fat.
The Long Drought
A catastrophic drought gripped the High Plains—springs dried up, grass vanished, dust choked the air.
Many left, but some endured, adapting to the harsh West Texas climate.
Life was stripped down to pure survival:
Digging dry creek beds, grinding mesquite beans, chasing jackrabbits.
Oral traditions, parenting, firelight stories, and deep connection to the land persisted.
No great cities or temples—just a remarkable will to stay and survive.
Return of Life and Bison
Rains slowly returned. Springs flowed again. Grasses and modern bison came back.
People returned too, bringing new innovations:
Tipis stitched from hides with stone awls and drills.
Dogs became essential pack animals, pulling travois sleds across the plains.
Marked a quiet revolution in lifestyle:
Mobility, shelter, and survival improved drastically.
Not monumental, but life-changing.
The Ceramic Period
Around 2,000 years ago, people in West Texas began settling part-time near reliable water sources.
Small-scale gardening started—squash, beans, and possibly corn were grown.
Pottery emerged: simple, thick-walled brownware fired in open hearths.
Clay pots revolutionized daily life—allowing for boiling food, storing water, and preserving seeds.
Pottery signaled a shift from pure survival to planning and stability.
Shards found today may seem unremarkable, but once meant extra time between hunger and harvest.
This period marked a quiet cultural evolution—less about monuments, more about endurance.
The bow and arrow was adopted around 250–400 AD, transforming hunting strategies.
Bison hunters quickly came to rely on bows as essential tools.
While great civilizations rose across the world, West Texans were refining daily life through practical innovation.
Life here was marked by firelight, family, food preparation, and deep ties to the land—not kings or temples.
The Palo Duro/Antelope Creek Cultures
Around 900 AD (9:45 PM on the human history clock), the Medieval Warm Period brought a climate shift that spurred cultural growth across the globe.
In West Texas, the Palo Duro culture emerged in the Southern Plains, especially in the Upper Red River and Brazos watersheds.
These people adapted to fewer bison by hunting deer and pronghorn and developing horticulture, including gardens, storage pits, and pit ovens.
By 1200 AD, the Palo Duro culture faded, giving rise to the Antelope Creek culture.
The Antelope Creek people built permanent stone-and-adobe villages, some with multi-room homes and underground storage.
They cultivated corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers, and actively traded Alibates flint with the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico.
The region became interconnected—not just inhabited but part of a broader trade network.
After 1400 AD (10:45 PM), the Little Ice Age brought colder weather, crop failure, and famine.
Bison herds retreated south, some as far as the Gulf Coast.
Simultaneously, Proto-Apache raiders arrived from the north—skilled warriors who attacked and overran Antelope Creek villages.
The Antelope Creek culture vanished—their fate unknown.
They may have joined other tribes, been absorbed, or been wiped out entirely.
All we know is: they were here… and then they weren’t.
The Apache
The first written records of West Texas date to 1541 (11:00 PM) with the arrival of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and his expedition.
Coronado encountered the Querechos, a nomadic Apache group living in tipi villages and hunting bison on the Caprock.
Near Tule Canyon, he met the Teyas—a more settled group that farmed, hunted bison, and may have been related to the Jumano or Caddo peoples.
Another Apache group, called the Vaqueros by the Spanish, lived along the Red River and controlled the Alibates Flint Quarries.
Other Teyas-like peoples were encountered in Blanco Canyon (Crosby County).
The horse, brought by Coronado, revolutionized Plains culture—enabling faster travel, bigger hunts, and long-distance raids.
The Spanish also introduced iron, gunpowder, and steel weapons, accelerating technological advancement for native tribes.
These new tools created a power imbalance—tribes who adapted thrived, those who didn’t vanished.
The Lipan Apache—descendants of the Querechos and Vaqueros—adapted faster and better than anyone.
By 1600, they controlled vast areas including West Texas, San Antonio, and parts of Mexico, dominating the bison trade.
Lipan warriors were fierce, mobile, and tactically advanced, trained from a young age in warfare and hunting.
Lipan women had uncommon autonomy, participating in decisions, trade, medicine, and even hunting.
By 1700 (11:15 PM), the Lipan Apache were 4,000 strong, the undisputed rulers of the Caprock.
For a time, they were untouchable—the apex power on the Southern Plains.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Before Tascosa. Before oil. Before Texas was even an idea—there was a sea, a shelf of stone, and the long, silent memory of time. In this premiere episode of Season 2, WTX: A History of West Texas dives deeper than ever before. We go back to the very beginning to uncover how the land itself shaped the people, the myths, and the empires to come.
Enjoyed the episode?
Don’t forget to subscribe to WTX: A History of West Texas on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review!
For maps, photos, and bonus content—including fossil diagrams and Caprock cross-sections—visit wtxpodcast.com.
Join the Conversation:
Have you walked the Caprock? Found fossils or arrowheads in the West Texas soil? Share your stories, photos, or questions using #WTXPodcast or tag us on social media. We’d love to hear how your own boots have crossed this ancient land.
Further Reading
Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa - John L. McCarty, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968
Tascosa: It's Life and Gaudy Times - Frederick Nolan, Texas Tech University Press, 2020
The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway: Settlement, Development, and Decline on the Texas High Plains - Tiffany Marie Haggard Fink, dissertation in history, Texas Tech University, 2004
Credits:
Writer: Jody L. Slaughter
Producer: Jody L. Slaughter
Editor: Jody L. Slaughter
Engineer: Jody L. Slaughter
Music by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos
Contact:
Email: lubbockistATgmail.com
Twitter: @Lubbockist
Listen on:
Thanks for listening, and so long...from West Texas.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Cold Open - The Chase
I can hear it before I see it—the low, rolling thunder of its feet shaking the ground.
The mammoth is close. Close enough that I can feel the tremble through the soil, up my knees, and into the handle of my spear.
I crouch lower in the grass. Wind in my face. Breath shallow. The chill cuts through my bones, but I barely notice. All I feel is the blood pounding in my ears, the ache in my thighs, and the weight of the stone point gripped tightly in my hand.
I shaped it myself. Two days of chipping, grinding, fluting. It’s sharp enough to kill a god.
We’ve been tracking this bull for four days. Across frozen rivers, past broken trees, through whiteout snow and blackwater marsh. My legs scream. My throat is raw. My stomach’s been empty since yesterday. But I can smell the end now. We’re too close to stop.
I glance to the left. My brother is there, half-hidden behind a boulder, spear resting against his thigh. He doesn’t look at me, just nods. No words. No signal. We’ve done this before.
The mammoth crests the ridge, steam rising off its back like smoke from a morning fire. It’s huge—tusks curved like moons, swaying with each step. A walking mountain of meat and bone. It doesn’t know we’re here. Not yet.
So we wait.
The others are already in place. Two behind it. One to the north draw, its only path of escape.. Koya, the elder, is farther back with the fire pit—if this works, we’ll be feasting by nightfall.
And if it doesn’t?
There’s no second chance with a bull this size. One bad throw. One wrong step. And my ancestors would tell stories by firelight about my bones.
The mammoth lowers its head to graze. Its ears twitch. It’s heard something.
I freeze.
The wind shifts.
It lifts its head, snorting. It smells us. It bellows a deep, thunderous roar that echoes off the canyon walls.
I watch it turn—slow, uncertain. Its eye catches the sun. Just for a moment.
I raise my arm.
And I run.
Intro
Hey y’all, I’m Jody Slaughter—and welcome to West Texas. Where the stories stretch as wide as the sky, and the land’s been keeping secrets longer than any of us have been around to listen.
Now, today we’re going to start at the very beginning. And I don’t mean the beginning of cowboy stories or Comanche raids—I mean the beginning. Before the first human foot ever stepped onto the Llano Estacado. Before the great herds roamed, before the rivers carved their canyons, before the very Caprock stood sentinel. We’ll come face to face with Columbian mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and American lions—each one once king of these plains. We’re going back to when the land wasn’t even land yet.
Now, a few short notes before we begin. First, I’ve tried to divide things into a neat, ordered timeline, but keep in mind that many of these things didn’t happen neatly one after the other, they overlapped, and the changes that happened, didn’t happen overnight. They took hundreds, or thousands, or even millions of years. I’ve tried to keep things as accurate as possible, while also making it coherent to the non-geologist, non-paleontologist, and non-archaeologist. If you are one of those, you’re probably going to be yelling at your device while streaming this, so I just apologize in advance.
The periods of time here are impossible for our brains to really comprehend, so I’m going to borrow the well-worn calendar framework. So, imagine Texas and, presumably, the earth were created on January 1 of our pretend calendar. Wherever you sit right now in 2025, it is 12 months later, New Year’s Eve. Everything that has ever happened, has happened within the 12 months of our fictitious year.
Permian Period - Dec. 8
Our West Texas story doesn’t even begin until December 8, about 280 million years ago, during the Permian Period, a time even before dinosaurs. Back then, West Texas sat on the edge of a vast inland sea. A shallow, warm sea teeming with ancient life—coral reefs, fast-swimming squid with shells, and strange fish with armor-plated heads. Think of the Bahamas for a modern comparison. And as millions of years rolled by, that sea filled up with the remains of everything that lived and died in it. Skeletons, shells, and plant matter sank to the bottom and were slowly buried under layers of sediment over millions and millions of years. So right beneath your boots—if you’re standing anywhere between Midland, Odessa, and the Guadalupe Mountains—is a sunken geological bowl that we now call the Permian Basin. All of those layers of dead sea life - algae, plankton, sponges, coral were compressed by heat and pressure over millions of years until they turned into a new kind of ocean. A fossilized, subterranean ocean of oil and gas created by time and geology…just waiting to be discovered and exploited to power our world. Thanks lil fishies.
Triassic Period - Dec. 13
Over time, tectonic plates shifted and sea levels dropped, and this Permian Sea drained. No longer drowned beneath saltwater, the surface of West Texas cracked, hardened, and baked under a sun that had never touched it before.
During the Triassic, West Texas was a land of extremes—hot, dusty, and dry for most of the year, more like Australia’s outback than a jungle. But when the rains came, they didn’t just fall. They gushed from the sky unceasing. Flash floods carved shallow rivers through wide floodplains, and for a little while, pockets of water pooled into muddy wetlands where amphibians wallowed and reptiles hunted along the banks. The fossils of several small carnivores and scavengers, not much larger than a man, have been discovered at a quarry near Post. The aptly-named Postosuchus (POST-oh-SOOK-us), Coelophysis (see·luh·fai·suhs), Shuvosaurus (SHOO-voe-SORE-us), and Technosaurus. Named, not because of his sick DJ skillz, but after our own Texas Tech University.
Jurassic Period - Dec. 17
And as the Triassic turned to the Jurassic, the land changed again. Rivers began to cut across the land. The barren desert transformed to a tropical wetland. Ferns and cycads rose like green spines from the dust. And from the shadows, Bigger animals came. Heavier. Hungrier. Thundering across river beds and streambanks. Sauropods longer than school buses wandered through the shallows. Carnivores with jagged teeth stalked them in the night.
We don’t have the full fossil record here—not like Utah or Montana. But the bones that have been found—many not far from the Caprock itself—tell us we had giants too. The 30 foot tall Allosaurus. Smaller predators like dilophosaurus (which, coincidentally, was much larger and looked nothing like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park). Tenontosaurs and early horned dinosaurs grazed in herds. And above it all, great pterosaurs with their 40 foot wingspans, coasted silently overhead..
This tropical age lasted for another 100 million years. The land held storms, fire, and extinction. And then, just as the dinosaurs were reaching their golden age, the water came back.
Cretaceous Period - Dec. 22
But it wasn’t the shallow Permian Sea of before. This was something new. Bigger. Deeper. Stranger. A Cretaceous sea that didn’t just lap at the edges of Texas—it swallowed the middle of the continent whole.
This was the Western Interior Seaway, and it stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Picture a body of water wider than the Mediterranean, cutting clean across North America. Where Kansas is now? Underwater. Nebraska? Gone. And yes, even large parts of West Texas—including the eastern Llano Estacado, the Rolling Plains, and parts of the Panhandle—all beneath the waves.
And it wasn’t just wet. It was hot. Humid. Tropical. No ice at the poles meant sea levels were way up. If you want a modern comparison, think of the coast of Belize, or the mangrove shallows of southern Vietnam—only with monsters gliding just under the surface.
Below the waves, the sea teemed with life. There were mosasaurs, marine reptiles the size of buses, with double-hinged jaws and flippers like torpedoes. Plesiosaurs, long-necked and paddle-limbed like the mythic Loch Ness Monster, moved like underwater ballerinas. Xiphactinus—a 15-foot fang-toothed fish—swallowed other big fish whole, sometimes so fast it died with its prey half-digested. There were ancient sharks, coiled ammonites, giant squid, and toothed seabirds diving deep for prey.
There may have still been patches of land rising above the water—small islands, spits of coastal marsh. On those little scraps of dry ground, you’d find the last of the dinosaurs: Hadrosaurs, duck-billed and herd-bound. Ankylosaurs, covered in armor. And quick-footed raptors, sharp-eyed and clever, waiting in the palms.
But it wouldn’t last.
Because one day, about 66 million years ago - Christmas Day, something appeared in the sky. A speck at first—too small to notice, too fast to matter. But that speck was a mountain-sized asteroid, six miles wide, screaming through space at more than 40,000 miles per hour.
And it was headed straight for Earth.
It hit near what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula, and in the blink of a geologic eye, the world changed. The blast was so powerful it vaporized the Gulf, shook the crust of the Earth, and sent a wall of water thousands of feet high racing in every direction. Molten rock rained from the sky. Dust and ash blotted out the sun. The forests burned. The dinosaurs fell silent.
By the time the dust settled, three out of every four species on Earth were gone. West Texas, once a warm tropical sea, was now drying out. The land rose. And in the quiet that followed, the survivors—tiny mammals, birds, and lizards—emerged into a brand-new world.
Erosion began carving mesas and gulches. Volcanoes out west belched ash and lava, adding more layers to the earth’s crust. But here’s where the Llano Estacado started becoming something special.
The Rise of the Llano Estacado - December 30
The story of the Llano Estacado itself—that wide, flat tabletop of a land—begins with runoff.
It took 10 million years of rivers and flash floods, rushing off the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains dumping gravel, sand, and silt across what’s now eastern New Mexico and the Texas High Plains. These materials didn’t settle like mud—they stacked loosely, with gaps between the grains. Think of it like a giant sandbox, a thousand feet thick, with water trickling into all the empty spaces.
That’s how the Ogallala Formation was born.
As rainwater and melted snow filtered through the soil, it got trapped in these layers of gravel and sand. That created one of the largest underground lakes in the world—the Ogallala Aquifer. It's not just a pool. It's a buried sponge, stretching from South Dakota all the way down to the Permian Basin. Before being tapped for irrigation, the Ogallala contained some 900 trillion gallons of water. That’s enough to cover all of Texas in water 17 feet deep.
Then, in just the last 1-2 million years, as rain and rivers eroded the edges, the striking Caprock Escarpment was formed - the steep cliffs synonymous with the region today.
About 2.6 million years ago, the Ice Age rolled in. Now, the glaciers didn’t reach this far south, but the climate shifted. It got cooler, wetter. Grasslands spread across the plains, and small rivers like the White River and Brazos trickled through the canyons.
And then came the animals.
The Llano Estacado was a prehistoric safari, home to some of the most incredible beasts ever to walk North America: Columbian mammoths—towering elephants with tusks the size of church pews. Huge armadillos and giant ground sloths, big as oxen, lumbered over the plains. American lions - even larger than today’s African lions, massive dire wolves with bone-crushing jaws, and stealthy sabre-toothed cats prowled the canyons and grasslands. The world’s first camels evolved here in North America, before spreading to Asia and Africa. Small horses, not much larger than sheep, roamed the plains as well. They would go extinct before modern horses were reintroduced by European explorers.
The Clovis
Now you might be wondering—where were the people?
Well, we—Homo sapiens—first showed up in East Africa around 300,000 years ago. We were hunters, gatherers, travelers. And we didn't stay put for long. Wave by wave, generation by generation, early humans walked out of Africa, into the Middle East, across Asia, and eventually north into Siberia.
Then, sometime around 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, sea levels dropped. A land bridge opened up between Russia and Alaska—Beringia. And that’s how people reached North America: on foot, walking across a frozen plain that’s now buried beneath the Bering Sea.
They didn’t stay in the Arctic. They followed rivers, followed game, followed curiosity—southward, then east. Across centuries, some of them made their way into the Southwest. They’d set up camp in places like Blackwater Draw, near modern-day Clovis, New Mexico, and at a spring-fed spot that today we call Lubbock Lake Landmark. Watering holes frequented by game. The first evidence of humans in the area appears around 12,000 years ago. So let’s reset the scale of our calendar from a year to a day, and say that the first humans are stepping foot on West Texas soil at midnight.
These Paleoindians, walking down from Alaska through the ice age glaciers that extended as far south as Kansas, must have thought West Texas was paradise. Tall grasses, plentiful water, and bountiful game. Having only the most primitive tools and weapons - stone knives, spears, and lances, they favored catching young mammoths and mastodon instead of trying to take down their full-sized parents. They hunted an extinct bison species with straight horns, around ⅓ larger than modern bison. And they were likely hunted themselves by the lions, dire wolves, and sabre-toothed cats of the plains. They supplemented their diets by gathering turnips, and mesquite beans, or hunting smaller game like geese, ducks, turkeys, and rabbits that still live here today.
By 1 a.m. - 11,500 - they had established a unique culture of their own. These were the Clovis peoples, and they dominated the region for hundreds of years.
On the Llano, the Clovis hunters crouched in dripping marshes, moss-slick stones underfoot, tracking mammoths—towering creatures with tusks longer than a pickup truck. They chased them across the prairie, read their footprints like stories in the dirt, and struck when the time was right. A single mammoth kill meant weeks of food, shelter, tools, and fire. Nothing went to waste.
But it was never easy.
Imagine standing on the open plain, armed with nothing but a spear, facing down an animal the size of a small house. You don’t get second chances. You either hit your mark—or you run. And if you run too slow, you don’t get to tell the story.
But they weren’t just hunters. They were parents. Storytellers. Fire-builders. They roasted prairie dogs, gathered mesquite beans, and picked prickly pear fruit with careful fingers. They sang songs no one remembers. They buried their dead with offerings. They lived with the land, not on top of it.
And for a time—maybe five hundred years—they were the most successful people on Earth.
But nothing lasts forever.
As the Ice Age melted away, the climate changed. Grasslands shrank. Watering holes dried up. The lush, humid climate the Clovis people had first encountered turned to an arid, almost-desert-like climate similar to the trans-Pecos today. The mammoths, giant ground sloths, horses, and other Ice age herbivores could not adapt. They disappeared. And along with them, the larger carnivores that preyed on them.
One by one, the great herds disappeared, until the Clovis had nothing left to chase. The prairies fell silent.
Out of that silence came a new people. Smaller. Quieter. Smarter in different ways.
The Folsom
The Folsom culture emerged at 2:24am - around 10,800 years ago, built on a new reality: the age of giants was over. No more mammoths. No more mastodons. What remained was the bison antiquus—a massive, sharp-horned ancestor of today’s buffalo. Still dangerous. Still worth the risk.
The Folsom refined their hunting techniques. Their spear points were thinner, more delicate, fluted with astonishing precision. These weren’t brute weapons. They were surgical.
And their hunts? Tactical. Coordinated. A single mistake could cost the whole band their food for the winter. But when it worked, when they brought down an entire herd, it must have felt like magic. Like power over nature itself.
We’ve found their camps too at places like Lubbock Lake Landmark and Blackwater Draw. Fire rings, flakes of stone, butchered bones. And, in 1953, just outside Midland—a skeleton. A young woman, buried more than 10,000 years ago. She’s known today as Midland Man, even though we now know she wasn’t a man at all. She might have been a mother. A daughter. A storyteller. Hers are some of the oldest human remains ever found in Texas.
But even the Folsom couldn't outrun time. Soon, as the Ice Age continued to recede, the land became more barren. And eventually, the last of the Great Bison were gone, whether it was from climate or overhunting. It didn’t much matter to the Folsom. Just like the Clovis before them, the Folsom’s centuries-long reign came to an end.
Plainview/Firstview/Plano
By 4am, about 10,000 years ago, the Folsom had been replaced by a number of regional cultures - The Plainview, Firstview, and Plano. These cultures were distinct, but also overlapped in both time and geography. These were still hunter-gatherers, but with a much larger emphasis on the gathering, mainly subsisting on roots, nuts, berries, and other forage. Just as the sun began to rise on our imaginary day, the Firstview culture was making their mark upon the West Texas sands. They would thrive for a thousand years. The Plainview culture, 4:20 am to almost 10 am (5,100 BC) was the most developed of this era. They moved in larger bands, began developing the seeds of sociopolitical societies, and even developed an innovative way to preserve meat. Plainview women dried small strips of meat in the sun (bison jerky anyone?) and then pounded it into a slurry with berries and animal fat, then packed it into skin bags that were sealed with even more fat. This “pemmican” could last for years without spoiling.
We don’t know a lot about the next groups of people who lived here, except that they proved more adaptable than their predecessors. When times got hard, they sharpened their tools, reshaped their habits, and paid closer attention to the land. At places like the Alibates Flint Quarries, near today’s Lake Meredith, they chipped away at stone beds streaked with color—choosing only the finest blades of chert to make the tools that would feed their families.
The bison changed too. Gone were the lumbering Ice Age herds—these new bison were quicker, leaner, built for speed and drought. And the hunters adapted right along with them. They learned how to turn the land into a weapon, herding bison into narrow draws or driving them off cliffs in carefully timed stampedes. You can almost hear it—the pounding hooves, the shouted signals, the silence that followed.
But for all their brilliance and resilience, these people didn’t have it easy.
They endured one of the longest droughts in human memory. For nearly two thousand years, from around lunchtime all the way to mid-afternoon, the High Plains were seared by sun and scoured by wind. Springs dried up. Grass turned brittle. Blowing dust turned day to night. This was the land learning how to be West Texas.
Many of the people left the area, perhaps most did. But some stayed. And those who did, learned how to be West Texans.
They crouched beside dry creek beds, digging for moisture. They waited for cactus fruit to ripen. They crushed mesquite beans on stone slabs until their hands blistered. And when a jackrabbit darted from the brush, they ran—not for sport, but for supper.
There were no pyramids here. No stone circles or cities.
But there was love. There were parents teaching their children how to stitch a hide tight against the wind. There were stories told by firelight—about storms, animals, and ancestors. There was laughter, and hunger, and heartbreak. And there was a deep understanding, etched into every bone and sinew, that survival here meant knowing the land, not conquering it.
While the rest of the world raised temples and carved their names into stone, the people of West Texas did something just as remarkable: they endured.
And while they were scraping out survival, the rest of the world was building wonders.
In Sumer, they were writing in cuneiform, setting laws, and raising temples to the heavens. In Egypt, the first great pyramids were taking shape under the rule of divine kings. In the Indus Valley, cities like Mohenjo-Daro were laid out in perfect grids, with drainage systems more advanced than some towns today. Stonehenge was rising in the misty fields of England. Governments, religions, and great armies were being built. And in a few great cities, up to 50,000 people gathered in one place, fed by rivers and harvests and centuries of accumulated knowledge.
But here on the Llano, it was still just stone tools, sweat, and survival.
No temples. No kings. No writing. Just dust and wind, and the people who refused to leave.
So much dirt blew during this 2,000 year period that when the Santa Fe Railroad built their line from Plainview to Lubbock in the early 1900s, they had to drive bridge supports across the Yellowhouse and Blackwater draws through 100 feet of dirt and sand just to reach the old river bottom.
Eventually—mercifully—the skies shifted. The winds calmed. Rains returned, slowly, then steadily. Springs that had been dry for generations began to trickle again. Grasses crept back across the prairie. And with them came the bison.
Not the towering giants of the Ice Age, but the bison we know today—nimble, muscular, built for the heat and for long distances. And they didn’t come alone. The people came back too.
You can imagine the relief—standing beside a clear-running spring after two thousand years of thirst. To see grass tall enough to hide a calf. To hear the grunt of bison rolling like thunder across the flats. Life didn’t just return—it flourished.
Now, for the first time, hides weren’t just for warmth—they were for homes. With new tools like stone drills and awls, people could pierce the thick skins and stitch them together into weatherproof shelters. Tipis took shape across the plains, sturdy and mobile, made to follow the herds.
But tipis are heavy. And there were no horses yet. So they turned to an old companion.
Dogs.
Dogs had crossed the land bridge with humans millennia earlier—first as guards and scouts, then as family. But now they took on a new role: haulers. Harnessed to travois sleds, these early pack animals helped carry hides, supplies, and children across the plains.
It was a quiet revolution—not of stone monuments or metal tools, but of small inventions that changed daily life. And over time, those small changes stacked up.
Ceramic Period
At 8pm, about two thousand years ago, another shift took place—people began to settle, at least part-time. They started to grow things—squash, beans, maybe even corn in small garden plots tucked near dependable water. They experimented with storage—baskets first, then clay pots, hardened in open fires.
The Ceramic Period had begun.
Pottery here wasn’t flashy. No painted symbols, no polished glazes. Just thick-walled, brownware vessels—simple, durable, and life-changing. For the first time, people could boil food, store water, preserve seeds. A broken shard in the dirt may not look like much today, but back then? It meant stability. It meant a little more time between hunger and harvest.
They were no longer just surviving until tomorrow. They were planning. For the future.
And while families on the Llano were boiling roots and drying meat, halfway across the world, cities were rising.
The Roman Empire had already peaked, and declined. In India, the Gupta philosophers debated math and medicine. In Mesoamerica, the Maya were carving kings’ names into stone and building temples tall enough to kiss the canopy. In China, artisans were glazing early porcelain and scribes were copying poetry onto silk scrolls.
And out here? Someone sat by the fire, sealing up a clay jar with mud and ash. Someone stitched a bison robe while their child slept under the stars. Someone knelt beside a stream, cupping water to their lips, thinking not of kings or conquest—but of the hunt, the season, and what tomorrow might bring.
It was also during this period, somewhere between 250-400 AD, 8:30pm, that the bow and arrow was first adopted. Soon, no self-respecting bison hunter would be caught without one.
Palo Duro/Antelope Creek
Then, around 9:45pm or 900 AD, something changed in the sky.
The Medieval Warm Period was a global warming trend expanding across Western Europe and North America and causing a civilizational boom on both continents. In Europe, agricultural yields increased, and along with them, the size of cities. Great Gothic Cathedrals were built, the Reformation took place. The massive pyramids of Central America were built. Farming communities like the Pueblos of New Mexico flourished.
Here in West Texas, the warmth brought new life to the Southern Plains. Out of the Palo Duro Canyon, a new culture blossomed.
These early people—centered in the Upper Red River and Brazos watersheds—didn’t chase bison the way their ancestors had. The big herds had moved off to escape the heat. So they turned instead to deer and pronghorn, and leaned into horticulture. The Palo Duro people grew gardens. Built storage pits. Cooked in pit ovens. They read the seasons, watched the sky, and scratched a living from the soil. But by around 1200 AD, the Palo Duro culture, too, had faded into memory—making way for something bigger.
A new force emerged on the High Plains: The Antelope Creek culture.
From the Canadian River all the way down into modern-day Briscoe, Swisher, and Castro counties, they built permanent stone-and-adobe villages, some with multi-room houses, even underground storage chambers. Corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers filled their gardens. They mined the famed Alibates flint and traded it west to the Pueblo cultures of New Mexico. The High Plains weren’t just inhabited—they were connected.
But as always on the Llano… good times don’t last.
After 1400, 10:45pm, the warming trend snapped. The climate turned cold. Again.
The Little Ice Age gripped the world. Crops failed. Famines spread. Snow fell deeper. Seasons grew shorter. Even the bison—tough as they were—retreated south, some as far as the Gulf of Mexico.
And from the north came another threat. Not the cold. The Proto-Apaches.
These early ancestors of the Apache tribes that would come later weren’t farmers. These were raiders. Warriors. Hunters born in war. They descended in bands—lean, fast, and brutal—pillaging the Antelope Creek villages with swift, coordinated strikes. Stone houses couldn’t protect a people armed with garden tools from warriors trained since childhood to kill.
The Antelope Creek people vanished. We don’t know where they went. Maybe they fled north and joined the Pawnees. Maybe they were absorbed by other cultures to the west. Maybe they were wiped out entirely.
What we do know is this: They were here. And then… they weren’t.
Apache
And that’s where we pick up our first written records of West Texas.
It wasn’t until 1541, 11pm, that the first Europeans in any numbers arrived on the Texas Plains when Coronado marched his Spanish expedition across the Caprock in search of cities of gold. Much, much more on them in the next episode. What Coronado found instead were the Querechos—a mobile, bison-hunting Apache group, living in tipi villages atop the Caprock. They didn’t farm. They didn’t build towns. They followed the herds.
Further south, near what’s now Tule Canyon, Coronado met another group: the Teyas. They were different. They planted crops, lived in more permanent villages, and spent part of the year hunting bison. They were enemies of the Querechos, and may have been related to the Jumano peoples of the Trans-Pecos—or possibly to the Caddo from East Texas.
Another Apache group—whom the Spanish called the Vaqueros—lived farther north, along the tributaries of the Red River. They controlled the Alibates Flint Quarries now and continued to trade with the Pueblos to the west. Other Teyas-like peoples were encountered in Blanco Canyon, in present-day Crosby County.
But the real game-changer was the thing Coronado brought with him: The horse.
Until now, bison hunts had been limited by human legs. But a horse could run for miles. A horse could carry hides, food, warriors, weapons. The horse changed everything.
Now, tribes weren’t just eking out an existence on the plains. They were racing across them. Raiding. Retaliating. Expanding. Raiding again.
And it wasn’t just horses. The Spanish brought iron, gunpowder, metal blades. Technology that would’ve taken native cultures centuries to develop was dropped in their lap almost overnight. It was like someone in 1776 showing up with tanks and M16s.
They had speed. They had steel. They had fire.
Those who adapted to this new world quickly became unstoppable. Those who didn’t… disappeared.
And no one adapted faster than the Lipan Apache. A successor to the Querecho and Vaqueros.
By 1600, they controlled large parts of West Texas, modern San Antonio and even Mexico. They controlled the lucrative bison trade with the Spanish in New Mexico.
They were terrifying in battle. The man had long hair, tattoos, war paint. They rode to battle almost naked. Grandfathers trained their grandsons in hunting and fighting while the men were away. They were taught an elaborate set of customs in the sacred compact that existed between a hunter and his prey.
The women enjoyed a respect and equality seen almost nowhere else in the world at the time. They participated in occasional hunts, and while the men were gone - sometimes for weeks - they were empowered to make all decisions for the group. They also learned prairie medicine, and were given the task of butchering meat, preparing hides, and then trading the same with others.
By 1700, 11:15pm, the Lipan Apache had become the dominant power in Texas. Over 4,000 strong.
They were the kings of the Caprock. And for a time, no one could touch them.
Closing
Thanks for listening to the first episode of the second season of the WTX Podcast: I’ve been Jody Slaughter. I’m so excited to be back in the swing of things, so look forward to an exciting second season. In the next episode or two, depending on how it shakes out. We’ll dive deeper into the early Europeans who first laid eyes on the area, before introducing the feared Comanche. You won’t want to miss that.
If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll definitely want to check out Paul H. Carlson’s fantastic book: Heaven’s Harsh Tableland, a new history of the Llano Estacado. It’s a really great read and goes way more in-depth on many of these topics. As always you can email me at with any questions or comments, or reach out on Twitter @Lubbockist. Visit wtxpodcast.com for photos, maps, and tons of additional info related to each episode. This episode was written, produced, edited, and mixed by me, Jody Slaughter. Original music is performed by my AI band Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos, you can find more from them on Spotify or wherever you stream music. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of this journey across time and West Texas with me. So for now, so long…from West Texas.
Comments