The field appeared prehistoric, disordered as it was with silver sagebrush, high bluestem yard, and yellow-flowering curlycup gumweed. The fecundity was, partly, the outcome of hefty rainstorms that had actually simply brushed up via the Panhandle. I tipped around some irritable pear, stalked a mild surge, and stared out at a delicately undulating landscape tinted by moves of yellow and environment-friendly. The early-morning light exposed the rustic red dust on far-off hillsides. That midtown Amarillo showed up from the top of among those hillsides appeared difficult.
I remained in the northeastern edge of the Cross Bar Monitoring Location, a 12,000-acre system of government land that couple of recognize exists, partly due to the fact that gain access to is very hard. It’s bordered by exclusive cattle ranches and the Canadian River. Getting in by roadway needs approval from a landowner– you need to recognize somebody or recognize somebody that understands somebody– and the aid of a companion to open up a collection of secured gateways. The only various other method is a two-mile trip that needs wading throughout the Canadian two times, tramping via thick layers of six-foot-tall reeds, evading enormous spiderwebs protected by arachnids the dimension of doorknobs, and ultimately climbing over an entrance at the system’s north fencing line.
Within mins of going into the Cross Bar my trousers were sequined with goathead sticker labels that punctured and stabbed my knees and ankle joints with each action. Once in awhile I needed to punch via a grove of sunflowers whose thick stalks overlooked my six-foot framework.
About one lengthy mile later on, I got to a little cleaning where a white pick-up with a Bureau of Land Monitoring logo design on its front bumper rested idling. Out of the guest side tipped Lorie Van Ongevalle, the executive supervisor of Buddies of Cross Bar, a not-for-profit company based in Amarillo. On the motorist’s side was Adrian Escobar, an outdoor-recreation organizer for the BLM that looks after the Cross Bar in support of the federal government. They were below to reveal me around the remainder of the home.
” You made it,” Van Ongevalle claimed. She is 55 with a pleasant however flinty behavior; her white hair was connected right into a braid that drained of the rear of her baseball cap. Escobar is a big, barrel-chested, pleasing guy of 45 with a dark beard. Both of them, and Escobar’s BLM associates, are bound by a common goal: to create regarding 10,000 acres of the Cross Bar as a public outdoor-recreation location with multi-purpose routes for treking, hill cycling, and horseback riding, plus camping areas and large backcountry locations for bowhunters to track video game.
We jumped in the pick-up, drove to a BLM job and storage space website, and pressed right into an Energy Job Automobile. Over the following hour, Escobar and Van Ongevalle revealed me the views: rolling levels, rugged hillsides, and broad red-clay canyons with rivers and creeks winding via them like emerald capillaries. They rounded off our excursion with an amazing raised sight of the Canadian River, which specifies the north side of the Cross Bar. We primarily drove on sections of routes that they and volunteers from the Buddies team had actually currently developed. Van Ongevalle aimed them bent on me and talked as if each were an one-of-a-kind sculpture. “I take pride in that a person,” she claimed, indicating a path that bent nicely along a sloping shape.
We really did not see much wild animals– it was a really warm day in August– however Escobar claimed he’s seen plenty, consisting of turned on toads, pronghorns, hill lions, and all way of grassy field birds. “Toss a dart at a poster of South Plains pet varieties, and you’re most likely to discover it below,” he claimed.
Van Ongevalle and Escobar really hope that the day when the Cross Bar is conveniently available to the general public is coming close to. It would certainly be a welcome enhancement to the Panhandle’s existing offerings for walkers, campers, seekers, hill bicycle riders, and horseback bikers such as Van Ongevalle.
” When I stayed in Colorado, I can reach Rocky Hill National Forest in half an hour and ride my equine,” she claimed. “So when we relocated to Amarillo, I wept. There was absolutely nothing below.” There are equestrian routes in Palo Duro Canyon State Park, however in Van Ongevalle’s estimate a lot of them are so brief that it takes around as lengthy to drive there from Amarillo and saddle up as it does to ride the routes. Caprock Canyons State Park is attractive and much less checked out, however it’s a virtually two-hour drive southern. That leaves simply Lake Meredith National Leisure Location, a forty-minute drive northeast, which has premium angling and boating however just a handful of stunning routes.
Yet for Van Ongevalle, there’s even more at risk than leisure accessibility to a neighboring exterior room. “I like this area,” she claimed. “The Cross Bar is something that comes from us now however additionally to our youngsters and grandkids and their youngsters. It comes from our area.”
The Cross Bar had not been constantly public. The precise beginning of its name has actually been shed, however the land got in Texan documents as a personal cattle ranch in the 19th century, when it prevailed technique to call cattle ranches after livestock brand names. It was bought someplace around the millenium by the business person Lee Bivins and functioned as the structure for his livestock realm. By the 1920s he was commonly taken into consideration the biggest landowner in Texas and recognized to possess even more livestock than any person on the planet. Bivins offered the home, which had substantial quantities of oil and gas, and ultimately it wound up in the hands of Humble Oil and Refining Business.
Not long after, in 1931, the federal government got the land from Modest as a result of the exploration of large amounts of an additional useful source: helium, the very light and nonflammable gas that is a vital part in clinical and army innovations. The federal government, which had actually produced a nationwide helium book, positioned the Cross Bar under the Division of the Inside.
Potter Area at a Glance
For the following 6 years, the land was out-of-bounds to the general public as the federal government drew out the gas. In the mid-nineties the BLM took control of and was later on guided to market the helium book to exclusive market. Yet the land stayed under BLM guidance, and the firm started considering the future of the home. In 2011, when Escobar occupied his message, there still had not been a clear instructions for the land. (Escobar claimed the helium wells at the Cross Bar were connected and deserted by 2021.) The BLM briefly prepared to reestablish the black-footed and prairie canines, however Escobar established via an eco-friendly research study that there had not been adequate land to host lasting populaces.
” That’s when I transformed equipments and began discovering the leisure choice and ultimately fulfilled Lorie,” he claimed. Their initial conference really did not work out. 8 or 9 years ago Escobar remained in Amarillo offering his concepts for developing multi-purpose routes for treking, cycling, and horseback riding at an online forum; Van Ongevalle remained in the target market. At the end of his discussion, she stalked him and claimed, “Hi, I’m Lorie. 2 route areas require rerouting.” After that, she claimed, she left. “I had not been the kindest individual because minute.”
Van Ongevalle had some pertinent experience. In the 2010s she arranged volunteers– riders from the endurance-riding area– to aid construct routes in the locations bordering Lake Meredith. It was a labor of love; the team developed virtually thirty miles of riding routes, and Van Ongevalle found out a lot regarding trail-design concepts. Yet she had a befalling with brand-new monitoring at Meredith, and she and her volunteers quit working prior to the last 5 miles can be finished. “I really felt shed,” she claimed.
Van Ongevalle had actually appeared to Escobar’s discussion having actually currently examined the Cross Bar’s topography and saw that several of his tips would certainly have produced issues; sections of 2 of his routes went straight up the steepest components of inclines, which would certainly create them to wear down promptly as an outcome of rain overflow. After that, simply weeks later on, to Van Ongevalle’s
excitement, he appeared at a trail-building program she was going to in New Mexico. Both promptly came to be pals.
That bond in between a government worker and an involved person has actually brought the vision of an openly easily accessible Cross Bar near truth. Van Ongevalle once more arranged volunteers to construct routes, which brought about her being employed by Close friends of Cross Bar in 2022. “The majority of individuals that appear and aid are older ladies,” she claimed. The volunteers make use of hand devices such as a Pulaski (a double axe and adze) and a McLeod (generally a mix of a rake and a hoe) to hack and ravel dust and rock.
” We divided right into groups of cyberpunks and finishers,” Van Ongevalle informed me. The cyberpunks make use of Pulaskis to collect, cut, and press away rocks, origins, and crushed rock. The finishers adhere to behind with their McLeods, scuffing the dust right into a smoother surface area.
Escobar supplements his associates’ initiatives by manning a Vermeer CTX100 Mini Skid Steer, a diesel-powered plowing equipment. “We typically adhere to behind him with our devices,” Van Ongevalle discussed. On an excellent day, Escobar and a little team of volunteers can reduce approximately a quarter mile of route. Thus far, they have actually developed sixteen miles, with as numerous as twenty-four still to go. “What thrills me one of the most is these girls function their butts off, and among them is eighty years of ages,” Escobar claimed. “I’m not trading them for anything.”
While Van Ongevalle concentrates on reducing routes, Escobar is developing prepare for camping area websites, car park, and a facility with info regarding helium and the home’s background. Yet none of that would certainly matter all that a lot without a public roadway right into the Cross Bar. Structure one needs 2 points: an easement from a landowner and cash.
The previous was contributed by Lee Bivins’s offspring, that possess and handle the LX Cattle ranch, which surrounds the Cross Bar’s southeastern side. The easement has to do with 4 miles long and attaches united state 287 to the southeastern
corner of the Cross Bar through an additional back road. Transforming it right into an appropriate roadway would certainly set you back an approximated $13 million. Close Friends of Cross Bar has actually elevated $10 million via a mix of government gives and government appropriations safeguarded by Congressman Ronny Jackson. It’s tough to obtain benefactors to aid comprise the $3 million deficiency. “We do not drop under pets, kids, or food– the most significant subjects that bring in financing,” claimed Andrew Hall, an Amarillo realty designer, benefactor, and outdoors fanatic that has actually monetarily sustained Close friends of Cross Bar via his family members’s structure.
” We’re wishing that points exercise where the roadway can be finished right when the inner roadways, routes, and camping areas await usage,” Escobar claimed. If the financing void is shut, roadway building and construction can start in 2028.
Once it becomes easily accessible, the Cross Bar would certainly be a twenty-five-minute drive from midtown Amarillo. And the area would certainly profit not simply from a practical location to play; even more easily accessible public land would certainly alter the face of a city where vacationers going through typically do not remain. “It has to do with obtaining individuals to remain an additional evening,” Hall informed me.
That can bring some much-needed financial task to Potter Area, which is noticeably poorer than bordering Randall Area to the south. Potter’s average house earnings of $51,300 has to do with 60 percent of Randall’s. “Some individuals in Potter Area are having a hard time,” claimed John Coffee, a Potter Area commissioner whose district consists of the Cross Bar. A financial effect research study performed by Texas A&M scientists approximated that the Cross Bar can ultimately develop greater than one hundred work and bring in $13.4 million a year of costs by site visitors getting here from outdoors Potter and Randall regions.
Though the Cross Bar comes from the general public, the majority of people would not pick to bushwhack like I carried out in order to appreciate it. And yet I really felt lucky to have actually checked out prior to the initial groups turn up and it comes to be a little much less wild. As we jumped right into the pick-up to start my excursion, Escobar gestured at the quite little field where we were standing. “This will certainly be a car park,” he claimed. A really little rate to pay, numerous would certainly say, for even more individuals to be able to see this land.
This post initially showed up in the November 2025 concern of Texas Month-to-month with the heading “Land, Land Almost everywhere, Yet Not a Route to Take.” Subscribe today.
