Artistic affection for the highly hued beauty of this wild landscape of canyons and big skies began with the Comanches and their haunting rock art, followed by Anglo artists, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Frank Reaugh, L. O. Griffith, and Josephine Oliver, who came early into this Texas frontier territory.

Reaugh followed the cowboys and their Longhorns up the Brazos, first in 1883 and again with Griffith in 1901. O'Keeffe came to the Palo Duro canyon area at the Red River headwaters first in 1913 as a young teacher in Amarillo, beginning her long, prolific artistic romance with the American Southwest

Focusing on shapes, textures, colors and light, O'Keeffe painted the Texas plains and canyons of Palo Duro and wrote about these Texas Canyonlands: “It is absurd how much I love this country.”