While this Web site focuses its special attention on the Brazos River and its table and canyonlands, the site also examines a larger area and larger story of which the Brazos is a part. This larger area encompasses the headwaters of the Red River and the Colorado River as well as the Brazos. This larger area of canyonlands and tablelands, about three hundred miles in length and fifty to one hundred miles in width, lies along the edge of the Texas High Plains (the Llano Estacado.) We call these the Texas Canyonlands.

At the north end of the Texas Canyonlands near Amarillo the Red River headwaters create the majestic Palo Duro and Tule Canyons. On to the south, the Brazos River headwaters wind out of Yellow House Draw near Lubbock and out of the Double Mountain Fork Canyon in Garza County, joining as the river enters the Brazos River Canyonlands in Kent County.

Further on south and west along the rim of the Texas High Plains the Colorado River headwaters begin at the “caprock” edges of Dawson and Borden counties, carving out Muchaque Valley and Gail Mountain.

This Texas Canyonlands area has recently been designated by the United States Geological Survey as two distinct Level IV ecoregion systems: Caprock Canyons, Badlands, and Breaks; and Flat Tablelands and Valleys. See the USGS map above for delineations and more information about both the Brazos RIver Canyonlands and Texas Canyonlands.

This Web site relies heavily upon Dan Flores' ideas and information in his books Caprock Canyonlands and Horizontal Yellow. Through his work Caprock Canyonlands, Flores influenced the recognition of this unique land and its formal designation by the USGS as distinct ecoregions. Flores once owned a place in Yellowhouse Canyon on the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos.