What was destroyed in September 1874 was a specific form of life, a specific economy, a specific relationship between people and horses and buffalo and the open Plains.

The people survived.

The canyon holds the memory of what happened here — in its silence, in its geology, in the marker at the end of Park Road 5, and in the histories that the nations whose ancestors fled across its floor continue to tell.

The cavalry suffered no casualties.

Four Indian dead were counted.

And 1,000 horses were shot.

That is the story of why Palo Duro Canyon matters.