Caprock Canyons State Park and Trailway, State park in Briscoe County, United States.
Caprock Canyons State Park and Trailway is a 17,500-acre state park along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado in Briscoe County, Texas. Its badlands hold honey mesquite, redberry juniper, yucca and cacti, with taller grasses and cottonwoods in the canyons. A 64.25-mile rail trailway crosses the park through Floyd, Briscoe and Hall Counties.
Human presence in the area dates back over 10,000 years to the Folsom tradition, followed by the Plainview culture and Archaic-period groups. Plains Apache lived here when Coronado arrived in the 1500s; the Comanche displaced them in the 1700s. Charles Goodnight began ranching in 1876 and with John G. Adair established the JA Ranch in 1882. Texas bought about 14,100 acres in 1975, and the park opened in 1982.
The bison roaming the park descend from animals Charles Goodnight saved at his wife's urging from the 19th-century slaughter; the herd was donated to the State of Texas in 1997. In 2011 the Texas Legislature named it the official State Bison Herd of Texas, and the animals now range freely across the park.
The 64.25-mile trailway runs between Estelline and South Plains, passing through Floyd, Briscoe and Hall Counties; the Clarity Railroad Tunnel lies along it. The park is in West Texas with a semiarid climate: January minima average 19 °F and July maxima 91 °F, with about 20.4 inches of rain a year. Camping is available at RV, tent and equestrian sites, and many trails are multi-use for hiking, mountain biking or horseback riding.
The Clarity Railroad Tunnel on the trailway is 528 ft (161 m) long and shelters a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats from late April through mid-October. Summer ranger-led bus tours go to the tunnel at dusk to watch the bats emerge.
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