Where Texas meets New Mexico\'s domain,
There stretches out a vast and treeless plain;
The Llano Estacado, high and wide,
A kingdom of the grass on every side.
Its ancient rocks were shaped by wind and rain,
While distant mountains fed its stony plain;
The Caprock rose in rugged, towering walls,
Where earth descends and into canyons falls.
In fifteen forty-one, Coronado came,
And left the Spaniards\' mark upon its name;
A boundless sea of prairie met his eyes,
With little sign of earth or distant skies.
The buffalo once roamed in countless herds,
And prairie winds disturbed the nesting birds;
The Comanche rode the open country free,
Beneath the vast and ever-changing sky.
Then cattle ranches claimed the western range,
And homesteads brought a new and lasting change;
The cowboys rode where longhorn cattle fed,
While windmills drew the water from the bed.
The Ogallala lies below the sod,
A precious store bestowed upon the land;
Its waters made the fields and harvests grow,
Yet dwindling wells reveal a hidden woe.
Today the cotton blooms in summer heat,
And grain fields stretch beneath the farmer\'s feet;
The oil derricks rise against the blue,
While ancient prairie grasses still push through.
O Llano, land of distances untold,
Of summer storms and winter sunsets gold;
Your history lives in every grassy acre,
A vast and storied realm of earth and sky