Barbara Brannon

Back in the salad days of auto travel, when Route 66 wasn’t even paved all the way from Amarillo, Texas, to Tucumcari, N.M., Zella’s Cafe, starting in 1928, dished up grub for hardy cross-country travelers at tiny Adrian, a shipping…

Boots scoot, skirts twirl, kids flit outdoors under the stars, a top pops on a cold beer beside a pickup — and inside, under a vaulted wooden roof, a fiddle twangs and an accordion pumps out a lively polka. The…

In the high Texas desert well south of I-10 cities, the land is flat except where ringed by mountain ranges, the atmosphere is dry, and the night sky is some of the darkest anywhere. Here, since 1883, mysterious points of…

Not so Long ago, you couldn’t buy gas at the only highway crossroads in all of Borden County (pop. 648) — much less Nashville-act merch or a thick, juicy steak or a cold Shiner. Well, it’s still true about that…

Since its founding in 1887 as a Panhandle cowtown and rail hub — perhaps along yellow-hued creek banks lined with bright yellow flowers — Amarillo has been labeled a city with bright prospects. When journalists and hometown boosters conspired in…