Llano Estacado (4)

Rising above these red-earth lowlands to the south is the Llano Estacado or Stockaded Plain, a high plateau covering some 32,000 square miles in eastern New Mexico and adjacent areas in Texas. Topographically, it is one of the flattest areas in the United States, and rises to 450 feet above the surrounding Great Plains. Sediments shed from the rising mountains to the west formed the Llano Estacado, later to by bypassed by streams such as the Pecos and Canadian Rivers and left standing in bold relief with a relatively level, uneroded caprock surface. Croplands on the plain are irrigated using “fossil” water pumped from underground aquifers.