Amarillo tourist information

In April 1887, J. T. Berry established a site for a town after he chose a well-watered section along the way of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, which had begun building across the Texas Panhandle. Berry and Colorado City, Texas merchants wanted to make their new town site the region's main trading center. On August 30, 1887, Berry's town site won the county seat election and was established in Potter County. Availability of the railroad and freight service after the county seat election made the town a fast growing cattle marketing center.

The settlement originally was called Oneida, it would later change its name to Amarillo. Amarillo's name probably derives from the nearby Amarillo Lake and Amarillo Creek, named in turn for the yellow soil along their banks and shores (Amarillo is the Spanish word for the color yellow) or the yellow wildflowers that were plentiful during the spring and summer. Despite having a Spanish origin name, the City of Amarillo is pronounced in English as Am-ah-rillow not Ah-mah-ree-yoh. The name was originally given the Spanish pronunciation, and early residents pronounced it that way. However within a year, it was called Am-ah-rillow. Charles F. Rudolph, editor of the Tascosa Pioneer, predicted the pronunciation change after blaming Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad employees for ignoring the word's Spanish pronunciation. Most of the town's first houses were painted yellow in tribute of the name change.

On June 19, 1888, Henry B. Sanborn, who is given credit as the "Father of Amarillo," and his business partner Joseph F. Glidden began buying land to the east to move Amarillo after arguing that Berry's site was on low ground and would flood during rainstorms. Sanborn also offered to trade lots in the new location to businesses in the original city’s site and help the expense of moving buildings. His incentives gradually won over people, who moved their businesses to Polk Street in the new commercial district. It rained heavily and almost flooded Berry’s part of the town in 1889 and prompted more people to move to Sanborn's location. Eventually it would lead to another county seat election made Sanborn's town the new county seat in 1893.

By the late 1890s, Amarillo had emerged as one of the world's busiest cattle shipping points, and its population grew significantly. The city became an elevator, milling, and feed-manufacturing center after an increasing production of wheat and small grains during the early 1900s. Discovery of gas in 1918 and oil three years later brought oil and gas companies to the Amarillo area. The United States government bought the Cliffside Gas Field with high helium content in 1927 and the Federal Bureau of Mines began operating the Amarillo Helium Plant two years later. The plant would be the sole producer of commercial helium in the world for a number of years. The U.S. National Helium Reserve is stored in the Bush Dome Reservoir at the Cliffside facility.

Following the lead of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad established services to and from Amarillo. Each of these three carriers maintained substantial freight and passenger depots and repair facilities in the city through most of the 20th century and were major employers within the community.

During the 1930s, the city was hit by the Dust Bowl and entered into an economic depression. The U.S. Routes 60, 87, 287, and 66 merged at Amarillo, making it a major tourist stop with numerous motels, restaurants, and curio shops. World War II led the establishment of Amarillo Army Air Field in east Amarillo and the nearby Pantex Army Ordnance Plant, which produced bombs and ammunition. After the end of the war, both of the facilities were closed. The Pantex Plant was reopened in 1950 and produced nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. The following year, the army air base was reactivated as Amarillo Air Force Base and expanded to accommodate a Strategic Air Command wing. The arrival of servicemen and their families ended the city's depression. Between 1950 and 1960, Amarillo's population grew from 74,443 to 137,969. However, the closure of the Amarillo Air Force Base on December 31, 1968, contributed to a decrease in population to 127,010 by 1970. In the 1970s, ASARCO, Iowa Beef Processors, and Owens-Corning built plants at Amarillo. The following decade, Amarillo's city limits encompassed 60 square miles in Potter and Randall counties. The intrastate interstate highway I-27 connecting Lubbock to Amarillo was built mostly during the 1980s.

Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport is located in Amarillo, and was named after the Amarillo native Rick Husband, who died aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. A portion of the old Amarillo Air Force Base was converted to civilian use and became part of the airport. It is served by Southwest Airlines, Continental Express, Great Lakes Aviation, and American Eagle, with non stop service to Dallas (Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport), Houston (George Bush Intercontinental Airport), Albuquerque, Clovis, Denver, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

Local transit services in the city have been available since 1925 and have been provided through the City of Amarillo's Amarillo City Transit (ACT) department since 1966; prior to that time the system was privately owned. ACT operates bus services that include fixed route transit and demand response paratransit which are designed for people with disabilities. The ACT transports approximately 350,000 passengers per year on the fixed route and 30,000 paratransit passengers, but it is a declining ridership. ACT has no plans to scale back any of their transit routes or services.

Amarillo has no passenger rail service but remains an important part of the rail freight system. The BNSF Railway complex in Amarillo continues to serve a heavy daily traffic load, approximately 100-110 trains per day. The Union Pacific Railroad also sends substantial shipments to or through Amarillo. In addition to intermodal and general goods, a big portion of rail shipments involve grains and coal.

The streets in Amarillo's downtown area conform to a grid pattern. The city's original street layout was set up by William H. Bush, beginning at the west end of the town moving to the east. Bush named the north to south streets for past United States presidents, in chronological order except for John Quincy Adams because the surname was taken with the second president, John Adams. (The last president so honored was Grover Cleveland; though the city has expanded eastward the pattern was not continued.)

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In 1910, the Amarillo voters approved to pay for street paving and the materials used to pave the streets were bricks. As of 2003, the city still has 16.2 mi (26.1 km) of brick streets in some parts of the downtown area. The city spent $200,000 in 2002 to restore one block of brick street on Ninth Avenue between Polk and Tyler streets.

Less than one mile of intrastate interstate highway I-27 is located in Potter County. The highway terminates at the city's main west-east highway I-40 near the Potter-Randall County line. The roadway continues northward into downtown Amarillo via U.S. 60, 87, and 287, a series of four one-way streets. North of downtown the highway becomes U.S. 87 and continues northward to Dumas, Texas.

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