Our History
In 1879, the state of Texas entered negotiations with the Great Northern Railroad Company on the sale of 4,768 sections of land in the panhandle. The deal was done, filed and recorded at the Randall County Courthouse on April 27, 1883. The deed reads as: 3,051,520 acres of land sold for $4,628,400.00. (that’s a whopping $1.52 per acre)
The acreage that makes up our Village changed hands a couple of times over the next 34 years, when it finally ended up as part of the Madsen Ranch. The Palisades Corporation purchased the land from James and Florence Madsen on October 27, 1926. The sale was for 640 acres of land that surrounded 1.45 miles of the Prairie Dog Town fork of the Red River. The sales price was $25,000 ($39.06 per acre).
Not long after the sale, the plat map for a subdivision “The Village of Palisades” was filed (July 28, 1927) and the Village of Palisades was officially born.
The Palisades Corporation had a grand design for our humble community. The original plat map shows a nine hole golf course in the southeast corner of the Village, also a nine hole “Pitch & Putt”, complete with practice putting greens located where the fire station and community building are now, four tennis courts on the south side of Nassau Trail, and a shopping center and parking lot on Downtown Drive.
In June of 1962, the dam was completed on Lake Stockton (now Lake Tanglewood), and by late 1963 the lake had filled, and the water had backed all the way up into the Village of Palisades.
Our canyon is an upstream section of Palo Duro Canyon formed through at least four geologic ages (perhaps ninety million years) by water erosion of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River.
This canyon has furnished shelter for Indians, the expedition of Francisco Vasques de Coronado in 1541, and certainly for the cattle of Charles Goodnight who founded the JA Ranch. It now gives shelter to us. How blessed we are to be part of such a rich history.
The acreage that makes up our Village changed hands a couple of times over the next 34 years, when it finally ended up as part of the Madsen Ranch. The Palisades Corporation purchased the land from James and Florence Madsen on October 27, 1926. The sale was for 640 acres of land that surrounded 1.45 miles of the Prairie Dog Town fork of the Red River. The sales price was $25,000 ($39.06 per acre).
Not long after the sale, the plat map for a subdivision “The Village of Palisades” was filed (July 28, 1927) and the Village of Palisades was officially born.
The Palisades Corporation had a grand design for our humble community. The original plat map shows a nine hole golf course in the southeast corner of the Village, also a nine hole “Pitch & Putt”, complete with practice putting greens located where the fire station and community building are now, four tennis courts on the south side of Nassau Trail, and a shopping center and parking lot on Downtown Drive.
In June of 1962, the dam was completed on Lake Stockton (now Lake Tanglewood), and by late 1963 the lake had filled, and the water had backed all the way up into the Village of Palisades.
Our canyon is an upstream section of Palo Duro Canyon formed through at least four geologic ages (perhaps ninety million years) by water erosion of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River.
This canyon has furnished shelter for Indians, the expedition of Francisco Vasques de Coronado in 1541, and certainly for the cattle of Charles Goodnight who founded the JA Ranch. It now gives shelter to us. How blessed we are to be part of such a rich history.