1. Rick Husband was a graduate of Amarillo High School before he went on to join the ranks of NASA in 1995. Husband tragically lost his life while aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, and Amarillo named its airport after their beloved hometown hero.
2. The Rick Husband Airport has the third largest runway in the world—and is designated as an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.
3. Many people believe that you can see the curvature of the earth against the Amarillo horizon at sunrise and sunset, due to the wide open spaces of the Great Plains.
4. Amarillo is home to the Big Texan Steak Ranch which is world famous for serving a 72 ounce steak. Anyone who can finish the steak in less than one hour gets their dinner for free.
5. Since 1960, nearly 30,000 people have attempted the Big Texan’s 72 ounce steak challenge. In that time, only 4,800 people have succeeded. That’s only a 16 percent success rate!
6. The famous 72 ounce steak was featured on the shows Man vs. Food with Adam Richman and No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. Richman successfully completed the challenge, while Bourdain declined to try. Party pooper.
7. The oldest person to eat the steak was a 69 year old grandmother, while the youngest was an 11 year old boy.
8. Competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut broke the record for the shortest time in 2008 when he finished the steak in 8 minutes and 52 seconds. But Chestnut was dethroned in May 2014 when 125-pound Molly Schuyler blew everyone away by eating the steak in 4 minutes and 58 seconds and then went for seconds, completing her second steak in a total of 14 minutes and 57 seconds for both.
9. But the real winner of the 72 ounce steak challenge goes to a 500 pound Siberian Tiger who chowed down the steak in 90 seconds.
10. Amarillo is known as the Yellow Rose of Texas. Amarillo is Spanish for “yellow.” The city was named after the yellow sub-soil and the yellow blooms on the region’s Yucca plants.
11. In 1922, the first radio concert ever broadcast was played by the Amarillo station WDAG, which was one of the first licensed stations in the country.
12. The hit film "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" starring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery was filmed in Amarillo.
13. Amarillo girl Lacey Brown was the 12th place finisher in season 9 of American Idol. Her father is the pastor at Victory Church and she played violin while growing up in Amarillo.
14. Amarillo became the temporary home to Oprah Winfrey back in 1998 during the trial in which she was unsuccessfully sued by the cattle industry for her claims that American Beef was the cause of Mad Cow Disease.
15. During the lawsuit she relocated her show to the Amarillo Little Theatre right here in Amarillo.
16. Go swimming in a pool shaped like the state of Texas at the hotel next door to the Big Texan Steakhouse. Swimmers are advised to wait an hour after attempting the 72 ounce steak. The cinder-block construction of the Big Texan Motel is designed to resemble a main street in an old west town and features Texas themed-décor.
17. Carolyn Jones, who you might know better as Morticia Addams in the 1960s television series The Addams Family, was born in Amarillo in 1930.
18. Amarillo native Brandon Slay won the Olympic Gold Medal in wrestling at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.
19. The film Waking Up In Reno starring Billy Bob Thornton and Patrick Swayze filmed scenes here in Amarillo.
20. The film shows Billy Bob Thornton's character taking on the 72 ounce steak dinner challenge at the Big Texan.
21. Wonderland Park received the 2009 Publisher's Pick Award from Amusement Today magazine. Originally known as Kiddie Land, the park opened in 1951 with three children’s rides and a ticket booth made from a large box. As the park grew, the owners changed the name to Wonderland, inspired by the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland.
22. NFL linebacker for the Miami Dophins, Zach Thomas, was drafted in the 5th round of the Draft in 1996, signing a 3-year, $577,000 contract. He resigned with the Dolphins in 1999 for $22.5 million and then extended his contract for another give years in 2003 for $33.75 million. He was selected to the Pro Bowl eight times and recorded over 1,700 tackles.
23. Amarillo has been the focus of many different songs like, Amarillo By Morning by Paul Fraser and Terry Stafford, (Get Your Kicks) on Route 66, and Brownsville Girl by Bob Dylan. Rob Zombie wrote Two Lane Blacktop about the city, as is “Is This The Way To Amarillo?” by Neil Sedaka.
24. On June 5, 2014, after a 14 year-long lapse, the Polk Street Cattle Drive once again herded dozens of Texas Longhorn cattle down the street by people on horseback, kicking off the celebration of Amarillo’s western heritage at the Coors Ranch Rodeo.
25. Country star John Rich was born in Amarillo on January 7, 1974.
26. Back in 1893, Amarillo’s population was listed as “between 500 and 600 humans and 50,000 head of cattle.”
27.One of the more unusual sculpture in Amarillo is again by the artist Stanley Marsh. Known as the Floating Mesa, he painted a backdrop to give the illusion that the top is floating in the air, which is very realistic looking when the sky behind it is the right side of blue.
28. Amarillo is also known as the Helium capital of the world because most of the world’s supply of the gas is found underground the city and the surrounding areas.
29. The Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument was built in 1968 in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of helium. It currently stands appropriately at the Don Herrington Discovery Center science museum.
30. The Time Columns Monument is a six-story high stainless steel structure which contains four time capsules. Each capsule is meant to be 25, 50, 100, and lastly 1,000 years after the structure was built in 1968. The first time capsule was opened in 1993 during a two-day celebration.
31. One of the items in the 1,000 year time capsule is the passbook to a bank account which was opened in 1968 with $10 deposit.
32. The Helium Centennial Time Columns also acts as a sundial, with its features oriented to the sun to tell the time.
33. Back in 1910, voters in the city approved to pay for street paving using bricks. As of 2003, Amarillo still has 16.2 miles of brick streets throughout parts of the downtown area. In 2002, the city spent $200,000 to restore one block of brick street on Ninth Avenue between Polk and Tyler streets.
34. Amarillo is home to Pantex, the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the country. It also serves as one of the city’s largest employers.
35. Amarillo has a long standing record of being America’s cattle shipping capital, mainly due to the high number of cattle ranches located in the region.
36. Visit Cadillac Ranch to see a line of ten junk Cadillac vehicles buried nose-down in a huge farm field in Amarillo. It was created in 1974 by artists Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm and has become a mecca for graffiti artists over the years.
37. Cadillac Ranch is on the property of local artist millionaire Stanley Marsh who acted as the patron of the project. Marsh is known for creating unique art throughout the city, including 200 street signs on display at various homes and businesses. Each sign has a different, offbeat slogan including “What is a village without village idiots?”, “Road Does Not End,” and a Marilyn Monroe sign aptly placed on Monroe Street.
38. Another one of Marsh’s unique art pieces is the Giant Phantom Soft Pool Table, but only a few have seen it. This 180 foot by 700 foot pool table sculpture has 42 inch plastic balls on top of it, but is hidden somewhere on his family-owned acreage and is only viewable by a private showing or by low-flying planes.
39. Each year Amarillo hosts the World’s Largest Calf Fry Cook-Off. For those who don’t know, “calf fries” are bull testicles.
40. In 1929 Amarillo was a stop on the route of the first continuous-scheduled air passenger and mail service from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
41. Noting just how big Texas can be with a variety of climates, on March 27, 1984, the south Texas town of Brownsville had a recorded temperature of 106 degrees, while the panhandle city of Amarillo received snow with a recorded temperature of 35 degrees.
42. Amarillo is home to the largest canyon within the state of Texas, Palo Duro Canyon, second only to the Grand Canyon. Which is how it’s earned its nickname as the “Grand Canyon of Texas.”
43. On average, the city's daily water production averages between 40–50 million US gallons.
44. Lake Meredith was Amarillo’s water source, located northeast of the city. In 2005, it contained at least 114 billion US gallons of water. But by 2011, the Texas drought’s effect on the lake was so devastating, that the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority voted to stop using it entirely.
45. Jack Sisemore’s RV Museum is home to a collection of 15 vintage trailers, campers, and mobile homes from the 1930s to the 1970s, including the bus from the Robin Williams film RV.
What’s your favorite fun fact about Amarillo? Tell us in the comments below!
