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The inhabitants of the Panhandle , the southernmost portion of the Great Plains, call it "the real Texas"; it certainly fulfills the fantasy of what Texas should look like. When Coronado's expedition passed this way in the sixteenth century, the gold-seekers drove stakes into the ground across the vast and unchanging vista, despairing of otherwise finding their way home. Hence the name Llano Estacado , or staked plains, which still persists today. Once the buffalo - and the natives - had been driven away from what was seen as perilous and uninhabitable frontier country, the Panhandle began, around the 1870s, to yield great natural resources . Helium - especially in Amarillo - and oil, as well as agriculture , have brought wealth to the region, home to some of the world's largest ranches . The Panhandle may hold few actual tourist attractions, but what appeals are its rural charm, its quirkiness and its distance from the eastern cities. Music has particular significance in an area famous for songwriters such as Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Mac Davis, Joe Ely and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, although most musicians relocate to cosmopolitan centers like Austin. Above all, the exceptionally hospitable people of the Panhandle make it special, along with the starkly romantic landscape, strewn with tumbleweeds and mesquite trees.
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