Quanah Parker led a band of Comanches over much of the Texas Plains area. Large metal arrows donated by Charles Smith of New Home now remind those who pass by them that this region was the last frontier. Caches will now lead you to many of those arrows.
The arrow--21 feet long and made of 4 inch dia pipe that is cemented into the ground--
is part of a Texas PlainsTraIl Region project to mark the 19th century presence of Quanah
Parker and his Comanche tribesmen in a 52-county area of the panhandle.Giant steel arrows are falling into place across the Texas Plains to mark the Quanah Parker Trail. Quanah will dedicate the first arrow at 10 a.m. Thursday in the State of Texas Park near the foot of Main Street. Hardeman County Museum and Historical Society accepted the 23-foot-tall stylized Comanche arrow sculpture from New Home artist-cotton farmer Charles Smith. He's crafted several other identical arrows for installation in other places throughout the 52-county Texas Plains Trail Region (TPTR), the largest of the state's 10 heritage tourism regions. The arrows carry markings in traditional Comanche colors of red, yellow and blue. Smith is donating the arrows to the Quanah Parker Trail project. They complement a website about the trail — www.quanahparkertrail.com — and magazine advertising. The QP Trail advertised earlier this year in True West Magazine; four ads will run in 2011 and 2012 in Wild West. The TPTR will distribute information about the QP Trail at the State Fair. Holle Humphries, a public art specialist, and Dolores Mosser, past TPTR president, noticed a Charles Smith arrow last year close to New Home, one Smith had fabricated for a friend to illustrate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous line "I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where." Both agreed that such arrows would make ideal Quanah Parker Trail Markers. Their suggestion set well with Smith and has proved popular with towns along the trail. "The trail honors landmarks, sites, events, and artifacts that link our region to the Native Americans who last roamed the Texas Panhandle Plains," Humphries said. "Descendants of Quanah Parker approved the idea of using the Giant Arrow to honor the memory of their ancestor in this way. The Giant Arrows will create a physical marker to provide an incentive for travelers, tourists, scholars, educators, and students to find and discover."she said "Most significantly, the Giant Arrows will provide a physical reminder of the now-vanished nomadic Native Americans who once roamed free in the vast area of the Texas Plains Trail region. As the last stronghold of the free Comanche, the Giant Arrows will serve to remind all that our region is unique for being the last frontier