The Best Things to Do in Amarillo, Texas

This is the reason people stop in Amarillo rather than drive through it. The canyon runs about 800 feet deep across roughly 30,000 acres of park, and the scenic drive takes you from the rim down to the canyon floor in a few minutes. Trails are open to hikers, mountain bikers and horses.

The six mile round trip Lighthouse Trail to the park's signature rock formation is the hike everyone wants. It closes from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. whenever the National Weather Service issues a heat advisory, and the canyon floor runs 5 to 10 degrees hotter than the rim, so plan around that rather than around it.

Installed in 1974 and funded by Amarillo eccentric Stanley Marsh 3, the row of ten Cadillacs spans model years 1949 through 1963. The whole point is that you paint them. Bring a can of spray paint, add your layer, and it will be covered by somebody else inside a day.

The site sits on private land that the owners keep open to the public at no charge. It was quietly moved two miles west in 1997 when Amarillo's sprawl caught up with the original location.

This is the most intact stretch of Route 66 architecture in Amarillo, a former streetcar suburb that the highway ran straight through in 1926. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and it is still a working commercial strip rather than a museum piece.

Anchors include the 6th Street Antique Mall, Whispering Pine Antiques and the Nat, a 1920s swimming pool that became a big band dance hall and is now an antiques market. The GoldenLight Cafe has been serving on this block since 1946 and bills itself as the oldest continuously operating restaurant on Route 66.

The American Quarter Horse Association is headquartered in Amarillo, and its museum is the serious cultural stop in town. It covers the breed's ranching and racing history and inducts horses and horsemen into a hall of fame, which is more interesting than it sounds if you have any interest in how the cattle business actually worked.

It is a manageable size. Most visitors give it 60 to 90 minutes, and it sits five minutes off the interstate with its own parking lot.

The show has run in the canyon since 1966 and played its 60th season in 2026 from June 11 to August 1, with 8 p.m. curtains Tuesday through Sunday. The setting does most of the work, a natural amphitheater with the cliff face as the backdrop and riders coming in along the rim.

You can add a chuckwagon barbecue dinner beforehand under a covered patio, or a backstage tour. If you are in Amarillo between June and early August, this is the single best evening available to you.

This is where Amarillo families go on a bad weather day, and it is the best indoor option in town if you are traveling with kids. Exhibits are hands on rather than behind glass, and the site includes a dome theater.

It sits in a cluster with the Amarillo Botanical Gardens on the same block, so you can pair the two without moving your car.

Six hundred acres of native grassland, small canyons and bluff overlooks, five minutes from a Walmart. The trail network runs to about nine miles and includes paved ADA accessible sections, a dig pit and a bird blind.

If the canyon is a half day commitment you do not have time for, this is the version of the same landscape you can do in an hour before dinner.

It moved to the interstate in 1970 and has been the most photographed building in Amarillo ever since. The 72 ounce challenge is the draw, a steak plus shrimp cocktail, salad, baked potato and roll inside 60 minutes, eaten on a stage with a clock running. Roughly 10,000 people have finished it out of about 90,000 attempts.

You do not have to attempt anything. There is a brewery on site, a gift shop, a motel with a Cadillac shaped pool, and a regular menu. Go for the spectacle and order something reasonable.

Attached to a working RV dealership, this is a genuinely odd and genuinely good free museum. The collection runs from 1930s trailers through 1970s motorhomes, all restored, including the 1948 Flxible Clipper bus used in the film RV.

Sources disagree on the opening hours, which appear to have narrowed in recent years, so treat the posted times as approximate and phone first.

Founded in 1955 and reopened in late April 2026 after roughly a month of renovations under a new nonprofit operator, the zoo covers about 15 acres in Thompson Memorial Park. It leans toward animals of the Great Plains and North America rather than trying to be a big city collection.

It is small enough to walk in 90 minutes, parking is free, and admission stayed flat through the reopening.