CASAS AMARILLAS. The name Casas Amarillas, Spanish for "yellow houses," was given by early explorers to a geological formation near Levelland in Hockley County that at a distance looked like yellow houses. Spanish missionaries visited Indians at the site in the seventeenth century. The formation, long considered a landmark on the South Plains, became the location of a trading post for buffalo hunters, freighters, and cattlemen. It was acquired by the XIT Ranch syndicate in 1882 and by George Washington Littlefield in 1901. A marker was placed at the site of Casas Amarillas by the Texas Centennial Commission in 1936.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harold Schoen, comp., Monuments Erected by the State of Texas to Commemorate the Centenary of Texas Independence (Austin: Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations, 1938).