Ogallala Life

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Our purpose is to promote the self-determination of communities sustained by the High Plains Aquifer System. We were founded three years ago.

Our mission is to educate & empower the citizens of said communities to rehydrate the landscape. Most of our work to date has been to start research & demonstration projects, to show landscape rehydration works in landscapes that are relevant to our bioregion, and culturally. Our first pilot is on private rangeland N of Amarillo, along the N side of the Canadian River Valley on a half dozen ephemeral drainages. We installed 110 instances of "Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams" aka NIDS, to spread, slow & sink stormwater & recover riparian perennial vegetation. This year, we partnered with the Don Harrington Discovery Center, to do landscape rehydration works along West Amarillo Creek that passes through Wildcat Bluff Discovery Center. We built 80 "leaky weirs" with the same intended function, slow, spread & sink stormwater. We planted trees, bare-root seedlings & cuttings, and installed bunds & terraces along the degraded slope below the windmill. See a map showing the location of these structures on our website, projects page, then go to Wildcat and check it out for yourselves :)

We anxiously await rain. We are making plans for more projects, and further work at Wildcat, and monitoring our NIDS. Moreover, we are active participants and thought leaders in the ReFi space, aka regenerative (decentralized) finance, and see DeSci, & DePIN (decentralized, distributed science & public infrastructure, respectively). This intersection of technology and traditional land recovery practices is fascinating, fruitful and transformative. Support our work, watch & you'll see!

08/06/2026

We've a team retreat in SE CO, there's three of us from Ogallala Life and 6 others Ogallala Commons in leadership, workforce development & local foodshed 💪

We showed up early to explore the remote & wild country where the broken canyonlands upstream of the Cimarron meet the high plains proper. The old communities - Springfield, Campo, Walsh etc - grew because of the high plains aquifer. They've declined as has the water table, and suffer the general rural failures associated with federal policies of the past half century.

Carrizo Creek and its many tributaries are beautiful and life sustaining, and also depleted & degraded. Our guide, CEO John, talked of the Carrizo Creek of his childhood - it used to flow(!) and deep enough to jump off these giant rocks.

At first glance the water looks polluted w/ excessive nutrients. We got closer and it looks to be covered with duckweed or similar, cold & clear beneath. Then it started raining and quickly turned opaque. The channel is incised. The system is flashy. It's a good candidate for rehydration efforts, to recover healthy watershed & wetlands function. So too pretty much every drainage from Midland to Denver 🤷

Check out those petroglyphs! So cool, and sophisticated - some of the rock art references the sky and used for calendar purposes, to know when to plant or harvest ...

Colorado launched Rocky Mountain Bighorn repopulation efforts decades ago and we looked for the SE CO herd, but no luck. Good to know they're here.
There were also bison, wolf & grizzly, but not today ;)

;)

07/03/2026

The panhandle saw some rain this June, a bit spotty & not enough - the mapmakers say we're in Severe to Extreme drought.

That doesn't mean there's no water cycling. We'd anticipated some violent runoff at Rock Creek in Borger's Johnson Park. And sure enough...

We've a mixed bag of results. The work we did with rock is going pretty much as expected. Pretty wild how much sediments flux during just a few events, the erosion that forms these landscapes happens episodically.

The natural infrastructure built with brush & deadwood fared worse. Some of our work is doing just fine. The brush that stayed where we put it has been weighed down by the sediments & gravels deposited by faster flows, and is retaining significant volumes of water. But more than half of the brush we installed has washed down. Some caught in a pretty sizeable tangle that's forcing some widening & meander.

How much "good" did we do? It's too early to say. We've learned a lot, and did some good, and kept costs down. And, we built a relationship with this beautiful spot - a rare babbling brook, here on the southern high plains...

Saw fish, frogs, turtles, snakes & lizards. Lots of cool vegetation including a soapberry motte grown extra tall.

Theres some old infrastructure exposed all around the park - big old pipelines, smaller new poly pipe, some pump jacks, some old road water crossings and the wastewater facility. The carbon black plant looms on the W horizon. Some in better shape than other.

If Palo Duro Canyon is hopping and you want get away from the crowds, or if you're near Borger and need some nature, Johnson Park is highly recommended. Go check it out 🤠

06/28/2026

Wildcat has received just under 1" of rain in the last 7 days, a little over 2" the past 30. The storm around 1am Thursday got the creek flowing, a lot more than I'd had expected. The rain stopped round 2am. The creek maintained mild, regulated flow for 12-18 hours. There's significant ponding >48 hours later. 🤠

Classically, little ran in from the SW, the main Helium Road branch. It all came from the West branch, of W Amarillo Creek, despite being smaller. Exacerbated perhaps by the Stinky Fire footprint.

Before we started working in 2024, the channel was deeply incised, and scraped bare. You could walk up & down the channel barefoot, unimpeded for miles. The system was flashy, water rose & fell quickly.

We built ~100 leaky dams along ~1.5 miles of channel. The system of cascading check dams acts as natural infrastructure, and functions to slow this stormwater down, spread it out over time & space, and soak & sink into the ground.

This would regulate flow (& climate), mitigate flood & fire, retain significant volumes of freshwater, sediments & nutrients, recharge the aquifer and help sustain life.

See for yourselves!
The first group of pics are of Thursday afternoon, ~12 hours after the rain. The levels are higher and water is moving, but slowly. The next group show conditions Friday, ~36 hours later. No more moving water, but significant ponding.

The high water mark is visible in many of these pics, discolored by the fine sediment. Whoa!

Some years, more water flows across Wildcat Bluff than falls onto its square mile. If we capture & retain that water, we can increase the effective precipitation.

Let's go!

06/08/2026

The rains yesterday got the creek flowing again - significant volumes ran onto , much sunk into the ground, and very little left as run off.

We're catching rain 💪

05/26/2026

We've built many hundreds of leaky dams here on the Southern High Plains - and just getting started 🤠

The why is simple. In drylands like ours, water is life, hope and wealth. When we rehydrate landscapes, we invest in a hopeful & resilient future.

When we don't, we don't. Managed depletion isn't good enough.

"Findings consistently show increased water residence time, enhanced soil-moisture storage, expanded riparian vegetation, extended flow duration, and shifts toward greater latent-heat flux—producing localized cooling and strengthened ecohydrological feedbacks.

USGS Laura Norman et al
https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2026.1796710

(Not in re our work specifically, but work like ours in similar contexts ;))

05/08/2026

Much of the Southern High Plains hasn't seen measurable precipitation since last Fall. It was a warm winter and we had some very hot days in March. It's dry, much different than the mild & wet weather of 2025.

But life goes on. Get outdoors, cover some ground and you'll find something ;)

The yucca bloomed en masse in '25, so only a few are in flower this Spring.
Spotted our first prickly pear flower this morning. The mesquite bloom is prolific. Will we see a bumper crop of beans, like 2024?

How many of these can you identify!?

05/04/2026

This weekend was the 2d Grasslands Network Gathering, w/ folks from New Mexico, Iowa, Texas, OK, Montana, Kansas, Wyoming & more.

It was awesome & inspiring!

On Friday, some of us toured our landscape rehydration work , while others visited the Playa Classroom. Then a fantastic dinner at St. Peters, huge thanks & kudos to the awesome gardeners 🤤

We heard from Dr. David O'Hara & Rev. Dr. Christina O'Hara, and Michael Champlin, about their work growing perennials for material, medicine and food on church lands.

Then the AI panel, about responses to Fermi & the DJT Advanced Energy & Intelligence Campus.
moderated, asking questions to , .major, & Sage - some impressive, impassioned & hard working community leaders 🙏

We spent Saturday .
Will & Mary Emeny started things off, talking about their experiences with rangeland, regenerative ag & natural science education in the Panhandle.

Then the most awesome Dr. Tammy Counts & Reggie Moten, associated with the Kansas Black Farmers Association & historic gardens in Nicodemus KS.

Maria Yanez, Regional coordinator at OC, helped wind things up. She described the expansive work Ogallala Commons' does across these Great Plains - the workforce development (~800 interns!?), local food shed & stewarding natural resources. Will talked more on landscape rehydration projects, and a great Q&A that got a bit sad - yes, the aquifer continues to decline - but ended on a more hopeful note.

The event finished with some discussion on practical, next steps.

Huge kudos to Bishop Cathleen for spearheading this whole thing! And Bishop Scott & Father Jared for supporting this gathering in Amarillo.

🤠

04/23/2026

Water is life!

W Amarillo Creek ran thru this country - live water
Those early accounts are hard to imagine - talk of quicksand!?

The watershed here was perennial thru the first half of the 20th century. Its base flow was due the natural discharge of groundwater from the high plains aquifer system. It stopped when the water table dropped.

The Helium plant upstream saw intensive industrial activity in the 1930s-50s (ish). The facility relief on pumped groundwater for cooling, ultimately released into the surface upstream. This input masked the general decline of the water table due pumping, primarily irrigators.

The last of the swimming & fishing happened ~1960. Without surface water, the ranch installed the first well in a central location - where the windmill is today, just S of the namesake bluff. Prior to that, cattle, prolly sheep then countless bison survived on water from the creek.

This land is impoverished.

Thankfully, freshwater falls from the sky!!! Not often but sometimes, and occasional torrents.

When the rains come - and come they will - we're ready to catch it.

The Rain We Keep ;)

04/14/2026

Big day in Borger - Landscape Rehydration Field Day 🤠

Hydrogeologist Ashley presented on surface & groundwater interactions in the region.
& talked about our work here along Rock Creek at Johnson Park in Borger, and on our prior projects like 👍
Nicole talked about Borger' priorities and natural assets - trees, canyons, watersheds, springs, streams ...
Great lunch from Roma!

And then, the field visit. We walked two different stretches and it was awesome. There's not been as much runoff as we'd anticipated - it's not rained here much more than Amarillo - but the growing season is going strong and there's lots to see.

Thanks to the attendees for being awesome & engaged, and to Maria & Berlin for making the logistics happen 🙏

04/10/2026

One of the hardest workers is Jacob aka Jude. Last winter, he spent a day shoveling 5 big holes, rectangular infiltration pits along the ranch road .

We added some compost & mulch and planted a variety of native seedlings & cuttings.

When it rains, water runs down the road and is diverted into the pits. They fill up pretty quick and hold the moisture for a long time. We know because we watered these only once since the rains of last summer.

And they're doing well! 🤠

Tremendous volumes of stormwater run off of developed surfaces, causing erosion and incision problems downstream. We should harvest road runoff as a matter of course, by default, and we hope to see this kind of thing adopted across the southern high plains 😎

Address

2301 N Soncy Rd
Amarillo, TX
79124

Telephone

+18062212730

Website

https://ogallala.life/

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