Fourteen sights in Lubbock and on the road — music, museums, wine, canyons, bison and Route 66.
The South Plains reward curiosity. In Lubbock itself, allow two days for the music heritage of the Buddy Holly Center and the Depot District, the museums around Texas Tech and a wine tasting or two. Then take to the road: canyons, bison, cranes and Route 66 are all within two hours.
We have grouped the sights below by type. Each page has opening information, how to get there from Lubbock, insider tips and a short FAQ.
Lubbock city sights The rock ’n’ roll pioneer’s hometown museum, his famous glasses and the West Texas Walk of Fame.
Lubbock’s tribute to its most famous son, Buddy Holly, in a restored 1920s railway depot — with his trademark glasses, Crickets memorabilia, a fine-art gallery and the Buddy Holly statue and West Texas Walk of Fame across the street.
Lubbock city sights Spanish Renaissance towers, a huge public-art collection and Red Raider game days.
Lubbock’s great institution: a large campus of Spanish-style architecture with a celebrated public-art collection, the Will Rogers statue, the Carol of Lights in December and Red Raider football at Jones AT&T Stadium.
Lubbock city sights Where most of Texas’ wine grapes grow — with tasting rooms in and around Lubbock.
The Texas High Plains AVA around Lubbock grows the large majority of the state’s wine grapes, thanks to high elevation, hot days and cool nights. Visit pioneering wineries south of town and walkable tasting rooms in the Depot District.
Lubbock city sights Lubbock’s nightlife, live-music and tasting-room quarter around the old railway depot.
The historic warehouse district along Buddy Holly Avenue and 19th Street, home to the Buddy Holly Center, the restored 1938 Cactus Theater, wine tasting rooms, breweries, restaurants and bars — the place to hear live West Texas music.
Museums & heritage Fifty-plus historic ranch buildings brought together on the Texas Tech campus.
A superb open-air museum of ranch life: more than 50 authentic structures — dugouts, adobe, bunkhouses, windmills and a railway depot — moved from across Texas and restored, plus galleries of saddles, art and cattle-country history.
Museums & heritage Around 12,000 years of human history in a quiet draw on the edge of town.
A National Historic Landmark and working archaeological preserve in Yellow House Draw, where digs have revealed a nearly continuous record of people on the Southern Plains back to Clovis times — with trails, an interpretive centre and summer excavations.
Museums & heritage The world’s great collection of the windmills that settled the plains.
A museum and outdoor park on the east side of Lubbock showing well over a hundred historic water-pumping windmills — the machines that made ranching and farming on the waterless Llano Estacado possible — alongside a modern wind turbine.
Museums & heritage Art, dinosaurs, anthropology and a planetarium — free to enter.
A large and wide-ranging university museum with art galleries, natural-history and paleontology halls, anthropology collections from the Southwest and a planetarium, next door to the National Ranching Heritage Center.
Museums & heritage The little-known story of America’s WWII glider pilots, trained in Lubbock.
Housed in the old Lubbock airport terminal, this museum tells the story of the US Army glider program of World War II — many of its pilots trained at South Plains Army Air Field — with a restored Waco CG-4A glider as its centrepiece.
Road trips & nature The second-largest canyon in the United States, two hours north of Lubbock.
A vast red-rock canyon cut into the edge of the Llano Estacado south of Amarillo — around 120 miles long and up to about 800 feet deep — with the Lighthouse hoodoo, horseback rides, camping and the summer TEXAS outdoor musical.
Road trips & nature Red canyons, a free-roaming Texas State Bison Herd and a 64-mile rail trail.
Wild, uncrowded canyon country on the eastern Caprock escarpment near Quitaque, home to the official Texas State Bison Herd — descendants of Charles Goodnight’s herd — plus hiking, Lake Theo and the Caprock Canyons Trailway.
Road trips & nature Spray-painted Cadillacs, Route 66 neon and a 72-ounce steak challenge.
Amarillo, two hours north of Lubbock, is Route 66 country: ten graffiti-covered Cadillacs nose-down in a field at Cadillac Ranch, the historic Sixth Street district, the Big Texan Steak Ranch and the Route 66 midpoint at Adrian.
Road trips & nature Texas’ oldest national wildlife refuge and a winter spectacle of sandhill cranes.
Saline playa lakes and shortgrass prairie northwest of Lubbock, established in 1935. From late autumn to February, tens of thousands of sandhill cranes can gather here in a good year, lifting off the lakes at dawn.
Road trips & nature Small-town day trips: a cereal king’s planned town and a restored Harvey House.
Two easy half-day trips southeast of Lubbock: Post, founded in 1907 by cereal magnate C. W. Post at the foot of the Caprock, and Slaton, a railroad town with a beautifully restored 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House.
With four days you can see Lubbock’s highlights, spend a day at Palo Duro Canyon with a night in Canyon or Amarillo, and a day at Caprock Canyons. In winter, swap one day for the sandhill cranes at Muleshoe. Our travel guide has day-by-day itineraries, and our hotel picks cover every base.
Pair Lubbock and Palo Duro Canyon with the best-rated experiences on the road in: cowboy history in Fort Worth, Route 66 west to New Mexico, or the canyons of Big Bend. Book in a couple of taps.
