Yellow House Draw is an ephemeral watercourse about 236 km (147 mi) long, heading about 20 km (12 mi) southwest of Melrose, New Mexico, and tending generally east-southeastward across the Llano Estacado to the city of Lubbock, where it joins Blackwater Draw to form Yellow House Canyon at the head of the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos River.

[1] It stretches across Roosevelt, Curry, Bailey, Cochran, Hockley, and Lubbock Counties of eastern New Mexico and West Texas, and drains an area of 9,790 km2 (3,780 sq mi).

Today, very little standing water remains and no actual lake is there, but the site has become an important archeological landmark.

The Canyon Lakes offer scenic views and recreational opportunities, and they also function as an essential part of Lubbock's wastewater disposal system.

[7] To minimize contamination of the Ogallala Aquifer, groundwater is then pumped from beneath the Land Application Site to Canyon Lakes, where the water flows from one lake to the next and eventually into Yellow House Canyon, forming the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos River.