Many people in northern Texas and southwestern Oklahoma still believe that the Marlow brothers - George, Charles, Alf, and Epp - were thieves and killers. In 1888 they were charged with rustling and murder, tried by public opinion, and betrayed by law officials responsible for their safety. After Alf and Epp were killed in a brutal ambush, Charles and George accomplished a grisly escape, only to be caught and sent to Dallas for trial where, for their own protection, they were deputized as marshals. Their story, as lurid and adventuresome as any western saga, significantly documents late...

During the winter of 1896, two men, Charles MacFarland, Texas cattleman, and Charles C. French, public relations director for the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company, met on a sidewalk in North Fort Worth. In the course of their conversation they agreed that a stock show would do a great deal to stimulate the livestock industry and to draw attention to Fort Worth's place in it.
On a crisp winter morning in 1993, two men met on a sidewalk in West Fort Worth. Both were professional stockmen. They spoke entirely different languages, one Portuguese, the other a highly inflected brand of English....

In 1936 as Texas prepared to celebrate its centennial--100 years after the Battle of San Jacinto--Dallas was chosen as the site of the official exhibition. Plans were under way for a modest Frontier Days Celebration in Fort Worth--until "Star-Telegram" publisher and civic booster Amon G. Carter stepped in. Carter considered the naming of Dallas as the official site a gross miscarriage of justice and was determined to get even by mounting a show that would directly rival the official event--and pull tourist dollars into Fort Worth. To put his celebration together Carter hired flamboyant...

Temple Emanu-El, the first Jewish congregation in North Texas, has played a historic role in the growth of Dallas. Founded in 1875, the temple evolved from the Hebrew Benevolent Association, organized in 1872 by eleven men who established a cemetery and held the first Jewish services. This initial gathering of pioneer Jews occurred just two weeks before the arrival of the first train--the indispensable catalyst for Dallas' development into a bustling commercial center.
Arguably, Temple Emanu-El owes its ascendancy to the auspicious designation of Dallas as a railroad crossroads. Jews,...