For a child growing up in the 1920s, El Paso seemed to be full of off-beat characters and warm personalities: from a diverse group of servicemen and their families stationed at Fort Bliss to tuberculosis patients attracted by the dry desert climate. Mary Rodge's father, a dye man in the cotton-mill industry, moved the family to El Paso in 1924 when he was offered a job there. Rodge's memoir begins with her family's hazardous road trip across the desert from Redlands, California, to Texas. In the following pages, she explores the lives of its citizens and narrates her experiences over the...
For a child growing up in the 1920s, El Paso seemed to be full of off-beat characters and warm personalities: from a diverse group of servicemen and t...
The Pecos River flows snake-like out of New Mexico and across West Texas before striking the Rio Grande. In frontier Texas, the Pecos was more moat than river, a deadly barrier of quicksand, treacherous currents, and impossibly steep banks. Only at its crossings - with such legendary names as Horsehead and Pontoon - could travelers hope to gain passage. Even if the river proved obliging, its Indian raiders and outlaws often did not. Its banks echoed with the sounds of the mythic Old West - the war cry of the Indian, the blast of the cowboy's six-shooter, the crack of the stage-driver's whip,...
The Pecos River flows snake-like out of New Mexico and across West Texas before striking the Rio Grande. In frontier Texas, the Pecos was more moat th...
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....
During the winter of 1896, two men, Charles MacFarland, Texas cattleman, and Charles C. French, public relations director for the Fort Worth Stock Yar...
True tales and tall ones come alive in "Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier." Patrick Dearen of San Angelo is the author of this definitive, thoroughly documented study of six West Texas folk stories. Included are the stories of: - Castle Gap, a break in a mesa some 12 miles east of the Pecos River, used by Comanches on the warpath, emigrants seeking California gold and cattlemen driving Longhorns up the Goodnight-Loving Trail; - Horsehead Crossing, the most infamous ford of the Old West, considered the graveyard of hopes by drovers and emigrants alike; - Juan Cordona Lake, the cast salt...
True tales and tall ones come alive in "Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier." Patrick Dearen of San Angelo is the author of this definitive, thorough...
In 1848 the York and Gilmore families stopped their covered wagons north of the Trinity River near present-day Fort Worth. A century and a half later, the settlement they founded is North Fort Worth, with a colorful history centered around livestock, tourism, and family life. After the Civil War, life often revolved around massive cattle drives passing through North Fort Worth. Later, stockyards were built and the meat packing industry boomed, attracting thousands of people from around the world - Austria, Greece, Russia, Mexico, and Poland. North Fort Worth is now incorporated within the...
In 1848 the York and Gilmore families stopped their covered wagons north of the Trinity River near present-day Fort Worth. A century and a half later,...
In 1863 Sam Houston, physically and emotionally scarred by a lifetime of battles, tried the soothing mineral water baths at Sour Lake, TX. Almost a century later, Dallas billionaire H.L. Hunt heard of miraculous cures at Indian Hot Springs, on the Mexican border, and bought the fading resort. His improvements and the famed springs which could restore all kinds of powers attracted such celebrities as boxing champ Gene Tunney and Texas congressman Olin Teague."Crazy Water: The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas Health Resorts" documents the mineral water boom, taking readers from one end...
In 1863 Sam Houston, physically and emotionally scarred by a lifetime of battles, tried the soothing mineral water baths at Sour Lake, TX. Almost a...
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 Broadway...
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 exhibi...
Texas is a place where legends are made, die, and are revived. Fort Worth, Texas, claims its own legend - Hell's Half Acre - a wild 'n woolly accumulation of bordellos, cribs, dance houses, saloons, and gambling parlors. Tenderloin districts were a fact of life in every major town in the American West, but Hell's Half Acre - its myth and its reality - can be said to be a microcosm of them all. The most famous and infamous westerners visited the Acre: Timothy ("Longhair Jim") Courtright, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Mary Porter, Etta Place, along with...
Texas is a place where legends are made, die, and are revived. Fort Worth, Texas, claims its own legend - Hell's Half Acre - a wild 'n woolly accumula...
