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...
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...
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 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,...
Walking backward in the wind was often a child's game. But in West Texas during the Great Depression, whether you were child or grownup, it was a method of moving ahead by backing through the legendary windstorms which swept the landscape, the same winds that covered beds, furniture and even food with a thick layer of dust. Helen Mangum Field's account opens and closes with the winds - one a nameless windstorm, the other the fabled Black Duster. But Walking Backward in the Wind is about more than the winds - they are only bookends, a blustery literary device. What occurs between the winds -...
Walking backward in the wind was often a child's game. But in West Texas during the Great Depression, whether you were child or grownup, it was a meth...
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...
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...
Galveston--a small, flat island off the Texas Gulf coast--has seen some of the state's most amazing history and fascinating people. First settled by the Karankawa Indians, long suspected of cannibalism, it was where the stranded Cabeza de Vaca came ashore in the 16th century. Pirate Jean Lafitte used it as a hideout in the early 1800s and both General Sam Houston and General James Long (with his wife, Jane, the "Mother of Texas") stayed on its shores. More modern notable names on the island include Robert Kleberg and the Moody, Sealy and Kempner families who dominated commerce and society...
Galveston--a small, flat island off the Texas Gulf coast--has seen some of the state's most amazing history and fascinating people. First settled by t...
