Landmark Maps of Texas features important depictions of the Lone Star State and the Americas from 1513 to 1904. 100 maps in their old color grace its pages and many of these specimens are extraordinary and rare. This is not just a picture book designed to sit on a coffee table but rather a book to be read and referenced. Landmark Maps of Texas features the story behind the original map and its owner and how Frank Holcomb brought this treasure to Texas. Provenance takes center stage and there is an emphasis on items from 1830-1850 when Texas became a Republic and later joined the United States. Another section in this book takes readers on a chronological trek that shows how our understanding of the lay of the land evolved over time. This is more than geography. This is history and the geographical canvas that it is painted upon.

If you live in Texas, have been to Texas, or might come to Texas, Landmark Maps of Texas brings the finest assembly of Lone Star State charts to the reading public.

John R. Cook was an American original. He witnessed or participated in a string of important events that shaped the nation and sculpted the history of the West. Born in Ohio in 1844, Cook moved with his family to Kansas. He joined the Union Army at sixteen and fought along the Kansas-Missouri border, in Indian Territory, and in Arkansas. After the Civil War, he ventured out to establish a homestead and work cattle. Several hardships forced Cook to try his luck at various enterprises. He became a prospector in New Mexico, a buffalo hunter in Texas and Kansas, and an Indian fighter.

Santa Fe, Adobe Walls, Fort Elliot, and Rath City were among Cook's Great Plains haunts. His accounts of the 1878 Hunters War against Comanche leader Black Horse and the battle of Yellow House Canyon near present-day Lubbock are rare glimpses into the last great effort of the Comanche people to maintain their way of life. He eventually found employment as a government scout and guide with the army.

In later years, Cook recorded his adventures in a modest volume, The Border and the Buffalo, first published in a small edition in 1907. Historians quickly recognized it as one of the most important first- hand accounts about buffalo hunting ever written. The organization of hunts, camp routines, and marketing of the buffalo hides are all described in detail.

Award-winning author and Texas historian James L. Haley provides a new foreword in this reprint edition of this classic of Texana.

A Texas history classic, available again . . .

Phil Collins received a birthday present that would change his life: a receipt for a saddle signed by an Alamo defender. From that point forward, the drummer began building his impressive Alamo and Texas Revolution collection. I didn't know this stuff was out there, that you could own it, the rock-n-roll legend said. It had never occurred to me. Before long, he had amassed nearly 500 items! These priceless artifacts are now housed at the Alamo's brand new Ralston Family Collections Center behind the iconic Alamo Church and the venerable Gift Shop amid the tranquil setting of the Alamo gardens. This 24,000 square foot facility showcases not only Phil's great collection immortalized is this his book, but are joined by his remarkable narrated presentation of the siege and battle of the Alamo built around the masterpiece scale replica of the compound first created by artist Mark Lemon for the State House Press book The Illustrated Alamo: A Photographic Journey. The Alamo and Beyond, now in a third printing in partnership with The Texas Center at Schreiner University, is you way of taking Phil's collection home with you.

When Phil Collins was a kid growing up in a London suburb, he would often watch an amazing show on his family television. There, in black and white, was Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. As he matured, Collins not only acted out the exploits of his new hero, but he often refought the Battle of the Alamo with his toy soldiers. Even though music came to dominate his life, it was this love of history--and Davy Crockett and the Alamo in particular--that was always near by. On one musical tour, Collins encountered his first David Crockett autograph--for sale at a store called the Gallery of History. I didn't know this stuff was out there, that you could own it, the rock-n-roll legend said. It had never occurred to him. Later, he received a birthday present that would change his life: a receipt for a saddle signed by an Alamo defender. From that point forward, the drummer began building his impressive Alamo and Texas Revolution collection.

Here, for the first time in history, are the artifacts, relics, and documents that compose the Phil Collins collection, available in a beautifully designed color book shot-through with stunning photography and crisply rendered illustrations. Collins's prose takes the reader through the joys of being a collector as he lovingly describes what each piece in this impressive assemblage means to him. Photographer Ben Powell of Austin brought these items to vivid relief, and artist Gary Zaboly's masterful pen-and-ink drawings breath life into the items. Essays by Texas historians Bruce Winders, Don Frazier, and Stephen Hardin provide the historical background to the collection and help make this into a work of art that also serves handily as a serious research tool.

Around 1848 Wilhelm Friedrich, a young German immigrant to Texas, completed three drawings that capture unique details of life on the frontier. Friedrich's sketches feature Comanches, Germans, a captive girl, a wagon train, the landscape and wildlife of the Texas Hill Country, and dynamic scenes of cultural contact. Friedrich is the only artist known to have produced contemporaneous images of a Comanche captive while still in captivity. The authors use their expertise in Comanche culture, German immigration, art, and Hill Country history to explore the many layers of meaning in Friedrich's drawings. Who was Wilhelm Friedrich? How did he come to Texas? What information does he pack into his drawing? How can we understand his work--as art, as data about Comanche life and customs, and as a record of German values and priorities in the New World? Who is the captive girl? And why is her portrayal important today?

This new study revolves around the Tonkawa tribe in the history of the Lone Star State and the greater Southwest. The chronological account allows readers to understand its triumphs and struggles over the course of a century or more, and places the story in a larger historical narrative of shifting alliances, cultural encounters and economic opportunity. From a coalition with the Lipan Apaches to the incorporation of Tonkawa scouts in the U.S. Army during the late nineteenth century, the author tells the story of these often overlooked people.

By highlighting the role of the Tonkawas, Dr. McGowen provides a fresh appreciation of their influence in frontier history and renders their ultimate fate all the more heartbreaking.

This book made possible in part by a grant from Summerfield G. Roberts Foundation.

Texas a whole other country-a slogan that promotes tourism as much within the Lone Star State as elsewhere-is familiar to native Texans and those adopted sons and daughters who got here just as quickly as they could. Texas is as varied as East Texas timberland, hundreds of miles of seashore, prairies of the Central and High Plains, and the dry desert of far West Texas. When traveling abroad and asked, Where are you from? residents of forty-nine of the United States usually respond, the USA. Nearly every citizen of the Lone Star State will answer Texas! The world encourages such chauvinism. Mass media celebrates and exploits Texas and Texans in television and motion pictures about the Alamo, Texas Rangers, the oil industry, and athletics, to name only a few genre. Texans' pride in their distinctiveness increases when their state is paraded-or satired-and they consciously pass it on to succeeding generations. But what does it mean to be a Texan? How did Texas come to be as it is? Texas: A Compact History provides answers to such questions about Texans and Texas. It tells the story of Texas history and provides thoughtful interpretations about the state's development, all with the general reader in mind-in a brief, easily read narrative. ARCHIE P. McDONALD is the author of numerous books dealing with various aspects of Texas history, including Back Then: Simple Pleasures and Everyday Heroes (State House Press, 2005)

Mandred Wood may have caught a glint off the Bowie knife that sank into his belly--but probably not. On the afternoon of November 11, 1837, he had exchanged harsh epithets with David James Jones, a hero of the Texas Revolution. When words failed, Jones closed the argument with his blade. Such affrays were common in Houston, the fledgling capital of the Republic of Texas. This one, however, was singular. Wood was a gentleman and Jones a member of a disruptive gang of vagrants that the upper crust denounced as the rowdy loafers. Jones went to jail; Wood went to his grave.

In the weeks that followed, the killing resounded throughout the squalid, verminous city that one resident described as the most miserable place in the world. Stephen L. Hardin's suspenseful and witty narrative reads like a contemporary page-turner, yet all is carefully documented history. He entwines the murder into the story of the sordid city like the strands of a hangman's rope.

It is an astonishing tale peopled by remarkable characters: the one-armed newspaper editor and political candidate who employs the crime to advance his sanctimonious agenda; the Kentucky lawyer who enjoys champagne breakfasts and collecting human skulls; the German immigrant who sees rats gnaw the finger off an infant lying in his cradle; the Alamo widow whose circumstances force her to practice the oldest profession; the sociopathic physician who slaughters an innocent man in a duel; the Methodist minister horrified by the drunken debaucheries of government officials; and the president himself--the Sword of San Jacinto-- who during a besotted bacchanal strips to his underwear.

Skillfully conceived and masterfully written, Texian Macabre: A Melancholy Tale of a Hanging in Early Houston will transport readers to a lost time and place.

The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas The Story of Dublin Dr Pepper The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas is the story of the Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co., a David-Goliath case study of the world's first Dr Pepper bottling plant, and the only one that has always used pure cane sugar in spite of compelling reasons to switch sweeteners. The book traces the story from the founder's birth through the contemporary struggles of a tiny independent, family-owned franchise against industry giants. Owners of the plant have been touched by every major social, economic, and political issue of the past 114 years, and many of those forces threatened the survival of the plant. The Dublin plant's 100th birthday in 1991 was a turning point because the national media created an identity so unique that it has taken on a life of its own. Thanks to the Travel Channel, Food Network, Texas Monthly, Southern Living, and others, the Dublin plant and museum attract tens of thousands of tourists every year, and Dublin Dr Pepper is consumed around the world through internet sales. The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas tells how a small plant ignored most of the cherished rules of production and marketing-and succeeded-in spite of not speeding up production, not expanding its franchise area, not cutting production costs, and not adapting to changing times.

When Americans settled Texas in the 1830s, they brought their booze with them and found some made by the locals when they got here! Before long, the Lone Star State had a thriving distillery business, more than a century ahead of modern craft distillers that are changing the face of the spirits industry today. This is a fascinating history filled all too frequently with floods, fires, explosions, and lots of bad luck. Had the development of Texas happened a little differently, the state might have well become a major whiskey producer intertwined with barbed wire, refrigeration, cattle, railways, oil, and cooperage all coming into play.
Texas distilling is older than both the American and Texan Republics, but the history of transforming grains into whiskey in Texas goes back to at least the early 1840s. No spirit is more associated with the state's frontier history than American whiskey. But even during its wildest days, there was a vocal prohibitionist element in Texas that was working to outlaw distilleries, and more importantly, close the saloons. Texas distillers also made liquor for the Confederate war effort, and operations in Tyler and near present day Denison played an often-overlooked role in supporting the troops in the field with medicinal whiskey. After the war, home-grown Texas whiskey found a market and seemed destined to takes its place among the great American spirits of its day.

In early 1861, most Missourians hoped they could remain neutral in the upcoming conflict between North and South. In fact, a popularly elected state convention voted in March of that year that no adequate cause existed to compel Missouri to leave the Union. Instead, Missourians saw themselves as ideologically centered between the radical notions of abolition and secession.

By summer 1861, however, the situation had deteriorated dramatically. Because of the actions of politicians and soldiers such as Missouri Gov. Claiborne Jackson and Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, Missourians found themselves forced to take sides.

In this updated edition, author Jeffrey Patrick tells the fascinating story of high-stakes military gambles, aggressive leadership, and lost opportunities. Campaign for Wilson's Creek is a tale of unique military units, untried but determined commanders, colorful volunteers, and professional soldiers. The first major campaign of the Civil War to take place west of the Mississippi River guaranteed that Missourians would be engaged in a long, cruel civil war within the larger, national struggle.

Best known as the Texas Ranger captain who tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde, Frank Hamer was designated by Walter Prescott Webb as one of the three most fearless men in Western history.

This reprint of the 1968 edition gives the complete details of the Barrow-Parker rampage and is the only authentic account of the events leading to their deaths.

With more than one hundred pages of illustrations, I'm Frank Hamer tells the amazing story of one of the greatest Texas Rangers of all time.

Lust for Glory: An Epic Story of Early Texasand the Sacrifice That Defined a Nation is a concise, reader- friendly depiction of the Heroic Age of Texas history. Employing short, episodic chapters, it explores the twenty-five years between 1821 and 1846.

Certainly one of the most eventful eras, it included Mexican independence, Anglo American settlement, the Come-and-Take-It fight, Battle of the Alamo, Goliad Massacre, victory at San Jacinto, and the decade of the Texas Republic that culminated in statehood. Extraordinary figures like Stephen F. Austin, William Barret Travis, Sam Houston, and his long-suffering wife, Margaret, come alive on the page.

Skillfully conceived and masterfully written, Lust for Glory flows with a style as passionate and exuberant as the place and the people it describes.

2019 Spur Finalist in the Western Writers of America Spur Award -Best Western Juvenile Nonfiction category.
2018 Winner of the Summerfield G. Roberts award for the best work on the Republic of Texas era.

The history of Texas is usually told in terms of its giants such as Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin. Here, instead, is a history of Texas told by one of its lesser giants, William Turner Sadler (1797-1884), whose biography becomes the framework for an exciting view of Texas History. Sadler, one of the leading pioneers of nineteenth-century Texas, participated in most of the major events of the period. He migrated to Texas from Georgia in 1835 to become a farmer. He soon found himself in command of a ranger company that built Fort Houston, served as a private in the battle of San Jacinto, was active in quelling the Cordova Rebellion, and became a leader in the campaign against Chief Bowles and the Cherokees. Eventually her served as a representative in both the Republic Congress and the state legislature. During the Civil War, at the age of sixty-six, Sadler served in Terrell's Texas Cavalry. Stephen L. Moore, a sixth generation Texan, graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, where he studied journalism and advertising. He has been an accounting manager for a Houston-based firm which serves the retail advertising industry. Moore's interest in military history and efforts in writing continue to combine as a part-time hobby. He previously combined with William J. Shinneman and Robert W. Gruebel to write The Buzzard Brigade: Torpedo Squadron Ten at War (Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company). Steve, his wife Cindy, and their two daughters currently make their home in the Dallas area.

The Thurber coal district sprang to life in the late 1880s in northern Erath County, Texas, some seventy miles west of Fort Worth.

The mines were opened by the Texas & Pacific Coal Company to fuel the locomotives of its railway, whose tracks crossed the state from Marshall to El Paso. The company also built the town of Thurber to service the mines. It then imported workers from distant points, eventually including some twenty nationalities, whose old country ways contrasted sharply with neighboring farm life.

John Spratt grew to manhood in Mingus, just three miles north of Thurber during the 1920s. His chronicle of the Thurber district is not only a nostalgic trip back in time but also a case study of the impact of technological change on one part of modern America.

In a remote corner of West Texas in 1942, the dreaded western diamondback rattlesnake was awarded the unique distinction of having a mighty airfield named in its honor. Although the installation originally bore the official title of Pyote Army Airfield, the massive quantity of serpents encountered during the construction of the base quickly earned it the nickname of The Rattlesnake Bomber Base. For the thousands of military men and women who served on the airfield and the additional thousands of civilians who worked there, what is now only a ghostly ruin will always be a vibrant and undying monument to a brief time when men and snakes and giant silvery bombers all came together on the West Texas desert to share a legendary chapter of American history. This book tells the story of what happened when an American bomber base aptly named for a serpent arose, Brigadoon-like, from the sun-baked caliche desert located just east of the fabled Pecos River and just west of nearly every place else. Although the huge airfield was eventually to sprawl over nearly three thousand acres of Texas hardscrabble, its important and colorful history should by no means be considered merely a regional wartime episode. What happened at Pyote, Texas, before, during, and after World War II represents instead a microcosm of what took place all across the North American continent. THOMAS E. ALEXANDER, a commissioner with the Texas Historical Commission, is the author of three other books on Texas military history, including The Wings of Change: The Army Air Force Experience in Texas During World War II, published by McWhiney Foundation Press in 2003. He lives in Kerrville.

In 1940, Abilene, Texas was just an overgrown country town of some 25,000 souls. World War II wrought a permanent change through the advent of a major army training camp housing 60,000 troops. Although the base closed at the end of the war, the city soon attracted an air force base that continued to leaven the community.Over the next seventy years, Abilene grew to be home to nearly 120,000 citizens. Population growth carried with it the need for geographic expansion, infrastructure upgrade, and economic diversification, but also unimaginable cultural change. While the retail operations of the city spread far beyond the bounds of the old business district, a historic preservation initiative changed the deteriorating downtown into a thriving and vibrant cultural center. Robert W. Sledge picks up the story of Abilene where Volume 1: The Future Great City left off and takes readers through the history of the burgeoning country town as it became a modern city. He details Abilene as the central presence of a wide region known as the Big County and places it distinctly in the modern era.

This book follows the route of Sam Houston's army from Gonzales to San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. The author visited every campsite or important location to see what is there now and to look for the footprints of the Texas Army. What is left over from Houston's time? What is there now? Using both primary and secondary sources, Dyer stitches together a historically accurate story of each site and illustrated it with his modern photos. Directions to each site are provided to encourage readers to visit. Many of these sites have no historical markers and have been forgotten or ignored. The goal of this work is to encourage people to explore some forgotten local history by visiting these sites as a great way to gain an appreciation for Texas History. An accompanying podcast will be made available to make it easy to listen to each description while visiting the sites.

The Texas Rangers are legendary, but just where does legend end and fact begin? Frederick Wilkins begins his new history of the Rangers, the first major Ranger history in many decades, by using the recently discovered and now much more accessible source materials to separate the facts from the fiction.
The Legend Begins is a masterful history of the Rangers from their earliest antecedents in the 1820s, as a defense force against Indian depredations, and continues with their fascinating history and accomplishments through the Texas Republic years up to statehood. The author discusses the changes in the philosophies and in the organization of the Rangers during these early years-changes made necessary as the times changed and as the needs of Texas changed. He describes, for example, the effects of new weapons such as the Colt repeaters on the tactics and abilities of the Ranger forces. This is not a revisionist history, but the author does use his source materials to make judgments based on his studies of the facts. He outlines his reasons for doubting whether the legendary battles of John Coffee Hays and the Rangers at Enchanted Rock and at Bandera Pass actually occurred, but he stresses that the reality of the Rangers' accomplishments is not diminished by his pointing out the doubtful status of these two legendary battles. The position of the early Rangers is secure enough to withstand carping about a few fights that may not have taken place. An updated history of the first Rangers is long overdue, and this volume will be welcomed by the many individuals and scholars fascinated by the Texas Rangers. The late FREDERICK WILKINS was born in Dallas, Texas, majored in history at Southern Methodist University, and spent twenty-five years with the U.S. Army's information program. His primary interest was the Texas Rangers and he is the author of the highly acclaimed Defending the Borders: The Texas Rangers 1848-1861 and The Law Comes to Texas: The Texas Rangers 1870-1901 also by State House Press.

Coach Emory Bellard spent a remarkable 43-year football coaching career at both the high school and college level, where he helped teams win 12 district championships, five regional titles, and three state championships in 21 seasons as a high school coach in Texas. He also won five Southwest Conference crowns and two national titles during his collegiate career as an assistant coach at the University of Texas and as a head coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. Bellard collaborated with veteran sports writer Al Pickett, to tell the remarkable story of his career for the first time, including how he invented the wishbone offense when he was an assistant to Darrell Royal at Texas and why he resigned in the middle of the season as head coach at Texas A&M. Coach Emory Bellard spent a remarkable 43-year football coaching career at both the high school and college level, where he helped teams win 12 district championships, five regional titles and three state championships in 21 seasons as a high school coach in at Ingleside, Breckenridge, San Angelo and Spring Westfield in Texas. He also won five Southwest Conference crowns and two national titles during his collegiate career as an assistant coach at the University of Texas and head coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State. It was during his stint at Texas in 1968 that he invented the wishbone, an offense that revolutionized college football and produced seven national championships between 1969 and 1979. Al Pickett, a veteran Texas sports writer and sportscaster is the author of two other books, Team of the Century, which chronicles the seven years that Chuck Moser spent as the head football coach at Abilene High, and The Greatest Texas Sports Stories You've Never Heard. He is the host of Let's Talk Sports with Al Pickett, on ESPN 1560 Radio in Abilene, Texas, and the play-by-play voice for Abilene High and Hardin-Simmons University athletics. He is also a regular contributor to Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine and Red Raider Sports, magazine. He was named the recipient of the Outstanding Media Service Award from the American Southwest Conference in 2004. Pickett is chairman of the Big Country Sports Hall of Fame in Abilene and also serves on the selection committee for the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in Waco.

During the Civil War era, American society faced a number of challenges. Issues of morality and gender roles emerged as areas of contention concerning prostitution. Because of the social constraints on women during the period, females found themselves with limited skills and economic opportunities to provide for themselves.

Many sold sex as a means of survival. Soldiers left home for a cause, but many also sought adventure that led to prostitutes. Peer pressure and a sense of new found freedom brought many soldiers to seek out sex workers. Without an official policy regulating prostitution for either the Union army or the Confederate army, officers relied on their own beliefs or priorities in crafting orders relating to prostitution. The sex trade also came under the scrutiny of moral reformers and military doctors.

While prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases likely did not affect the duration of the war, the sex trade made a significant impact on the short term social status and long term health of thousands of people.