Traces of Texas Is on a Quest to Preserve the State’s Past Through Photography
“Somebody should photograph all this vanishing Texas before it’s forever lost.” What began as a chronicle of one man’s love affair with a state became one of the biggest online communities devoted to the history, people, and culture of the Lone Star State. Read More »
Keeping the Groove With Texas Bass Players, From Conjunto to Country and Polka to Punk
Bass is the heartbeat of Texas music, from the hard-rocking roadhouse blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan to the conjunto-revival sounds of Los Texmaniacs. Whenever you go out dancing to live music, the underlying tones of the upright bass fiddle or electric bass guitar drive your every move across the floor—and that’s true whether you notice the person playing the instrument or not. Read More »
Red Steagall, Country Hit-Maker and Cowboy Poet, Talks Texas Spirit and Overcoming Polio
Driving the backroads northwest of Fort Worth, you’d never know that one of the luminaries of Texas country and western music lives just around the bend. Down a gravel road, a pickup marked with Red Steagall’s “RS” brand signals that Steagall is around today. Inside his office, framed records and photos signed by the likes of Ronald Reagan line the wall, hinting at Steagall’s influential career. Read More »
My Hometown: Rooted In the Railroad and Blues Music, Navasota Chugs With Cultural Vibrancy
Navasota has long stoked history buffs’ imaginations. It was, after all, the area where historians believe French explorer Sieur de La Salle was murdered in 1687. Then, as a 19th-century railhead on the Navasota River, the town bustled with both commerce and unsavory characters with little regard for the law. Read More »
An LBJ Enthusiast Retraces the Route of Her School Field Trips in Search of History—and Herself
Every May, after the bluebonnets had faded from the hills around Marble Falls, my classmates and I would pack sack lunches, board a diesel-powered school bus, and hit the road. The annual field trip was the last major educational event before the school year ended. Or was it? Read More »
Eh-Ha-Ha! Downtown Galveston Concert to Remember Influential Gulf Coast Cajun Fiddler
The Galveston Historical Foundation on Saturday will celebrate Harry Choates music with a free concert at Hendley Green with a performance by Gulf Coast musicians Kevin Anthony & G-Town, who’ve recently recorded an album of Choates’ songs. Read More »
A Masterpiece in the Heartland: New Book Tells the Story of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum
In 'Of the First Class: A History of the Kimbell Art Museum,' author Tim Madigan chronicles the beginnings of one of the nation's great art museums in what was then an unexpected place, Fort Worth Read More »
In Defense of J. Frank Dobie—the Father of Texas Literature
On a soft autumn evening last year, I stood in a South Texas ghost town, ready to climb up onto the bed of a ... Read More »
New Management in Place for 7 of Texas’ Most Historic Sites
This week, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department transferred seven sites, including the San Jacinto Monument, Washington-on-the-Brazos, and the Port Isabel Lighthouse, to the Texas Historical Commission. Aimed at efficiency, the change is not expected to result in changes for visitors. Read More »
El Paso Has a Fascinating Connection With a Small Himalayan Country
In 1914, National Geographic published an article about the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, a remote Buddhist country tucked between India and China. El Paso resident Kathleen Worrell, who was married to the dean of the college that became the University of Texas at El Paso, was intrigued by the photographs of Bhutanese fortresses and monasteries. She also noted a resemblance between the rugged Himalayas and the Franklin Mountains that soar over El Paso. Three years later, as the college’s new campus was being built in the Franklin foothills, Worrell saw an opportunity. She asked her husband: Why not construct those buildings in the Bhutanese style? Read More »
It’s a Brave New World at These Forward-Thinking Libraries
A leader of the renaissance is the new, $125 million Austin Public Library’s Central Library, completed in 2017. This LEED Platinum-certified building—meaning it’s “green”—is outfitted with a bicycle corral for 200, a “tech petting zoo” for visitors to interact with new technology like 3-D printers, an art gallery, a native-plants rooftop garden, and a farm-to-table café. In 2018, Time magazine included the library on its list of the World’s Greatest Places. Austin’s showpiece is representative of a golden age of library innovation across the state. Here are three more libraries boasting smart, beautiful changes. Read More »
Six Years After Moving to Mexico, Lauded Chicana Writer Sandra Cisneros Looks Back on Her 29 Years in San Antonio
Last spring, the writer Sandra Cisneros returned to San Antonio to meet with her accountant, address some computer issues, and have her mother’s fur hat professionally cleaned. Cisneros has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, since 2013, but she resided in San Antonio for most of the 29 years prior, living in the King William District, where she stirred controversy for painting her Victorian cottage periwinkle. Her visit coincided with Fiesta San Antonio, and Cisneros appeared on the float “March To Your Own Drummer”—a fitting theme. “I think I can quote Fidel Castro here,” she says. ‘“History will absolve me.’” Read More »