Q&A with The Iron Orchard Screenwriter Gerry de Leon
Set and filmed in West Texas, the oil boom period piece starts screening Feb. 22. West Texas wildcatters have long been mythologized on screen in classic films like Giant and There Will Be Blood. This month, The Iron Orchard follows in those footsteps with its dramatic tale of greed, lust, and hunger during the oil boom of the 1930s through ’50s. The Iron Orchard is based off a novel of the same name written by Tom Pendleton (a nom de plume of Fort Worth writer and oil producer Edmund Van Zandt). The book caused a stir when it was published in 1966 and has since become a beloved classic for many in the Texas oil industry—in fact, a group of oilmen subsidized the independent film, directed by Midland native Ty Roberts. Read More »
Texas Highways Managing Editor Among New Members of the Texas Institute of Letters
The Texas Institute of Letters has spent the past eight decades recognizing the state's literary achievements. Lone Star pride hit fever pitch in 1936. Amid statewide celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Texas Revolution, statues, monuments, and commemorative museums were going up everywhere from Huntsville to Alpine and Corpus Christi to Lubbock. Read More »
La Kiva Restaurant Helps Heal the Terlingua Community
On the banks of Terlingua Creek, a ramp leads down into La Kiva, one of the most famous bar/restaurants in the Big Bend area. In Hopi culture, a kiva is an underground chamber used for religious and political meetings. But this kiva is a meeting place for the dreamers, lost souls, river guides, and tourists who are drawn to the old mining town and surrounding desert. Read More »
A Q&A With Big Bend National Park’s New Superintendent Bob Krumenaker
Big Bend National Park got a new superintendent last fall with the arrival of Bob Krumenaker, a 36-year veteran of the National Park Service who spent the past 16 years as superintendent of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. A native of New York, Krumenaker has worked in 14 national parks, including two years in the early 1980s at Big Thicket National Preserve in East Texas. Krumenaker sat down with Texas Highways in November, seven weeks into the job. Read More »
A New Texan Finds Beauty and Solitude Amongst the Living and the Dead in Terlingua
I live 4,900 miles away from England, where I was born, on any day of the week. But on that day, home was getting farther away still. It’s not just the eight-hour drive with my family from Austin, where we now live, to Terlingua. It’s something else, something farther than the distance … everything is left behind en route. Read More »
My Hometown: Born of Turbulent Times, Mason Today Offers Hill Country Peace and Charm
When writer and historian Scott Zesch walks through the central square of Mason, everybody he meets has something to say, a question to ask, or a handshake to offer. You’re likely to be a familiar fellow around town when your great-great grandfather settled in the area from Germany in the mid-1850s, you went to Mason High School, and you’re known for throwing rollicking chili parties. First settled as a fort in 1851, Mason formed as a community of Old World settlers scratching out a new life in harsh Comanche country. Zesch brings this history to life in his award-winning book, The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, which chronicles the lives of nine kidnapped children, including his great-great-great uncle Adolph Korn. Here Zesch, who lives on his nearby family ranch with his wife, Amelia, muses on Mason’s past and present. Read More »
Fossils Tell a Story of Vanished Worlds in Big Bend National Park
The northbound road through Big Bend National Park winds between scab-colored volcanic hills and the baking white flats of the Chihuahuan Desert. During the day, little moves out here but the wind; the heat presses down heavy and hard on the rock shelves. The landscape feels frozen, dry, and dead. In a word, timeless. Read More »
An East Coaster Learns to Live in (And Love) the Wide-Open Space of West Texas
Seven years ago, I thought of Texas primarily as an obstacle, a mind-numbingly long stretch of highway between ... Read More »
Historian and Author Lonn Taylor on Growing up in the Philippines and Settling in the Big Bend
Now 78 years old, Taylor is an old-fashioned raconteur with a bushy mustache, Stetson Open Road hat, and an assortment of snappy bow ties. He’s also the author of more than half a dozen books and a historian who draws inspiration from his adopted home of the Big Bend. Read More »
Find Relics of Rural Justice in Guidebook to Texas’ Tiny Jails
Long before the tiny home craze, Texas was home to an abundance of tiny jails. A night in the slammer was ... Read More »
One Artist’s Mission to Make Rankin the Most Painted Town in Texas
Artist Matt Tumlinson has made it his mission to quite literally “paint the town” of Rankin, a West Texas community with a population of around 800. The once-barren walls of Rankin, which lies in Upton County an hour south of Midland, are now decorated with Tumlinson’s quirky murals that often portray a Texan sense of humor. One of his murals is of Willie Nelson painted in the style of Greek religious iconography. Another that’s “turned some heads,” as Tumlinson puts it, features two cowboys on horseback looking at a selfie stick. In another, John Wayne dressed a professor depicts his famous quote, “Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid,” as a graph on a chalkboard. Read More »
The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Faces Financial Struggles
The Texas Observer reports a sharp decline in visitors and slashed funding at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Read More »