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 »
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 »
Big Bend Fossils Reveal New Dinosaur Species
Recent research reveals that fossils found in Big Bend National Park 35 years ago belong to an entirely new species of duck-billed dinosaur. Read More »
My Hometown: A Weslaco Native on the Bicultural Beauty of His Rio Grande Valley Burg
A stroll through downtown Weslaco feels like a visit to a bygone era, when department stores and hardware shops in Spanish colonial buildings lined the streets. Founded in 1919, Weslaco grew into a farming hub, famous as the home of the ruby red grapefruit and 1015 onion. The same mild climate that attracted farmers makes Weslaco a hotspot today for winter Texans—typically retirees from cold climates—and birders, who come to see Rio Grande Valley specialties like the green jay. When the town slows down in the summer, locals refresh with icy raspas and beach trips to nearby South Padre Island. Read More »
A Refurbished Baker Hotel Signals a New Beginning in Mineral Wells
The venerable but long-vacated Baker Hotel, which opened in Mineral Wells in 1929 and once hosted personalities such as Judy Garland, Clark Gable, and president Lyndon Johnson, is poised to surge back to life under a newly announced $65 million renovation slated for completion in 2022. Read More »
San Antonio’s Juneteenth Educates Future Generations
Texans are celebrating Juneteenth with events across the state this week, including today’s state government holiday. Read More »
Retrace the Life and Legacy of World-Champion Boxer Jack Johnson in Galveston
“Jack Johnson was a real person from a real place called Galveston,” Collins says while standing in his church clothes outside Old Central Cultural Center, formerly Central High School, the first black high school in Texas. In the park behind Old Central, located on Avenue M, a life-size bronze statue depicts Johnson in his prime: roughly 6 feet, 200 pounds, and ready to rumble. Read More »
The Texas Basket Company is a Century-Long Link to Jacksonville’s Tomato Capital Heritage
The Jacksonville manufacturer, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, has churned out millions of veneer baskets since it opened in 1919, surviving amid changing times from its home along the railroad that first brought this East Texas town to life. Read More »
In San Angelo, A Celebration Remembers the Mysterious ‘Lady in Blue,’ Who Evangelized to Jumanos
The young Franciscan nun in the cobalt-colored cloak was, quite literally, a vision in blue to the Jumano Indians of the Desert Southwest. Though she never left her convent 5,000 miles away in Spain, Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda mysteriously appeared before the indigenous people of what is now the San Angelo area, delivering an evangelistic message. They called her the “Lady in Blue.” Read More »
The Surrender of Santa Anna
In 1886, 50 years after the Battle of San Jacinto, Austin painter William Henry Huddle set out to interpret a critical scene from the conflict with his painting, The Surrender of Santa Anna. Huddle’s oil-on-canvas work, which has hung in the South Foyer of the Texas Capitol since 1891, depicts the morning after the April 21, 1836, clash as Texian fighters presented Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, dressed in the white pants of a private, to Texas Gen. Sam Houston, who is reclined with a battle wound to his leg. The decisive victory secured the rebels’ independence from Mexico, a turning point Texas honors annually on April 21, known as San Jacinto Day. Huddle’s painting includes more than 30 historical figures, among them scout Erastus “Deaf” Smith (seated on a log), Secretary of War Thomas Jefferson Rusk (to the rear left of Houston), and Col. Mirabeau B. Lamar (left of Rusk). Read More »
Jefferson’s ‘Diamond Bessie Murder Trial’ Plumbs 19th-Century Mystery
It was the O.J. Simpson trial of its day. Reporters descended on the northeast Texas town of Jefferson to chronicle the tragic tale of Diamond Bessie with black ink and purple prose. Nobody recognized the dashing young couple Annie Moore and Abe Rothschild when they checked into a local hotel in January 1877. But when Moore’s body was found in the woods two weeks later, a bullet in her head, the mystery of Moore, aka Diamond Bessie, catapulted Jefferson into the national spotlight. Read More »
Texas Highways Magazine Celebrates 45 Years of Traveling Texas
If there’s one thing Texans can agree on, it’s their love of wildflowers. A field of native blooms graced the second-ever cover of Texas Highways, and readers’ enthusiasm for the bluebonnet and its springtime companions hasn’t dampened since. Read More »
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