The Best Texas Wildflower Photos from 2019
Texas is awash in color after a wet fall and winter. These are some of our favorite photos readers have shared with us so far this year.
Photo: Clymer Meadow Preserve
With their characteristically droopy petals, Black Samson coneflowers seem ready to turn down for the night as the sun sets on the Clymer Meadow Preserve northwest of Greenville. The preserve protects remnants of the Blackland Prairie, a tallgrass prairie that once stretched from the Texas coast to Canada. Prairies and pastures in North Texas and the plains of the Panhandle provide native habitats for this perennial, which blooms April through July and can also be propagated in gardens.
4 Alternative Spring Break Trips
Say “spring break,” and most of us picture a tourist-packed beach, but there’s a world
of options away from the seashores. We’ve planned four under-the-radar trips for those
ready to seek out experiences beyond the norm … with or without kids in tow.
Photographers Capture Texas’ Spectacular Variety of Wildflowers in Every Region of the State
Awed by the spectacular variety of wildflowers throughout Texas, we sent four photographers on a springtime mission across the state. They combed seven distinct regions of Texas, from the shaded forests of the Piney Woods to the mountains and deserts of the Big Bend, from sandy coastal dunes to rolling hills and the vast plains of the Panhandle. The results are as magnificent and diverse as the lands that nurture our abundant blossoms.
Explore the Birthplace of Boogie Woogie Along US 59 in East Texas
The heavy left hand mimicked the rumble of steam locomotives on iron rails, while the right played melodic cross-rhythms that whistled up and down the tracks. A national craze during World War II, the hard-driving piano style known as boogie woogie set the stage for the musical revolution of rock ’n’ roll.
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How Beaumont Photographer Keith Carter Redefined the Artform
He’s one of the world’s great photographers, with a legendary sense for the mystery in the mundane. But right now he’s at home in Beaumont, and his longtime assistant, Cathy Spence, is calling for help from a side door.
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Water Weed-Devouring Weevils Helping Clear up Caddo Lake
Anglers and paddlers, rejoice: Caddo Lake is back.
Once largely overrun by giant salvinia, a highly invasive aquatic fern, the lake has benefited from a combination of freezing weather last winter and the release of more than 200,000 salvinia-munching weevils—the same kind that keep salvinia in check in the noxious weed’s native Brazil, the Marshall News Messenger reports.
Michael Martin Murphey Saddles Up for Cowboy Christmas Tour
Michael Martin Murphey’s singing rings with the sincerity and authenticity that many find lacking in pop country these days. Nowhere is that more apparent than during Murphey’s annual Cowboy Christmas tour, a series of holiday shows throughout the Southwest that feature a mix of traditional Christmas songs, a few Murphey classics, and cowboy poetry and storytelling.
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These 5 Hotels Will Transport You Back to Texas’ Railroading Days
There was a time when going home for the holidays meant taking the train. Whether boarding a steam locomotive or the electric interurban, passengers who could afford a ticket enjoyed unheard-of advantages in speed and comfort over horse-drawn coaches and the earliest automobiles.
Photo: A Male Cardinal Adds a Splash of Color to a Cold Day
Scarlet possumhaw berries and the bright plumage of the male northern cardinal add a splash of warmth to an otherwise cold winter day. While possumhaw is found in Central and East Texas—sprouting berries in fall and winter—northern cardinals can be spotted year-round through most of Texas. Like this iconic winter bird, other songbirds, gamebirds, opossums, and raccoons all dine on the possumhaw’s conspicuous berries.
How Oprah Helped This Smoked Turkey Company Become Famous
Sam Greenberg, the third-generation owner of Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, can pinpoint the day his bird became the word: Nov. 11, 2003. Oprah Winfrey’s people had called. The famed talk show host wanted to feature Greenberg turkeys on her annual—and very influential—gift-giving episode, “Oprah’s Favorite Things.”
Cast Away Your Cares on Six Texas Islands
“Islands will always be places we project onto,” writes Judith Schalansky, the German author and designer of Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands. Their inaccessibility is part of their allure, the crossing over water a literal rite of passage—the more remote, the more deserted, the better. And Texans have options: From my experience, you can pitch a tent on the mud, sand, and weeds of islands in East Texas rivers; string up a hammock between bald cypress trees on a crescent-shaped gravel bar on a Hill Country stream; and lug your gear across the wooden footbridge at Martin Creek Lake State Park near Tatum to spend a night among the pines on an island ringed by a short hiking trail.
Beaumont R&B Legend Barbara Lynn Named a National Heritage Fellow
The National Heritage Fellowships are the United States’ highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Lynn earned the recognition for her pioneering rhythm and blues career, which has garnered acclaim with her distinctive guitar play, soulful singing, and songwriting. From nightclubs in her native Beaumont—where her mother chaperoned her gigs when she was a teenager—Lynn’s career has taken her to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, American Bandstand, and other venues around the world.
Fredonia Hotel
The Fredonia Hotel provides an excellent example of an embraced past reinvented as a cutting-edge present.
Front Porch Distillery
Nacogdoches business owners value the college students and professors as customers. John D. Bradford is a good example. A Stephen F. Austin banner hangs from a tin roof above the distilling tanks at his Front Porch Distillery, which he opened with his four daughters in late 2016, creating it from an old catfish restaurant on the outskirts of town.
3 Nacogdoches Eats
A new crop of Nacogdoches restaurants is repurposing old structures, showing off the exposed brick of buildings originally erected in the 1800s and early 1900s. Opened a couple of years ago, Maklemore’s Ale House & Bistro garnered instant popularity with its selection of draft and bottled beers and live music many nights. You can’t go wrong with Maklemore’s juicy hamburgers with the all-American works—mustard, onion, tomato, lettuce, and pickles.
33 Roadside Restaurants for Your Next Texas Road Trip
Texas is vast, and the decisions are wide open when hunger strikes on those long hauls across the state. Sure, you could pull up to the nearest drive-thru window (again), but there’s nothing boldest or grandest about a bag of fast food—especially when exceptional mom-and-pop restaurants are dishing up affordable comfort a little farther down the line. Whether you’re hankering for a taste of home or the meal less traveled, sometimes you just need to get out of the car and into a diner booth.
These 10 County Courthouses Show off the Beauty and History of Small-Town Texas
Texas’ Historic County Courthouses shine with grandiosity and ambition. Often politically controversial because of their expense, courthouse projects in the 19th and early 20th centuries lasted years as counties selected architects and builders, quarried and imported materials, then painstakingly assembled the larger-than-life landmarks in the middle of town. It’s not hard to imagine a farmer stopping by a courthouse construction site to take in the scene, scratching his head at the columns, parapets, and towers rising from the prairie.
Mission Tejas State Park
Mission Tejas, a sleepy spot tucked away deep in the Piney Woods, honors a nearby site where Spain attempted to maintain its territorial claims in East Texas. In 1690, in an effort to limit French incursions and to convert native tribes to Christianity, Captain Alonso de León led an expedition to establish the first mission in the province of Texas near the Neches River. Smallpox, drought, and cultural clashes led to the mission’s abandonment only four years later. The mission was re-established and abandoned two more times in the following years. By 1730, the Spanish had abandoned the mission for good.
Tyler
The city, best known for its roses, is the site of Texas College, the University of Texas at Tyler, and Tyler Junior College.
Nacogdoches
Six flags have flown over Texas, but Nacogdoches claims nine. Numerous landmarks and museums pay tribute to the town’s historic past.
With Food, Drink, and History, Nacogdoches Offers More Than Beautiful Spring Azaleas
In early spring, Nacogdoches wears its azaleas like a princess wears her jewels: always and everywhere. It’s hard to find a corner of this small East Texas city not bedecked in plump, round blossoms of purple, pink, red, yellow, orange, and white.
But when we talk about Nacogdoches being in full bloom right now, we’re not just talking about flowers. With restaurants, shops, and attractions springing forth, new seeds of cultural vitality are sprouting in the town’s flourishing beds of history.
Explore the Lone Star Hiking Trail in East Texas
The sun crested over the tops of the tall pines, taking the chill out of the winter air as my partner and I set out from our campsite at Double Lake Recreation Area in East Texas’ Sam Houston National Forest. Our goal was to explore an 8-mile segment of the Lone Star Hiking Trail. The needles of loblolly and shortleaf pine trees crunched softly beneath our feet, and we listened to woodpeckers tapping in the canopy above as we looped through the forest on a part of the trail known as the Magnolia section. Encountering some of the namesake magnolias, we stopped to marvel at the towering, untamed trees—so unlike their manicured city cousins that it took me a moment to recognize them.
Enjoy Wine in the Piney Woods at Kiepersol Estates in Tyler
South African native Pierre de Wet worked as a farmer and a handyman in California in the early 1980s before moving to Texas to take a job near Tyler. Texas grew on him, and in the late 1990s, Pierre and his daughters opened a winery with a bed-and-breakfast inn and restaurant, naming it for a family homestead back in South Africa. Today, their enterprising company also encompasses an RV park and a distillery that released its first vodka, rum, and bourbon in spring and summer 2014.
Roads to Freedom
Before I met Cedric Fletcher, the man who would become my husband, I had never heard of the East Texas town of Grapeland.
Tyler Made
From where I sit, a picture-window perch in my home’s sunroom within Tyler’s 76-block Azalea District, a distinctive sense of tradition prevails.
Twice as Nice!
Long a fun, familiar gateway to the Lone Star State, Texarkana partners a fascinating history with multiple modern attractions to make a distinctive destination.
Absolutely Uncertain
The green road sign near Caddo Lake in East Texas seems cryptic, almost comical. “Uncertain,” it says.
