October 31, 2019 | By
In the spring of 2019, John Dyer set out to see what the edge looked like close up. Dyer is a San Antonio-based commercial photographer who has authored photography books on vaqueros and conjunto music, written two novels, directed several short films, and shot numerous magazine covers including Selena for the May 1995 issue of Texas Monthly. But he’d never taken on a project quite like this.
October 31, 2019 | By
Whether your idea of getting away includes four-star meals or a retro camper in a dense forest, these five escapes promise serenity and seclusion
October 31, 2019 | By Joe Nick Patoski
Andrew Stuart is the poster boy for the “next best place.” Raised in Austin, Stuart lived on both coasts before falling in love with West Texas. He spent two years as a reporter for the now-defunct Desert-Mountain Times in Alpine and three years as the news director at Marfa Public Radio. In 2009, he moved to Dell City, a Chihuahuan Desert farming community with little but a mercantile, a gas station, and two cafés. It’s a place once described by The New York Times as a “borderline ghost town.” But factor in the Guadalupe Mountains—the area’s primary tourist attraction, rising 20 miles to the east—and the feeling that you’re out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s easy to see Stuart, 44, has found his place. “I knew I wanted to live in the desert by myself, a go-west-and-reinvent-yourself kind of thing,” he explains one morning over breakfast tacos at Spanish Angels Café. “The writer Marilynne Robinson said, ‘Out west, lonesome is a positive.’”
October 31, 2019 | By
West Texas winds transform an ever-changing landscape of sand dunes at the 3,840-acre Monahans Sandhills State Park. The field of dunes begins south of Monahans and stretches north into New Mexico. Opened in 1957, the state park harbors a peaceful Chihuahuan Desert playground where people can explore the rolling landscape, slide down the hills, picnic, camp, and take in extraordinary sunrises and sunsets.
October 31, 2019 | By Kimya Kavehkar
Tune in to your local public radio station around lunchtime on a weekday and you’re likely to hear the dulcet voice—and sharp questions—of Krys Boyd. The host and managing editor of Dallas-based KERA’s Think delivers a one-two punch of mellow curiosity and deeply considered topics in her two-hour interview show. While she’s hosted big-name guests like actor Bryan Cranston and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the most fascinating episodes often cover topics outside of the 24-hour news cycle. Boyd has tackled everything from spelling bees to failed spy techniques.
October 31, 2019 | By Laurel Miller
T he judging of the International Frank X. Tolbert-Wick Fowler Memorial Championship Chili Cook-Off in Terlingua is underway. There are 10 of us seated at a long table, and to the casual observer it would seem we’re performing an ancient religious rite. We plunge spoons into the numbered, 24-ounce Styrofoam cups of brick-red chili in front of each one of us, and raise them to our lips.
October 31, 2019 | By Heather Brand
At Pierogi Queen in League City, the menu of unfamiliar words like bigos and golabki might confound those new to Polish cuisine. Fortunately, regulars and Polish expats who frequent the restaurant are always around to offer pointers. And of course owner Eva Sek has recommendations at the ready. These are not just the foods of her homeland, but the dishes of her childhood.
October 31, 2019 | By Dan Gentile
Brisket is an easy sell in small-town Texas, but try adding a $5 latte to that three-meat combo plate, and you’ll likely never hear the end of it from the locals. At Miller’s Smokehouse in Belton, though, no one complains much.
October 31, 2019 | By Chet Garner
When it’s time to ditch the phone, the Netflix queue, and civilization in general, then it’s time to head west to the Davis Mountains. One of Texas’ three sky islands, this majestic range rises from the desert floor, creating a postcard-worthy panorama in every direction.
October 31, 2019 | By
World War I is over, and the Jazz Age is on. Prohibition is the law of the land. Bootleggers are running booze, flappers are pushing social mores, and the Great Depression is brewing. None of that concerns Johnny and James Hayes, though. All they can think about is a giant catfish. Everything about this photo, taken by their father, Dallas Times Herald photographer James (Denny) Hayes, is period-perfect: the knickers, the caps, the cans of worms, and the cane poles. While we don’t know where in Dallas the photo was taken, the city—home to about 200,000 then—was growing rapidly. It’s a Texas that no longer exists, a place of sweet memories. Both boys later became photographers themselves. But on this day, there are fish to be caught, and little else matters.
October 31, 2019 | By Dan Oko
B eneath a warm Caribbean sun, down a twisted road from the tattered colonial city Santiago de Cuba, an American soldier stands frozen in time.
It’s a statue, actually, in a small park that commemorates the derring-do of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, formally known as the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, who helped drive Spain out of Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
October 30, 2019 | By S.C. Gwynne
The great cypress swamp is lovely, dark, and deep. There is no debating this. The wildly intricate and critter-infested maze of bayous, lakes, ponds, sloughs, and interconnected channels known as Caddo Lake and Big Cypress Bayou is one of the country’s most spectacular nature shows. It contains arguably the most diverse collection of species in Texas. The place has a mystical feel, too, an impression enhanced by the ghostly Spanish moss that drapes the trees, by the cypress roots known as “knees” that rise from the swirling mists like Excalibur in the Arthurian legend, by the lily pads with lotus flowers that spread everywhere and suggest Celtic fairylands.
October 29, 2019 | By Dan Oko
The southern span of the Post Oak Savannah in East Texas evolved out of ancient woodlands of oak and hickory that once stretched from Canada to Central America.
October 28, 2019 | By Bret Anthony Johnston
October 28, 2019 | By Michael Hoinski
In 1973, when it was completed, Amarillo Ramp was a spiral pathway jutting into Tecovas Lake, an artificial body of water outside of Amarillo. It was comprised of sandstone found in the area, compacted to an ascending height of 15 feet, and measured 140 feet in diameter. Now, with the lake long since dried up, Amarillo Ramp amounts to a quirky, failing rock formation.
October 28, 2019 | By Robyn Ross
Earth Native founder Dave Scott grew up tagging along with his father and uncle on volunteer search-and-rescue missions in Colorado. After six years in the military, he began studying wilderness survival techniques. In 2011, he launched Earth Native, one of a handful of schools in Texas that meld advanced outdoor skills like backcountry navigation, shelter building, and plant medicine with nature appreciation. Scott says he’s noticed an uptick in people’s interest in these types of skills because of survival-oriented reality TV shows. But the majority of his students tend to be less extreme. They mostly want to get into backpacking or spend more time outside with their kids.
October 13, 2019 | By Emily Roberts Stone, Editor in Chief
“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.
Published monthly by the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Highways, the official travel magazine of Texas, encourages travel to and within the Lone Star State and tells the Texas story to readers around the world.
