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Force Without Fanfare
In this faithful memoir, dictated at the age of ninety-three, K. M. Van Zandt recalls the details of a long and eventful life and of the struggle to build Fort Worth from a tiny "outpost on the Trinity" to a modern city. The son of Isaac Van Zandt--an active patriot during the days of the Republic of Texas and once a candidate for governor--K. M. Van Zandt began his career as a lawyer and surveyor for the railroad in East Texas. In 1861, he joined the Confederate army and served as an officer in the Seventh Texas Infantry. After the Civil War, he joined the wave of migration westward, settling in Fort Worth in 1874. A member of the firm of Tidball, Van Zandt and Company, Bankers, he served as president of the firm's bank from 1874 until his death in 1930. A vigorous civic worker, Van Zandt helped bring churches, schools, railroads, and new business and industry to Fort Worth. He represented Tarrant County in the state legislature and was active on the city council and the school board. First published in 1969.
Land of the Underground Rain
The scarcity of surface water which has so marked the Great Plains is even more characteristic of its subdivision, the Texas High Plains. Settlers on the plateau were forced to use pump technology to tap the vast ground water resources—the underground rain—beneath its flat surface. The evolution from windmills to the modern high-speed irrigation pumps took place over several decades. Three phases characterized the movement toward irrigation. In the period from 1910 to 1920, large-volume pumping plants first appeared in the region, but, due to national and regional circumstances, these premature efforts were largely abortive. The second phase began as a response to the drouth of the Dust ...
Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado
In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these “nesters.” In August 1902 a famous hired assassin, Jim Miller, ambushed and murdered J. W. Jarrott. Who hired Miller? This crime has never been solved, until now. Award-winning author Bill Neal investigates this cold case and successfully pieces together all the threads of circumstantial evidence to fit the noose snugly around the neck of Jim Miller’s employer. What emerges from these pages is the strength of intriguing characters in an engrossing narrative: Jim Jarrott, the diminutive advocate who fearlessly champions the cause of the little guy. The ruthless and slippery assassin, Deacon Jim Miller. And finally Jarrott’s young widow Mollie, who perseveres and prospers against great odds and tells the settlers to “Stay put!”
Rounded Up in Glory
Frank Reaugh (1860-1945; pronounced "Ray") was called "the Dean of Texas artists" for good reason. His pastels documented the wide-open spaces of the West as they were vanishing in the late nineteenth century, and his plein air techniques influenced generations of artists. His students include a "Who's Who" of twentieth-century Texas painters: Alexandre Hogue, Reveau Bassett, and Lucretia Coke, among others. He was an advocate of painting by observation, and encouraged his students to do the same by organizing legendary sketch trips to West Texas. Reaugh also earned the title of Renaissance man by inventing a portable easel that allowed him to paint in high winds, and developing a formula fo...
Littlefield Lands
The phenomenon of colonization by big land companies, common throughout the history of the United States, came late to the Panhandle-Plains of West Texas. Ranchers held sway there up into the 20th century. Then, realizing that the future followed the plow, they, joined by business owners and speculators, founded towns on their land, competed for railroad connections, provided irrigation wells and other improvements, and engaged in a variety of advertising activities to interest prospective settlers and to sell the land to farmers at a profit. Trainloads of such "prospectors" were brought in to tour the land; and salesmen of all kinds roamed all the more settled states painting enticing pictu...
The First Texas News Barons
Newspaper publishers played a crucial role in transforming Texas into a modern state. By promoting expanded industrialization and urbanization, as well as a more modern image of Texas as a southwestern, rather than southern, state, news barons in the early decades of the twentieth century laid the groundwork for the enormous economic growth and social changes that followed World War II. Yet their contribution to the modernization of Texas is largely unrecognized. This book investigates how newspaper owners such as A. H. Belo and George B. Dealey of the Dallas Morning News, Edwin Kiest of the Dallas Times Herald, William P. Hobby and Oveta Culp Hobby of the Houston Post, Jesse H. Jones and Ma...
Land of Bright Promise
“It shall be the chosen land, perpetual sunshine shall kiss its trees and vines, and, being storied in luscious fruits and compressed into ruddy wine, will be sent to the four points of the compass to gladden the hearts of all mankind . . . They will breathe the pure and bracing air, bask in the healing sunshine, drink the invigorating wine, and eat the life prolonging fruit.” —from a brochure advertising the Staked Plains from the Missouri Pacific Railway Company, 1889 Land of Bright Promise is a fascinating exploration of the multitude of land promotions and types of advertising that attracted more than 175,000 settlers to the Panhandle–South Plains area of Texas from the late year...
The Comanchero Frontier
This is a history of the Comancheros, or Mexicans who traded with the Comanche Indians in the early Southwest. When Don Juan Bautista de Anza and Ecueracapa, a Comanche leader, concluded a peace treaty in 1786, mutual trade benefits resulted, and the treaty was never afterward broken by either side. New Mexican Comancheros were free to roam the plains to trade goods, and when Americans introduced, the Comanches and New Mexicans even joined in a loose, informal alliance that made the American occupation of the plains very costly. Similarly, in the 1860s the Comancheros would trade guns and ammunition to the Comanches and Kiowas, allowing them to wreck a gruesome toll on the advancing Texans.
Stetson, Pipe and Boots - Colorado's Cattleman Governor
The book is a biography about Dan Thornton, a highly successful and well known purebred beef cattle producer (1937-1953) and an effective, flamboyant but controversial Colorado Governor (1951-1955). From humble beginnings as the son of sharecroppers in West Texas, to president of the Texas 4-H Clubs at age 16, to the sale of two Hereford bulls for a world record price ($50,000 each) at the 1945 National Western Stock Show in Denver, CO, to a record Hereford sale in 1947, to winning the Governorship of Colorado as a last minute replacement candidate at 39 years of age, to being largely responsible for the location of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, Dan Thornton's story is an interesting and exciting adventure. He was a friend with unknowns and celebrities alike, including Dwight Eisenhower, Bob Hope, Randolph Scott, Lauritz Melchior and Ben Hogan. He campaigned early for Eisenhower for U.S. President. He was Colorado's super salesman from cherries, beef, uranium, and coal to interstate highways and tourism. His grave marker in Gunnison, CO is inscribed with the tribute, "A Man Who Matched Our Mountains."
Lubbock
For 12 millennia, natural resources attracted humans to the region that Spanish conquistadors named the Llano Estacado (the Staked Plains). Nineteenth-century westward expansion brought many Americans to the plains, and small towns began to develop. On December 19, 1890, two communities on the Llano Estacado joined forces to create Lubbock. The sights and sounds of families moving their homes, farms, and businesses to the fledgling community exemplified the spirit of commitment, sacrifice, and cooperation that citizens of Lubbock continue to display. Today, 250,000 people call Lubbock home, and it remains the socioeconomic center of the Llano Estacado.
