Download or read book A Hill Country Paradise written by Elaine Perkins and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1800s, land speculators said that Western Travis County in Texas would be a paradise, a perfect place to grow crops, raise livestock, and build a life. Settlers were seduced by such stories, and many of them including a large segment of German immigrants made their way to this promised land. What they found was, for the most part, an arid area of cedar trees, poor soil, rocks, and snakes. Still, these hardy people carved out a good life for themselves, making the best of what they had, and their descendents continue to live in the area today. Historian and Travis County resident Elaine Perkins relates the tales of these settlers in A Hill Country Paradise, a moving testament to the pioneer spirit that made this place prosperous. From the earliest settlers through two world wars, Perkins reveals the tragedies and triumphs of those who made the county their home. This historical record brings this Texas county's past to life, recalling residents fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, breaking ground for a new homestead, rustling cattle, taking advantage of burgeoning business opportunities, squabbling, and heralding the arrival of electricity. Vivid details, solid research, and an intriguing narrative make A Hill Country Paradise not only educational, but also entertaining, securing the memory of this county's past for future generations.

Download or read book A Hill Country Paradise written by Elaine Perkins and published by . This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1800s, land speculators said that Western Travis County in Texas would be a paradise, a perfect place to grow crops, raise livestock, and build a life. Settlers were seduced by such stories, and many of them including a large segment of German immigrants made their way to this promised land. What they found was, for the most part, an arid area of cedar trees, poor soil, rocks, and snakes. Still, these hardy people carved out a good life for themselves, making the best of what they had, and their descendents continue to live in the area today. Historian and Travis County resident Elaine Perkins relates the tales of these settlers in A Hill Country Paradise, a moving testament to the pioneer spirit that made this place prosperous. From the earliest settlers through two world wars, Perkins reveals the tragedies and triumphs of those who made the county their home. This historical record brings this Texas county's past to life, recalling residents fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, breaking ground for a new homestead, rustling cattle, taking advantage of burgeoning business opportunities, squabbling, and heralding the arrival of electricity. Vivid details, solid research, and an intriguing narrative make A Hill Country Paradise not only educational, but also entertaining, securing the memory of this county's past for future generations.

Download or read book A Paradise Called Texas written by Janice Jordan Shefelman and published by Eakin Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bluebonnet Award Nominee. - Searching for a better life, Mina, Papa, and Mama left their German fatherland aboard the brig Margaretha, bound for Texas. They had been told it was the paradise of North America, but when Mina steps onto the desolate beach at Indian Point on a cold December day in 1845, she wants to go back to Germany and Opa's cozy house in the village of Wehrestedt. But go on they must. In spite of mama's tragic death, Mina and Papa push inland with the Kaufmann family to the Texas hill country. There Mina encounters an Indian chief and his young daughter, Amaya, whose help she needs when Papa falls ill. Based on her ancestors' immigration to Texas, Janice Shefelman tells of a journey into the wilderness that is filled with hardship, tragedy and adventure . . . young readers will glimpse a fascinating view of what life in early Texas was like for German settlers.Texas

Download or read book Almost Paradise written by Corabel Shofner and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When twelve-year-old Ruby's mother goes to jail, Ruby finds her Aunt Eleanor, an ornery nun with some dark secrets, who Ruby hopes will help free her mother.

Download or read book Bicycling Through Paradise written by Kathleen Smythe and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bicycling Through Paradise is a collection of twenty historically themed cycling tours broken into 10-mile segments centered around Cincinnati, Ohio. Written by two longtime cyclists--one a professor of history and one an architect--the book is an affectionate, intimate, and provocative reading of the local landscape and history from the perspectives of cycling and Cincinnati enthusiasts. Tours, navigated by Smythe and Hanlon, take cyclers past Native American sites, early settler homesteads, and locations made know through recent Ohio change-makers as navigated by the authors. With extensive details on routes and sites along the way, tours between 20 and 80 miles in length are designed for all levels of cyclists, and even the armchair explorer. Riders and readers will visit towns called Edenton, Loveland, Felicity, and Utopia. Along the journey, they'll encounter an abandoned Shaker village near the Whitewater Forest and a tiny dairy house called "Harmony Hill," the oldest standing structure in Clermont County, Ohio. They'll also take in the view from the top of a 2,000-year-old, 75-foot tall, conical Indian mound at Miamisburg. Riders can follow the Little Miami Scenic Trail and take a detour to a castle on the banks of the Little Miami River. Other sights include a full-scale replica of the tomb of Jesus in Northern Kentucky and the small pleasures of public parks, covered bridges, tree-lined streets, riverside travel, and one-room schoolhouses. And if all this isn't exactly Paradise, well, it's pretty close.

Download or read book Slipping Into Paradise written by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tribute to the author's adopted home in New Zealand describes his decision to relocate to a lush bay area near Auckland, where his family and he thrived in the wake of its natural flora and fauna, dolphin-filled waters, and wildlife. By the author of The Pig Who Sang to the Moon.

Download or read book Barton Creek written by Ed Crowell and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-03 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Barton Springs Pool is an iconic landmark of Austin and many people are familiar with the end of Barton Creek and its seven miles of public greenbelt, less is known about the forty-odd miles beyond that tumble and twist across private lands, eventually feeding the Colorado River. Legendary fights saved Barton Springs in the 1980s and 1990s, when the pool repeatedly was closed because of pollutant runoff from streets, nearby construction, and leaking sewer lines. In 1992, a highly publicized campaign resulted in land protections and stricter water standards. But will the creek and its springs become fouled again? That possibility arises upstream where tributaries and other creeks flow across mostly rural acreage, attracting new housing and business developments. Not only would city bathers lose access to the pool, but endangered species of salamanders and birds that depend on the Edwards Aquifer and its unique habitats face an uncertain future. Following the creek from downtown Austin’s Barton Springs Pool to its source as a cow-pasture trickle, longtime resident and journalist Ed Crowell explores the creek’s contentious political history, its historic and current residents, and the mounting environmental pressures threatening it. Barton Creek highlights the passionate individuals involved in the stream’s preservation, from city scientists to local landowners, who want to see the creek running clear and clean for future generations. Striking photography and vivid descriptions will entice readers to fall in love with Barton Creek all over again.

Download or read book Flavor of the Hill Country written by Randolph Jorgen and published by Western National Parks Association. This book was released on 1992 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richly illustrated cookbook transports readers back to 1915 in the Texas Hill Country, before the introduction of packaged foods, refrigeration, and mass-produced goods. Photos by Laurence Parent.

Download or read book The Promise of Paradise written by Satya Bharti Franklin and published by Barrytown Limited. This book was released on 1992 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir of a woman who joined the Rajneeshi community in a search for ultimate fulfillment, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the cult, describing its beginning to its demise in the 1980s.

Download or read book The White Cities written by Joseph Roth and published by Granta. This book was released on 2005 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A companion volume to What I Saw, Roth's critically acclaimed reports from Berlin

Download or read book Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites written by Laurence Parent and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential guide to Texas’s state parks and historic sites. Updated with a new park, Palo Pinto Mountains State Park west of Forth Worth; new historic sites; and scores of beautiful new photographs, the Official Guide to Texas State Parks has all the essential information organized by geographical regions to help you plan your great Texas adventure. The only complete resource of its kind on Texas, Laurence Parent’s Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the trusted source, with more than sixty-five thousand copies sold over the past thirty years. Praise for Previous Editions “Texas state-park fans should be thrilled. . . . Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the ultimate book detailing Texas’s state parks.”—Dallas Morning News “This book will make you want to hit the road to visit the natural splendor of Texas.”—Houston Chronicle “It’s good enough for a coffee table or a campfire. The Official Guide to Texas State Parks gives you sleek photography, maps, narratives, and loads of information.”—Southern Living “The newly updated Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites . . . has beautiful color photographs and insights on camping, fishing, horseback riding, and other recreational opportunities around the state.”—Texas Journey

Download or read book The Cedar Choppers written by Ken Roberts and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, “. . . they looked hard—tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin.” When Roberts’s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers’ offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, “Who are these people?” The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts’s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.

Download or read book Hudson Bend and the Birth of Lake Travis written by Carole McIntosh Sikes and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Along the picturesque shores of the Colorado River lies historic Hudson Bend. Established by Wiley Hudson in the 1850s, the verdant hills and abundant water attracted scores of farming families. Hudson's example was soon followed by still more settlers, who created their own thriving communities in the area. Discover the evolution of this cherished region and the courageous people who shaped it, from the Comanche tribes and Anglo settlers to the developers, "cedar choppers" and construction workers who forged the lake in 1937. Author and hill country native Carole McIntosh Sikes offers a collection of essays that explores a history forever linked with hill country culture, New Deal-era programs and Texas politics.

Download or read book A New Star in the Texas Sky written by Alice Lockmiller and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andy Patterson is a 15 year old Saddle-making apprentice in Austin Texas, in 1886. The Capitol Building is being built nearby by stone cutters from Scotland. Someone is stealing the rancher's cattle. Can Andy help his family and neighbors?

Download or read book Historical Agriculture and Soil Erosion in the Upper Mississippi Valley Hill Country written by Stanley W. Trimble and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thought-provoking book demonstrates how processes of landscape transformation, usually illustrated only in simplified or idealized form, play out over time in real, complex landscapes. Trimble illustrates how a simple landscape disturbance, generated in this case by agriculture, can spread an astonishing variety of altered hydrologic and sedi

Download or read book Oak Hill Country Club written by Sal Maiorana and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1901, Oak Hill Country Club opened on the Genesee River. There were only nine holes, and the clubhouse was a converted farmhouse, but for the members, it was a haven. In the 1920s, the club moved to Pittsford, where world-famous architect Donald Ross built two eighteen-hole courses. A stately Tudor-style clubhouse was added, and in 1949, Oak Hill's reputation as one of the best courses in America was cemented when the USGA held the U.S. Amateur here. Golfing greats like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods have competed in such tournaments as the 1956 and 1968 U.S. Open, the 2003 and 2013 PGA Championship and the 2008 Senior PGA Championship. Visit the most exciting moments on the legendary East Course and the history of one of America's most historic golf meccas.

Download or read book House of Faith or Enchanted Forest written by Charles W. Hedrick and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since The Renaissance of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, and particularly since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the ancient creeds of faith have been under serious fire, and the struggle has not gone well for popular religion in America. The rapid advances made by the physical sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the corresponding reliance on scientific accomplishments in American life have been matched by the growing influence of reason in the way Americans think about religion. Except for pockets of resistance, these developments have negatively influenced the practical role of traditional religion in American life. These essaysùpublished over a twenty-year period as newspaper editorials addressed to the general publicùconfront popular beliefs and morals with the challenge of human reason. At issue in this meeting of faith and reason is nothing less than the nature of religion in the twenty-first century. Will faith embrace reason to create a House where both dwell in harmony or will faith ignore the claims of reason and continue to live in an Enchanted Forest? Each essay, written in the practical language of the streets, attempts to dialogue with the general reader and gently provoke critical thinking on sensitive issues of belief. "Charles Hedrick is a scholar who has come clean. From the 'buckle on the Bible Belt' comes this honest, intelligent, and creative reflection on the struggle between reason (and/or science) and personal faith. Charlie's reminder to take our personal absolute truths (house of faith) a little less seriously and enjoy the diversity of thought and experience (enchanted forest) is practical, powerful, and incredibly timely."-Glenna S. Jackson, Professor, Department of Religion and Philosophy at Otterbein College "House of Faith or Enchanted Forest? is a personal and lively journey along the path of faith and doubt. Charles Hedrick poses deep questions that for centuries have haunted philosophers, historians, and theologians alike. This book awakens and celebrates critical thinking yet remains warmly accessible and resolutely honest. Anyone who wishes to re-think life's great questions in light of the changing face of Christianity will find joy in reading this book. Here is an excellent resource for discussion groups, book clubs, and inquiring individuals."-David Galston, Director of the Eternal Spring learning Centre, Hamilton, Ontario "Charlie Hedrick asks a lot of questions in this provocative collection of short essays. One specific question that, perhaps, sums up the others, 'Can a critical thinker also be a person of traditional religious faith?' Spanning a wide range of topics, Hedrick offers readers challenging questions to ponder, rather than easy answers to swallow. Yet, by pondering such questions, careful readers will find themselves closer to honest answers than they were before they read this helpful book."-J. Bradley Chance, Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, William Jewell College