Download or read book Goodbye to a River written by John Graves and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.
Download or read book Exploring the Brazos River written by Jim Kimmel and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Come with us to learn about a great Texas river ... We will explore ... camp on its banks ... and look for places of excitement, beauty and learning - some of them surprising." From its ancient headwaters on the semiarid plains of eastern New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River carves a huge and paradoxical crescent through Texas geography and history.
Download or read book Washington on the Brazos written by Richard B. McCaslin and published by Fred Rider Cotten Popular Hist. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Washington on the Brazos: Cradle of the Texas Republic, noted historian Richard B. McCaslin recovers the history of an iconic Texas town. The story of the Texas Republic begins and ends at Washington, but the town's history extends much further. Texas leaders gathered in the new town on the west bank of the Brazos in March 1836 to establish a new republic. After approving a declaration of independence and constitution, they fled as Santa Anna's army approached. The government of the Republic of Texas returned there in 1842, but after the United States annexed Texas in 1846, Austin replaced Washington as the capital of the Lone Star State. The town became a thriving river port in the 1850s, when steamboat cargoes paid for many new buildings. But the community steeply declined when its leaders decided to rely on steamers rather than invest in a railroad line, although German immigrants and African American residents kept the town alive. Later, Progressive Era plans for historic tourism focused the town's central role in the Texas Republic brought renewed interest, and a state park was founded. The Texas centennial in 1936 and the hard work of citizens' organizations beginning in the 1950s transformed this park into Washington-on-the-Brazos, the state historic site that serves today as the primary focus for preserving the history of the Republic of Texas.
Download or read book The Improvement of the Brazos River Texas from Waco to Its Mouth written by Waco Business Men's Club. Committee Brazos River Improvement and published by . This book was released on 1905* with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unruly Waters written by Kenna Lang Archer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Running more than 1,200 miles from headwaters in eastern New Mexico through the middle of Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River has frustrated developers for nearly two centuries. This environmental history of the Brazos traces the techniques that engineers and politicians have repeatedly used to try to manage its flow. The vast majority of projects proposed or constructed in this watershed were failures, undone by the geology of the river as much as the cost of improvement. When developers erected locks, the river changed course. When they built large-scale dams, floodwaters overflowed the concrete rims. When they constructed levees, the soils collapsed. Yet lawmakers and laypeople, boosters and engineers continued to work toward improving the river and harnessing it for various uses. Through the plight of the Brazos River Archer illuminates the broader commentary on the efforts to tame this nation’s rivers as well as its historical perspectives on development and technology. The struggle to overcome nature, Archer notes, reflects a quintessentially American faith in technology.
Download or read book Los Brazos de Dios written by Sean M. Kelley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long believed that the "frontier" shaped Texas plantation society, but in this detailed examination of Texas's most important plantation region, Sean M. Kelley asserts that the dominant influence was not the frontier but the Mexican Republic. The Lower Brazos River Valley -- the only slave society to take root under Mexican sovereignty -- made replication of eastern plantation culture extremely difficult and complicated. By tracing the synthesis of cultures, races, and politics in the region, Kelley reveals a distinct variant of southern slavery -- a borderland plantation society. Kelley opens by examining the four migration streams that defined the antebellum Brazos community: Anglo-Americans and their African American slaves who constituted the first two groups to immigrate; Germans who came after the Mexican government barred immigrants from the U.S. while encouraging those from Europe; and African-born slaves brought in through Cuba who ultimately made up the largest concentration of enslaved Africans in the antebellum South. Within this multicultural milieu, Kelley shows, the disparity between Mexican law and German practices complicated southern familial relationships and master-slave interaction. Though the Mexican policy on slavery was ambiguous, alternating between toleration and condemnation, Brazos slaves perceived the Rio Grande River as the boundary between white supremacy and racial egalitarianism. As a result, thousands fled across the border, further destabilizing the Brazos plantation society. In the1850s, nonslaveholding Germans also contributed to the upheaval by expressing a sense of ethnic solidarity in politics. In an attempt to undermine Anglo efforts to draw a sharp boundary between black and white, some Germans hid runaway slaves. Ultimately, Kelley demonstrates how the Civil War brought these issues to the fore, eroding the very foundations of Brazos plantation society. With Los Brazos de Dios, Kelley offers the first examination of Texas slavery as a borderland institution and reveals the difficulty with which southern plantation society was transplanted in the West.
Download or read book Lower Brazos River Canals written by Lora-Marie Bernard and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Communities have spent more than 100 years mastering the mighty Brazos River and its waterways. In the 1800s, Stephen F. Austin chose the Brazos River as the site for the first Texas colony because of its vast water and fertile soil. Within 75 years, a pumping station would herald the way for crop management. A sugar mill that was eventually known as Imperial Sugar spurred community development. In 1903, John Miles Frost Jr. tapped the Brazos to expand the Cane and Rice Belt Irrigation System while Houston newspapers predicted the infrastructure marvel would change the region's future--and it did. Within a few decades, the Texas agricultural empire caused Louisiana to dub Texas farmers 'the sugar and rice aristocracy.' As the dawn of the industrial age began, the Brazos River and its waterways began supplying the Texas Gulf Coast industry"--Publisher description.
Download or read book Exploring the Brazos River written by Jim Kimmel and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its ancient headwaters on the semiarid plains of eastern New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River carves a huge and paradoxical crescent through Texas geography and history. Its average flow is the largest of Texas rivers, but its floods, low flows, silt, and natural salt have often frustrated human desires. It is one of the most dammed of Texas rivers, but its lower four hundred miles constitute one of the longest undammed stretches of river in North America. In Exploring the Brazos River, Jim Kimmel follows this long, changeable river from its rocky “arms” in West Texas, through the stretch made famous by John Graves in his classic book, Goodbye to a River, to its lumbering presence as it flows, undammed and mostly untouched, down the Brazos Valley and into the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the entire river system, Kimmel first sets the context of climate and geology that determines the characteristics of the Brazos. He then explains the ecological processes that define the Brazos watershed before focusing on four reaches of the river, from the headwaters to the mouth. Each chapter features the captivating photography of Jerry Touchstone Kimmel and includes maps, charts, and descriptions of the water, land, ecology, and people. To encourage readers to explore on their own, Kimmel closes the chapters with tips on where best to experience the river and the surrounding countryside. Amateur and professional naturalists and outdoor enthusiasts of all stripes will find Exploring the Brazos River a practical and inspiring guide for the introduction of—or re-acquaintance with—one of the most important, historic, and diverse natural resources in the Lone Star State. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.
Download or read book Brazos River in Texas written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Rivers and Harbors and published by . This book was released on 1888 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bravo of the Brazos written by Robert K. DeArment and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a century after his death in 1878, the mere mention of John Larn’s name can trigger strong reactions along the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northern Texas. In Bravo of the Brazos, Robert K. DeArment tells for the first time the complete story of this enigmatic and controversial figure. Larn was good-looking, well-mannered, and gentle around women and children. He was a successful rancher and renowned frontier sheriff. Yet he was also the charismatic leader of a vigilante committee that enjoyed widespread support. Before his death at age 29, Larn had killed or participated in killing at least a dozen men.
Download or read book Control of Flood Waters of the Brazos River Texas written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers (74) S. 2092.
Download or read book Control of Flood Waters of the Brazos River Texas written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Flood Control and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sandbars and Sternwheelers written by Pamela A. Puryear and published by . This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature never intended the Brazos River for navigation, but before the coming of the railroads Brazos steamboats were a necessary, if always erratic, form of transport. And there were men to meet the challenge. One captain, heedless of shallows, shoals, snags, and falls, boasted that he could tap a keg and run a boat four miles on the suds. Based on rich archival sources, this authoritative and entertaining book tells of the men and boats that braved the river from the earliest days to the late 1890s. Steamboat captains and plantation aristocrats, business tycoons and empire builders, mud clerks and river rats, all were obsessed with a single idea: to open the Brazos for steamboats from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. The river was dredged and snags were removed, boats were designed with shallow draft, and boat owner, captain, and pilot (often one and the same) pitted their skills against the river. But the Brazos was recalcitrant. Seasonal rises silted in manmade channels and left behind new snags to catch the unwary. And as railroads inched their way across the state, the need for river transport dwindled. Railroad bridges across the Brazos finally created barriers that even a steamboat riding a "red rise" could not negotiate. By the turn of the century, the dauntless Brazos paddlewheelers were only a memory, but, even today, the dream dies hard along the river.
Download or read book Texas Almanac 2000 2001 Millennium Edition written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Boys in the Brazos River Bottom written by Peter L. Scamardo and published by . This book was released on 2021-11 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mumford, Texas, the summer of '69. Matt Ruggirello believes he is doomed to enter the farming life, just like everyone else in his family. Josh, his middle brother, wants nothing more than Papa's approval. While little brother Tommy observes all the happenings in and around the Ruggirello family home of Three Pecans, a nickname christened by the three brothers. Yet Matt receives news that could take him away from the cotton fields and into the big city. The obstacle in the way is Papa, whose suspicions make him fearful of change in the family. Along the way the brothers experience rivalries, car crashes, a torrential storm, familial stories of the past, the music of KTSA 550 San Antonio, and the dinner table discussions that define the Italian-American household. Inspired by stories his family has told over the years, Peter L. Scamardo II provides a window into the lives of the Central Texas farming communities, and a different perspective on the Italian-American experience.
Download or read book Bridges Over the Brazos written by Jon McConal and published by TCU Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridges-Texas-Brazos river. 2. Bridges-Texas-Brazos River Pictorial works.
Download or read book Control of Flood Waters of the Brazos River Texas written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers (74) S. 2092.
