Download or read book XIT written by Michael M. Miller and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Texas state constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres of public land in the Texas Panhandle in exchange for construction of the state’s monumental red-granite capitol in Austin. That land became the XIT Ranch, briefly one of the most productive cattle operations in the West. The story behind the legendary XIT Ranch, told in full in this book, is a tale of Gilded Age business and politics at the very foundation of the American cattle industry. The capitol construction project, along with the acres that would become XIT, went to an Illinois syndicate led by men influential in politics and business. Unable to sell the land, the Illinois group, backed by British capital, turned to cattle ranching to satisfy investors. In tracing their efforts, which expanded to include a satellite ranch in Montana, historian Michael M. Miller demythologizes the cattle business that flourished in the late-nineteenth-century American West, paralleling the United States’ first industrial revolution. The XIT Ranch came into being and succeeded, Miller shows, only because of the work of accountants, lawyers, and managers, overseen by officers and a board of seasoned international capitalists. In turn, the ranch created wealth for some and promoted the expansion of railroads, new towns, farms, and jobs. Though it existed only from 1885 to 1912, from Texas to Montana the operation left a deep imprint on community culture and historical memory. Describing the Texas capitol project in its full scope and gritty detail, XIT cuts through the popular portrayal of great western ranches to reveal a more nuanced and far-reaching reality in the business and politics of the beef industry at the close of America’s Gilded Age.
Download or read book Trails South written by C. Robert Haywood and published by Prairie Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of the trails from Dodge City Kansas to points in Oklahoma and Texas used primarily for trade from 1880 through the turn of the century.
Download or read book Texas Woollybacks written by Paul H. Carlson and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new epilogue to carry the story to the present, Paul Carlson engagingly chronicles the development of the range sheep and goat industry from Spanish times to about 1930, when widespread use of mesh-wire fences brought an end to the open-range management of sheep and goat ranches in Texas. “This well-written and thoroughly researched book will invariably be appreciated by those individuals interested in southwestern and agricultural history.”—Journal of American History “This volume is impressive in the array and quality of information presented concerning the sheep and goat industry in Texas.”—Western Historical Quarterly “. . . a comprehensive, well-organized, and easily read treatment of a subject comparatively neglected by historians of the American livestock industry."—Great Plains Quarterly “. . . employs a down-to-earth yet scholarly approach to give us a highly readable, very informative book on a neglected subject . . . accuracy, insight, and readability make Texas Woollybacks an excellent book.”—Southwest Chronicle
Download or read book Under the Cap of Invisibility written by Lucie Genay and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pantex was built during World War II near the town of Amarillo, Texas. The site was converted early in the Cold War to assemble nuclear weapons and produce high explosives. For nearly fifty years Pantex has been the sole assembly and disassembly plant for nuclear weapons in the United States. Today, most of the activities of the plant consist of the manufacture of high explosive components and the dismantlement or life extension of weapons. Unlike the much more famous nuclear-weapons-production sites at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Rocky Flats, the Pantex plant has drawn little attention, hidden under a metaphoric “cap of invisibility.” Lucie Genay now lifts that invisibility cap to give the world its first in-depth look at Pantex and the people who have spent their lives as neighbors and employees of this secretive industry. The book investigates how Pantex has impacted local identity by molding elements of the past into the guaranty of its future and its concealment. It further examines the multiple facets of Pantexism through the voices of native and adoptive Panhandlers.
Download or read book Taming the Land written by John Miller Morris and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A postcard craze gripped the nation from 1905 to 1920, as the rise of outdoor photography coincided with a wave of settlement and prosperity in Texas. Hundreds of people took up cameras, and photographers of note chose some of their best work for duplication as photo postcards—sold for a nickel and mailed for a penny to distant friends and relatives. These postcards, which now enjoy another kind of craze in the collecting world, left what author John Miller Morris calls a "significant visual legacy" of the history and social geography of Texas. For more than a decade, Morris has been finding and studying the photographers and methodically gathering their postcards. In Taming the Land, he shares those finds with readers, introducing each photographer and providing interpretive descriptions of the places, people, or events depicted in the photographs. The stories the cards tell—in the images captured and the messages carried—add an exceptional dimension to our understanding of life in rural Texas a century ago. Taming the Land presents postcards from twenty-four counties in the booming Texas Panhandle. This is the first book in a set called Plains of Light, which will collect and document turn-of-the-twentieth-century photo postcards from all over West Texas.
Download or read book Through Time and the Valley written by John R. Erickson and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The isolated Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle stretched before John Erickson and Bill Ellzey as they began a journey through time and what the locals call "the valley." They went on horseback, as they might have traveled it a century before. Everywhere they went they talked, worked, and swapped stories with the people of the valley, piecing together a picture of what life has been like there for a hundred years. Through Time and the Valley is their story of the river--its history, its lore, its colorful characters, the comedies and tragedies that valley people have spun yarns about for generations. Rancher Erickson is an insider who knows his territory and has the gifts to tell about it. A wry and delightful humorist, he tickles our funnybone while touching our feelings. Outlaws, frontier wives, Indian warriors, cowboys, craftsmen, dance-hall girls, moonshiners, inventors, big ranchers, small ranchers-all are part of the Canadian River country heritage that gives this book its vitality.
Download or read book Let me tell you what I ve learned written by PJ Pierce and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara Jordan spoke for many Texas women when she told a reporter, "I get from the soil and spirit of Texas the feeling that I, as an individual, can accomplish whatever I want to, and that there are no limits, that you can just keep going, just keep soaring. I like that spirit." Indeed, the sense of limitless possibilities has inspired countless Texas women—sometimes in the face of daunting obstacles—to build lives rich in work, family, friends, faith, and community involvement. In this collection of interviews conducted by PJ Pierce, twenty-five Texas women ranging in age from 53 to 93 share the wisdom they've acquired through living unconventional lives. Responding to the question "What have you found that really matters about life?" they offer keen insights into motherhood, career challenges, being a minority, marriage and widowhood, anger, assertiveness, managing change, persevering, power, speaking out, fashioning success from failure, writing your own job description, loving a younger man, and recognizing opportunities disguised as disaster—to name only a few of their topics. In her introduction, Pierce describes how she came to write the book and how she chose her subjects to represent a cross-section of career paths and ethnic groups and all geographic areas of Texas. A topical index makes it easy to compare several women's views on a given subject.
Download or read book The Papers of Will Rogers The early years November 1879 April 1904 written by Will Rogers and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1995-11-30 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horses, friends, ragtime music, and steer roping-those were the interests of the youthful Will Rogers as he came of age in the Indian Territory and traveled to the Southern Hemisphere in this first of six definitive volumes of The Papers of Will Rogers. By separating fact from legend and unveiling new knowledge via extensive archival research, this documentary history represents a unique contribution to Rogers scholarship and to studies of the Cherokee Nation West. Using many previously unpublished letters and photographs-together with introductions, notes, and biographies of his friends and relatives-volume one illuminates Rogers’s complex relationship with his father, his Cherokee heritage, his early education, first encounters with his future wife, Betty Blake, his voyage to Argentina, and his fledging years in Wild West shows and circuses in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Coorespondence, performance reviews, and rare newspaper documents spotlight the singular experiences that shaped the young Rogers within the context of his family, his ethnic background, and historical events. No other book describes so provocatively and authentically the genesis of America’s most beloved and influential humorist.
Download or read book Dumas written by Louise Carroll George and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1891, Louis P. Dumas heard about cheap land in the Texas Panhandle. He left his successful enterprises in Sherman and chose a section of grassland in Moore County to "build a town." He had not bargained for the harsh elements that came with the territory, though. Within five years he abandoned his town, as did most of the other residents. Dumas was a ghost town three times in its first 10 years, but gradually, a quiet village developed. Oil and gas discovered in the 1920s brought about growth and continues to support the economy. Phil Baxter, who wrote the song "Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," spoke of the friendliness and spirit of the people he met there in 1927. Today those qualities endure in the people of Dumas.
Download or read book Mysteries and Legends of Texas written by Donna Ingham and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of our growing Mysteries and Legends series, Mysteries and Legends of Texas explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Texas’s history. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in Texas history.
Download or read book Panhandle plains Historical Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cowgirls written by Erin H. Turner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-09-24 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Jo Monaghan, the Southern-belle-debutant turned Idaho cattlewoman, to Fanny Sperry Steele, the Bucking Horse Champion of the World, the Wild West was populated with untamed women who worked and played as men did in the saddles of their favorite bucking broncos. This book brings together their stories, including their own thoughts about being cowgirls, and archival art that celebrates the Western experience.
Download or read book Lake Meredith National Recreation Area written by Laurence Parent and published by Western National Parks Association. This book was released on 1993 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located in the Texas Panhandle, Lake Meredith today is an angler's paradise. For centuries before the lake was created, Alibates flint was the prize that drew people to the bluffs of the Canadian River Valley.
Download or read book Archeological Bibliography for the Northern Panhandle Region of Texas written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The End of the Old Ways written by Harold M. Brannan and published by Harold Brannan. This book was released on 2011 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Glimpses into My Own Black Box written by George W. Stocking and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George W. Stocking, Jr., has spent a professional lifetime exploring the history of anthropology, and his findings have shaped anthropologists’ understanding of their field for two generations. Through his meticulous research, Stocking has shown how such forces as politics, race, institutional affiliations, and personal relationships have influenced the discipline from its beginnings. In this autobiography, he turns his attention to a subject closer to home but no less challenging. Looking into his own “black box,” he dissects his upbringing, his politics, even his motivations in writing about himself. The result is a book systematically, at times brutally, self-questioning. An interesting question, Stocking says, is one that arouses just the right amount of anxiety. But that very anxiety may be the ultimate source of Stocking’s remarkable intellectual energy and output. In the first two sections of the book, he traces the intersecting vectors of his professional and personal lives. The book concludes with a coda, “Octogenarian Afterthoughts,” that offers glimpses of his life after retirement, when advancing age, cancer, and depression changed the tenor of his reflections about both his life and his work. This book is the twelfth and final volume of the influential History of Anthropology series.
Download or read book Texas Highways written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
