History Along the Way

DAN K. UTLEY, chief historian of the Center for Texas Public History at Texas State University and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, is the retired chief historian for the Texas Historical Commission, a past chairman of the National Register State Board of Review, and former president of the Texas Oral History Association and the East Texas Historical Association.CYNTHIA J. BEEMAN is the former director of the History Programs Division of the Texas Historical Commission. She is past president of the East Texas Historical Association and a board member of the Texas Oral History Association and the Ruthe Winegarten Foundation for Texas Women’s History.Utley and Beeman also coauthored the award-winning History Ahead: Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers (Texas A&M University Press, 2010).

“. . . brings together little-known sites and facts, as well as helpful maps to include the largest manmade oil tank, a WW II detention camp cemetery and the remains of Fort D. A. Russell. . . “—True West|“History doesn’t have to be a boring succession of dates or trends to remember . . . to appreciate it as a collection of interesting stories . . . History is a book like History Ahead: Stories Beyond the Texas Roadside Markers.”—Austin American Statesman|"Interestingly, the authors inherited the random nature of the markers and reflect it in their organization. Consequently, the book has no chronology or regional continuity between chapters as one story abruptly ends and another begins.Utley and Beeman write well and some of their chapters amount to brief biographies supported by interviews, archival materials, secondary resources, and side-bars. The color photographs, maps, seventy-seven marker locations, endnotes, and text are printed on a tough, slick paper obviously meant for rough transport on the floor of an automobile. Their work thus surpasses the earlier book on historical markers by Myra Hargrave McIlvain." --David G. McComb, Colorado State University