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John R. Cook was an American original. He witnessed or participated in a string of important events that shaped the nation and sculpted the history of the West. Born in Ohio in 1844, Cook moved with his family to Kansas. He joined the Union Army at sixteen and fought along the Kansas-Missouri border, in Indian Territory, and in Arkansas. After the Civil War, he ventured out to establish a homestead and work cattle. Several hardships forced Cook to try his luck at various enterprises. He became a prospector in New Mexico, a buffalo hunter in Texas and Kansas, and an Indian fighter.Santa Fe, Adobe Walls, Fort Elliot, and Rath City were among Cook's Great Plains haunts. His accounts of the 1878 Hunters War against Comanche leader Black Horse and the battle of Yellow House Canyon near present-day Lubbock are rare glimpses into the last great effort of the Comanche people to maintain their way of life. He eventually found employment as a government scout and guide with the army.In later years, Cook recorded his adventures in a modest volume, "The Border and the Buffalo", first published in a small edition in 1907.Historians quickly recognized it as one of the most important first-hand accounts about buffalo hunting ever written. The organization of hunts, camp routines, and marketing of the buffalo hides are all described in detail. Award-winning author and Texas historian James L. Haley provides a new foreword in this reprint edition of this classic of Texana.

Life of Billy Dixon is a compelling narrative of the ""wild, free life"" on the Great Plains frontier. Ride with Billy Dixon to a high point on the plains and look out over a nearly solid mass of buffalo that stretches in every direction as far as the eye can see. Stand with Billy Dixon at Adobe Walls, in the unsettled Texas Panhandle, as hundreds of Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne warriors on horseback charge out of the pre-dawn darkness toward a few dozen buffalo hunters. Crouch down in desperation with Billy Dixon at the Buffalo Wallow Fight as he and a few wounded and dying men lie in a shallow depression on the plains surrounded by howling Indians. In the Life of Billy Dixon the Great Plains frontier is seen through the knowing eyes of a participant who lived that frontier experience and who fortunately left an accurate and engaging record for those who followed.

The ghost port of Indianola is the subject of a gripping book that is of prime interest to anyone interested in knowing what life was like in coastal Texas during the nineteenth century. 1978 Summerfield G. Roberts Award.

As many as 9,5000 men of Hispanic heritage fought in the United States' Civil War. In Texas, the bitter conflict deeply divided the Tejanos– Texans of Mexican heritage. An estimated 2,500 fought in the ranks of the Confederacy while 950, including some Mexican nationals, fought for the Stars and Stripes, Vaqueros in Blue & Gray, originally published in 1976, is the story of these Tejanos who participated in the Civil War.This valuable resource for both the history of the Civil War and for the important role of the Tejanos in the history of Texas relates the various battles and skirmishes at Eagle Pass, Laredo, Carrizo (Zapata), Los Patricios, Las Rucias, the final Confederate expedition against Brownsville, and the last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch.Included is the story of the Tejanoswho fought in the Union Army and saw action in Louisiana and in the Rio Grande Valley.This new edition of the history of these vaqueros contains the first comprehensive list, containing almost 4,000 names, ever compiled of the Confederate and Union Hispanics from Texas who served in the war.Vaqueros in Blue & Gray presents a stirring saga of these brave people, their land, and their epic role in the Civil War and in the history of Texas.

During the course of the Second World War, the United States Army raised and maintained eighty-nine combat divisions, including sixteen armored divisions. Most of those units were created during the war and served only for the duration of the conflict. After going overseas and fighting to achieve victory, most of the World War II divisions were disbanded and faded into obscurity. This heavily illustrated narrative is the story of one of those units, the 12th Armored Division, which trained on the plains of West Texas at Camp Barkeley near Abilene. From its initial action, to the liberation of Nazi death camps, to the ultimate victory and peace, the division's story serves as a vehicle to study the many temporary army units that served our country during its most trying time.

In a remote corner of West Texas in 1942, the dreaded western diamondback rattlesnake, was awarded the unique distinction of having a mighty airfield named in his honor. Although the installation originally bore the official title of Pyote Army Airfield, the massive quantity of serpents encountered during the construction of the base quickly earned it the nickname of ""The Rattlesnake Bomber Base."" For the thousands of military men and women who served on the airfield and the additional thousands of civilians who worked there, what is now only a ghostly ruin will always be a vibrant and undying monument to a brief time when men and snakes and giant silvery bombers all came together on the West Texas desert to share a legendary chapter of American history. This book tells the story of what happened when an American bomber base aptly named for a serpent arose, Brigadoon-like, from the sun-baked caliche desert located just east of the fabled Pecos River and just west of nearly every place else. Although the huge airfield was eventually to sprawl over nearly three thousand acres of Texas hardscrabble, its important and colorful history should by no means be considered merely a regional wartime episode. What happed at Pyote, Texas, before, during, and after World War II represents instead a microcosm of what took place all across the North American continent.

The Thurber coal district sprang to life in the late 1880s in northern Erath County, Texas, some seventy miles west of Fort Worth. The mines were opened by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company to fuel the locomotives of it's railway, whose tracks crossed the state from Marshall to El Paso. The company also built the town of Thurber to service the mines. It then imported workers from distant points, eventually including some twenty nationalities, whose old country ways contrasted sharply with neighboring farm life. John Spratt grew to manhood in Mingus, just three miles north of Thurber during the 1920s. His chronicle of the Thurber district is not only a nostalgic trip back in time but also a case study of the impact of technological change on one part of modern America.

Many defenders of slavery have maintained that the slaves in Texas were well-treated and happy, but as a former slave remarked, ""Tisn't he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is - 'tis he who has endured."" Here are the tales of those who have endured - a collection of the voices of the ex-slaves themselves, recalling what their lives were like under slavery. Over one hundred former slaves describe their slavemasters, their work, runaway slaves, their recollections of the Civil War and, finally, the coming of freedom. The narratives were collected by WPA interviewers in the late 1930s and subsequently edited by Ron Tyler and Lawrence R. Murphy. ""The Slave Narratives of Texas"" is a highly informative and readable book that provides a valuable history of the institution of slavery in Texas. It is also a profoundly moving text that yields great insight into the full impact of slavery upon human lives.

The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas is the story of Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co., a David-Goliath case study of the world's first Dr Pepper bottling plant and the only one that has always used pure cane sugar in spite of compelling reasons to switch sweeteners. The book traces the story from the founder's birth through the contemporary struggles of a tiny independent, family-owned franchise against industry giants. Owners of the plant have been touched by every major social, economic, and political issue of the past 114 years, and many of those forces threatened the survival of the plant. The Dublin plant's 100th birthday in 1991 was a turning point because the national media created an identity so unique that it has taken on a life of its own. Thanks to the Travel Channel, Food Network, Texas Monthly, Southern Living, and others, the Dublin plant and museum attract tens of thousands of tourists every year, and Dublin Dr Pepper is consumed around the world through Internet sales. ""The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas"" tells how a small plant ignored most of the cherished rules of production and marketing - and succeeded - in spite of not speeding up production, not expanding its franchise area, not cutting production costs, and not adapting to changing times.

During the first quarter of the 20th century, the major naval powers of the world built hundreds of Dreadnought-style battleships. Today there is only one. The battleship Texas was for a time the most powerful weapon on earth. When it was commissioned in 1914, the 14-inch guns were the largest in the world. This technological marvel of the time served with the British Grand Fleet in World War I and was the flagship of the entire U.S. Navy between the two World Wars. During the Second World War, an older Texas, past its prime, supported amphibious invasions in North Africa, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The ship and her crew were preparing for the invasion of Japan when the war ended and the Texas came home. No longer needed to defend her country, the Texas was saved from the scrap yard to become our nation's first historic ship museum in 1948. Now lying peacefully in her berth at the San Jacinto State Park near Houston, the battleship Texas is still serving her country - teaching instead of fighting. The Texas is the only battleship remaining in the world today that served in World War I and the only ship remaining of any type that served in both World Wars. This is the story of the battleship Texas and the brave men who walked its decks.

Texas ""a whole other country"" - a slogan that promotes tourism as much within the Lone Star State as elsewhere - is familiar to native Texans and those adopted sons and daughters who ""got here just as quickly as they could."" Texas is as varied as East Texas timberland, hundreds of miles of seashore, prairies of the Central and High Plains, and the dry desert of far West Texas. When traveling abroad and asked, ""Where are you from?"" residents of forty-nine of the United States usually respond, ""the USA."" Nearly every citizen of the Lone Star State will answer ""Texas!"" The world encourages such chauvinism. Mass media celebrates and exploits Texas and Texans in television and motion pictures about the Alamo, Texas Rangers, the oil industry, and athletics, to name only a few genre. Texans' pride in their distinctiveness increases when their state is paraded - or satired - and they consciously ""pass it on"" to succeeding generations. But what does it mean to be a Texan? How did Texas come to be as it is? ""Texas: A Compact History"" provides answers to such questions about Texans and Texas. It tells the story of Texas history and provides thoughtful interpretations about the state's development, all with the general reader in mind - in a brief, easily read narrative.

The longest field goal in the history of football was kicked in Texas. But did you know it was love that first led a Swedish soccer player to Texas, where he still lives more than thirty years after his record-setting 69-yard field goal? That story is just one of dozens of unusual and behind-the-scenes stories veteran sports writer and broad-caster Al Pickett has compiled in more than twenty years of covering sports in Texas. Did you know that a tragedy on that same day that Ove Johansson kicked his record field goal changed University of Houston coach Art Briles' life forever? Did you know the greatest high school football coach in Texas history never played high school football himself? Or a case of deja vu helped a Texan win the Masters golf championship? After each chapter of "The Greatest Texas Sports Stories You've Never Heard", sports fans in the Lone Star State are certain to say, "I didn't know that."

Jeff Hamilton, only thirteen when purchased in 1853 by Sam Houston at a slave auction in Huntsville, Texas, was Houston's personal body servant during the period Houston was U.S. Senator, during both governorships, and was with Houston at his death. Originally published in 1940 shortly before Hamilton died at age 100, these memoirs contain Hamilton's fascinating and intimate viewpoints of the important issues during the last years of Houston's life.Aware of Hamilton's narrative abilities and of the historical importance of his first-hand accounts of one of our nation's most prominent figures, the 1936 Centennial Association of Texas commissioned Lenoir Hunt, author of ""Bluebonnets and Blood"" to interview Hamilton to ""save for posterity his rare recollections...one of the very few men now living who passed through the hates and passions of the 1850s and 1860s and who may give us an eyewitness picture of life and conditions in that eventful era."" And what a picture! In artless simplicity he stuns readers with his view of slavery: Hamilton saw ""most of the meanness as well as the good things that were going on about me...there are not many boys who have the distinction of being whipped by one of the great men of history. ""Containing revealing and intimate anecdotes nowhere else published, ""My Master"" is a valuable contribution to American folklore and history. In ""Hamilton"", Lenoir Hunt found ""a guileless old soul who could give me from an entirely new angle a simple account of the stirring times in which he lived...an aged Boswell anxious to tell the inside story of the colorful empire-maker who had liberated a people and who directly and indirectly had added more than a million square miles to the area of the United States.

Jose Antonio Navarro (1795-1871) played a central role in Texas history. A close associate of and facilitator for Stephen F. Austin, he was a signatory of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico, an important figure in the drafting of the Texas Constitution, and a State Senator. At the end of his life, the name of Jose Antonio Navarro was a household word in San Antonio and was well-known and respected across Texas. However, in later years, Navarro never received the recognition due him as one of the most influential of the founding fathers of Texas. Navarro's narratives, written between 1853 and 1857, constitute the first Tejano publication of Texas history.

Cater's reminiscences of his Civil War experiences, simply titled ""As It Was"", comprises a superbly detailed and colorful description of a soldier's life in the ranks of the Third Texas Cavalry and the Nineteenth Louisiana Infantry.In the early chapters of ""As It Was"", Cater describes his youthful experiences, including his family life, education, hunting, and other pleasant pastimes, plantation activities and relationships with slaves, as well as social conditions. These chapters are valuable for their honest views of life in the late antebellum northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas.In early May 1861 a wealthy Rusk County planter, Richard H. Cumby, began recruiting a company of volunteers to serve as cavalrymen. More than one hundred men, including Douglas John Cater, answered the call.Representing the cream of Rusk County's young male population, they would be designated as Company B of Col. Elkanah Greer's Third Texas Cavalry, formed the following month in Dallas. Cater served with the Third Texas Cavalry in the Battle of Wilson's Creek and Elkhorn Tavern.In June 1862, Cater transferred to the Nineteenth Louisiana Infantry to be with his brother Rufus, and remained with that unit until the end of the war. He participated in the Battles of Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Franklin, and Nashville.

Black Americans arrived in West Texas in the early sixteenth century and nearly five centuries later continue to contribute to the region that shares so many characteristics with the western United States. Despite that distinguishing feature, no published study covers the lives of African Americans in West Texas. This volume seeks to fill that gap. ""Slavery to Integration"" consists of twelve articles depicting the basic themes and topics of the black American experience in West Texas. Drawing articles from the West Texas Historical Association Year Book, the editors, Bruce A. Glasrud, Paul H. Carlson, and Tai D. Kreidler, selected well-written and enjoyable articles on the basis of chronology, topic, readability, scholarship, and interest. They include such topics as slavery, black cattlemen, buffalo soldiers, race relations, urban centers, education, desegregation, and integration. Read individually, each article explores an important aspect of African American history in West Texas and, read in aggregate, they cover black West Texas history broadly.