Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest – serie

Horned lizards, or horny toads, as they are popularly known throughout the West, have long had a particular mystique in American folklore. The ancient people of the Southwest, the Anasazi and the Mimbres, depicted the little lizard on pottery and in petroglyphs. In more recent times, it represented health and happiness in the symbology of Native Americans. Among Americans today, the horny toad has an almost legendary appeal. Many westerners remember times when the lizards were plentiful and children kept them on string leashes or in boxes as pets. Dried horned lizards were sold in the roadside curio shops along the nations major highways. More recently, as the lizards habitat has shrunk and as imported fire ants have supplanted their favored prey, the numbers of horned lizards have declined drastically. In many regions where the little creatures once abounded, they are no longer seen. In Texas, two of the three native species, the Texas horned lizard and the mountain short-horned lizard, are now designated as threatened. Jane Manaster has written this book for a general audience, but she discusses all aspects of the lizards biology as well as the horned lizards place in the culture of the West. Most of all, she has written it to attract attention to this little animal that deserves our respect and protection.

Carlson writes well in a style that lends itself to an understanding of how man got to the high plains, and what he did once he arrived. Highly recommended reading' - New Mexico Historical Notebook"". Humans have visited the Texas High Plains, and in particular the upper Brazos River region, for nearly twelve thousand years. At the site of the Lubbock Lake Landmark in the long Yellow House Draw, they camped, hunted game, and sought shelter from harsh winter weather. In this brief, readable history, Paul H. Carlson surveys the Lubbock Lake Landmarks long geologic past, placing emphasis on human activity in the region and showing how early people adapted to shifting environmental conditions and changing animal resources. Yet this book is more than a history of the Landmark. Carlson places this significant national archaeological site in broad perspective, connecting it to geology and history in the larger upper Brazos River drainage system and, by extension, the central Llano Estacado. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carlson consulted geological records; paleontological, anthropological, and archaeological reports; astrometrical and climatological studies; and, histories of the region to reach back through deep time to explore the significance of the region to life on the Texas High Plains. 'From the edge of eternity ...astronomy, geology, anthropology, and history converge, forming the High Plains. An exciting library addition, classroom guide, or reference book, Paul Carlsons easy-reading study is an adventure for everyone who explores the unique character of the Texas High Plains' - Eddie Guffee, former curator of the Llano Estacado Museum. Paul H. Carlson is professor of history at Texas Tech University. He has published many articles and several books, including ""The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture"" (Texas Tech 2000) and ""The Plains Indians"".

'Carlson writes well in a style that lends itself to an understanding of how man got to the high plains, and what he did once he arrived. Highly recommended reading' - ""New Mexico Historical Notebook"". Humans have visited the Texas High Plains, and in particular the upper Brazos River region, for nearly twelve thousand years. At the site of the Lubbock Lake Landmark in the long Yellow House Draw, they camped, hunted game, and sought shelter from harsh winter weather. In this brief, readable history, Paul H. Carlson surveys the Lubbock Lake Landmarks long geologic past, placing emphasis on human activity in the region and showing how early people adapted to shifting environmental conditions and changing animal resources. Yet this book is more than a history of the Landmark. Carlson places this significant national archaeological site in broad perspective, connecting it to geology and history in the larger upper Brazos River drainage system and, by extension, the central Llano Estacado. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Carlson consulted geological records; paleontological, anthropological, and archaeological reports; astrometrical and climatological studies; and histories of the region to reach back through deep time to explore the significance of the region to life on the Texas High Plains. 'From the edge of eternity ...astronomy, geology, anthropology, and history converge, forming the High Plains. An exciting library addition, classroom guide, or reference book, Paul Carlsons easy-reading study is an adventure for everyone who explores the unique character of the Texas High Plains' - Eddie Guffee, former curator of the Llano Estacado Museum. Paul H. Carlson is professor of history at Texas Tech University. He has published many articles and several books, including ""The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture"" (Texas Tech 2000) and ""The Plains Indians"".

This title is winner of Violet Crown Award, Writers League of Texas, 2008. For more than a decade, Marcia Kaylakie traveled Texas from the Panhandle to Big Bend country, from the Piney Woods to the Gulf, discovering thousands of quilts in towns from Alpine to Austin, Dimmitt to Dallas, and myriad other Texas communities large and small. Hidden away in closets, trunks, and attics, the quilts Kaylakie found are not only heirlooms but also, owing to their histories, irreplaceable emblems of Texas heritage. This book showcases thirty-four quilts. Through them and their stories, the cultural development of the state unfolds. Most will never be exhibited or appear in any other permanent record. All Texas-made, they span the state geographically and range from the 1870s to the turn of the twenty-first century. As examples of what Texas quilting was and is as craft - and as cultural narrative - these quilts preserve a unique and compelling aspect of Texas history.

One hundred thirty-two species, subspecies, and varieties of cacti may be found in Texas. About one hundred of them occur in the states Trans-Pecos region, one of the most cactus-rich areas of the United States, but at least one kind can be found in every county of the state. This volume is an identification guide to the genera, species, and varieties of Texas cacti, with maps showing the distribution of each. Based on the comprehensive reference ""Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Regions"" (2004), by A. Michael Powell and James F. Weedin, this field guide provides briefer, less detailed treatments of the entire states species for educated general readers. More than three hundred beautiful full-color photographs of the cacti in flower and in fruit, each placed with its description in the text, highlight the book. Readers may identify cacti using color photographs of the plants, keys, distribution maps, and descriptions of the vegetative characters, flowers, and fruits. The introduction - full of details about the biology and morphology of the family Cactaceae and the uses, horticulture, and conservation of cacti - is an important reference for general readers. A glossary of cactus terms, an exhaustive list of literature, and a thorough index complete the book. This guide was designed for use by naturalists and hobbyists as well as serious students. Visitors to the national parks, state parks, and other natural areas of Texas will find it essential to identifying the cacti.

Plant life in Big Bend National Park is incredibly diverse. The wide range of habitats within the park - desert, foothills, mountains and moist woodlands, river canyons and floodplain - as well as the Big Bends three major blooming seasons of spring, summer, and fall - guarantee a stunning show of botanical variety throughout the year. ""Little Big Bend"" is not a traditional guide to the areas common plants. Although it features many species that are characteristic of the Chihuahuan Desert environment, species such as orchids are also included precisely because they are uncommon or rare and therefore a special thrill to find. Plants not seen in other wildflower guides, or those with a limited geographic range that the reader will less likely encounter elsewhere, are pictured here. This guide describes 109 species found in the United States only in Trans-Pecos Texas; 62 of these occur only in the Big Bend portion of the Trans-Pecos, and 24 of them only within Big Bend National Park. Of the 252 featured species, 71 are considered sensitive plants; in Texas, 28 are classified as critically imperiled, 18 as imperiled, and 25 as vulnerable. The emphasis of this book is on the little in the Big Bend, the overlooked small plants or inconspicuous tiny flowers of larger plants that so often go unnoticed. In a landscape so immense, these plants may be right before our eyes but seldom seen, or they may be tucked away and quite difficult to find. Here, in glowing photographs and insightful text, Roy Morey has brought them to light.

A century ago, when Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona outlawed steer roping contests, there was one place a southwestern roper could go to hone his skills: Cowboy Park, the arena established in 1907 in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. During the formative years of rodeo that preceded the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, Cowboy Park promoted the sport of steer roping and provided a ready training ground for up-and-coming champions. From its inception until growing political turmoil in Mexico brought the enterprise to a halt, Cowboy Park kept the sport alive and fostered celebrity - its alumni swept the first prizes in Calgary and continued to dominate for some years. This unique institution, despite its significant influence on the future of rodeo, has until now received scant attention. Through the history he has recovered and photographs - many published here for the first time - John Baxter documents and illuminates the era of Cowboy Park and the early champions who won their spurs there.

Its strains may be haunting, but western swing is alive and on the upswing, enjoying a renaissance among musicians too young to recall or even comprehend its heyday. For them, the term may evoke the nationally known country music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and the Spade Cooley Band. Yet on the local level, western swing bands dominated the airways and dance halls in every town and rural setting throughout the Southwest in the 1930s and by the 1940s had spread their influence and music to California. Jean A. Boyd presents the history and music of those bands that did not garner national fame, but were local sensations to thousands of southwesterners hungry for diversion and good dancing during the depression and World War II. Devoted fans who travel the festival circuit will surely appreciate the histories and recollections Boyd has carefully compiled, while musicologists will welcome her musical analysis and her transcriptions of recorded performances. Performers, as well, may learn new licks and tricks from the ubiquitous swing jazz artists of a time not yet forgotten, preserved here for another generation’s enjoyment and edification.

Its strains may be haunting, but western swing is alive and on the upswing, enjoying a renaissance among musicians too young to recall or even comprehend its heyday. For them, the term may evoke the nationally known country music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and the Spade Cooley Band. Yet on the local level, western swing bands dominated the airways and dance halls in every town and rural setting throughout the Southwest in the 1930s and by the 1940s had spread their influence and music to California. Jean A. Boyd presents the history and music of those bands that did not garner national fame, but were local sensations to thousands of southwesterners hungry for diversion and good dancing during the depression and World War II. Devoted fans who travel the festival circuit will surely appreciate the histories and recollections Boyd has carefully compiled, while musicologists will welcome her musical analysis and her transcriptions of recorded performances. Performers, as well, may learn new licks and tricks from the ubiquitous swing jazz artists of a time not yet forgotten, preserved here for another generation’s enjoyment and edification.

In December 1860, along a creek in northwest Texas, a group of U.S. Cavalry under Sgt. John Spangler and Texas Rangers led by Sul Ross raided a Comanche hunting camp, killed several Indians, and took three prisoners. One was the woman they would identify as Cynthia Ann Parker, taken captive from her white family as a child a quarter century before. The reports of these events had implications far and near. For Ross, they helped make a political career. For Parker, they separated her permanently and fatally from her Comanche husband and two of her children. For Texas, they became the stuff of history and legend. In reexamining the historical accounts of the “Battle of Pease River,” especially those claimed to be eyewitness reports, Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum expose errors, falsifications, and mysteries that have contributed to a skewed understanding of the facts. For political and racist reasons, they argue, the massacre was labeled a battle. Firsthand testimony was fabricated; diaries were altered; the official Ranger report went missing from the state adjutant general’s office. Historians, as a result, have unwittingly used fiction as the basis for 150 years of analysis. Carlson and Crum’s careful historiographical reconsideration seeks not only to set the record straight but to deal with concepts of myth, folklore, and memory, both individual and collective. Myth, Memory, and Massacre peels away assumptions surrounding one of the most infamous episodes in Texas history, even while it adds new dimensions to the question of what constitutes reliable knowledge.

Over thousands of years, Native Americans in what is now Texas passed down their ways of roasting, boiling, steaming, salting, drying, grinding and blending. From one generation to another, these ancestors of Texas’s Mexican American community lent their culinary skills to combining native and foreign ingredients into the flavour profile of indigenous Texas Mexican cooking today.Building on what he learned from his own family, Adán Medrano captures this distinctive flavour profile in 100 kitchen-tested recipes, each with step-by-step instructions. Equally as careful with history, he details how hundreds of indigenous tribes in Texas gathered and hunted food, planted gardens and cooked.Offering new culinary perspective on well-known dishes such as enchiladas and tamales, Medrano explains the complexities of aromatic chiles and how to develop flavour through technique as much as ingredients. Sharing freely the secrets of lesser-known culinary delights, such as turcos, a sweet pork pastry served as dessert, and posole, giant white corn treated with calcium hydroxide, he illuminates the mouth-watering interconnectedness of culture and cuisine.The recipes and personal anecdotes shared in Truly Texas Mexican illuminate the role that cuisine plays in identity and community.

In the 1880s, there wasn't much in Anson, Texas, in the way of entertainment for the area’s cowhands. But Star Hotel operator M. G. Rhodes changed that when he hosted a Grand Ball the weekend before Christmas. A restless traveling salesman, rancher, and poet from New York named William Lawrence Chittenden, a guest at the Star Hotel, was so impressed with the soiree that he penned his observances in the poem “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball.”Re-enacted annually since 1934 based on Chittenden’s poem, the contemporary dances attract people from coast to coast, from Canada, and from across Europe and elsewhere. Since 1993 Grammy Award-winning musical artist Michael Martin Murphey has played at the popular event.Far more than a history of the Jones County dance, Paul Carlson analyses the long poem, defining the many people and events mentioned and explaining the Jones County landscape Chittenden lays out in his celebrated work. The book covers the evolution of cowboy poetry and places Chittenden and his poem chronologically within the ever-changing western genre.Dancin’ in Anson: A History of the Texas Cowboys' Christmas Ball is a novel but refreshing look at a cowboy poet, his poem, and a joyous Christmas-time family event that traces its roots back nearly 130 years.

The Great Western Trail (GWT) is a nineteenth-century cattle trail that originated in northern Mexico, ran west parallel to the Chisholm Trail, traversed the United States for some two thousand miles, and terminated after crossing the Canadian border. Yet through time, misinformation, and the perpetuation of error, the historic path of this once-crucial cattle trail has been lost. Finding the Great Western Trail documents the first multi-community effort made to recover evidence and verify the route of the Great Western Trail.The GWT had long been celebrated in two neighbouring communities: Vernon, Texas, and Altus, Oklahoma. Separated by the Red River, a natural border that cattle trail drovers forded with their herds, both Vernon and Altus maintained a living trail history with exhibits at local museums, annual trail-related events, ongoing narratives from local descendants of drovers, and historical monuments and structures. So when Western Trail Historical Society members in Altus challenged the Vernon Rotary Club to mark the trail across Texas every six miles, the effort soon spread along the trail in part through Rotary networks from Mexico, across nine US states, and into Saskatchewan, Canada.This book is the story of finding and marking the trail, and it stands as a record of each community’s efforts to uncover their own GWT history. What began as local bravado transformed into a grass-roots project that, one hopes, will bring the previously obscured history of the Great Western Trail to light.

These stories come from a variety of Southwestern states — as well as Latin America — and demonstrate how the magical world of witchcraft and the supernatural connects Spain to Latin America, and Latin America to North America. This rich tradition of supernatural tales illuminates an unexplored aspect of the American Southwest’s Hispanic heritage. The collection also includes biographical information on the narrators and a glossary highlighting the regional Spanish dialect of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, USA.

The Brazos River and the Rio Grande: what lies between are physical and cultural geographies stretching south from the Texas Hill Country to the border of Mexico, west across the Trans-Pecos, and up through Northern New Mexico into Colorado. Photographer Jerod Foster and poet John Poch praise and wonder along these varied waterways and across the landscapes they host. The result is communion—a synergy of imagery in story and story in imagery, finding unexpected form, depths, and meaning much as rivers themselves are honed in the pull of gravity and texture.

From an early age, Chef Adán Medrano understood the power of cooking to enthrall, to grant artistic agency, and to solidify identity as well as succor and hospitality. In this second cookbook, he documents and explains native ingredients, traditional techniques, and innovations in casero (home-style) Mexican American cooking in Texas. "Don't Count the Tortillas" offers over 100 kitchen-tested recipes, including newly created dishes that illustrate what is trending in homes and restaurants across Texas. Each recipe is followed by clear, step-by-step instructions, explanation of cooking techniques, and description of the dishes' cultural context. Dozens of color photographs round out Chef Medrano's encompassing of a rich indigenous history that turns on family and, more widely, on community—one bound by shared memories of the art that this book honors.

Opus in Brick and Stone: The Architectural and Planning Heritage of Texas Tech University explores the campus architecture of the Texas Tech University System, which was inspired by the sixteenth-century Plateresque Spanish Renaissance architectural style. This book details the parallels between the buildings of Texas Tech and those of their forebears from this relatively short period in Spanish architectural history, while exploring the remarkable stories behind the construction itself. A crucial element of Opus in Brick and Stone is to provide a visual chronicle of the campus's unique architectural style. In addition to historic and contemporary photography, the book also includes a comparative drawing section that, through original common scale drawings of physical structures, explores in detail historic design sources alongside their campus counterparts. Opus in Brick and Stone also tells a fascinating history: included is biographic information on figures such as Houston architect William Ward Watkin, who was convinced that this Spanish architectural style aligned well with the South Plains of Texas, and later College Architect Nolan Barrick, a Watkin protégé. Through the stories of these and other key figures, readers come to understand how it was only through the vision of specific individuals that this fascinating architectural heritage came to be situated upon the plains of West Texas. The architectural history of Texas Tech University, then, is a carefully crafted, purposeful history. Opus in Brick and Stone celebrates and elevates this little-known history into a tradition that can be appreciated by all Red Raiders, past and present.

One hundred fifty years ago, Texas was very different. A rural population was spread thinly across the eastern and central parts of the state, and vast lands in the western regions were still undisturbed.Texas's habitats and biota changed dramatically as its population increased and people spread across the landscape. In Texas Natural History: A Century of Change (2002), David Schmidly chronicled the changes that occurred during the twentieth century. In this second edition, Schmidly is joined by colleagues Robert and Lisa Bradley of Texas Tech University to extend that story over the first two decades of the twenty-first century.The focus of Texas Natural History in the 21st Century continues to be on the mammalian fauna of the state, and it includes a reprinting of Vernon Bailey's 1905 "The Biological Survey of Texas" with new annotations and updates. In the rest of the book, the authors discuss changes in landscapes, land use, and the status of Texas mammals in the last hundred years. The authors present current challenges to conserving the natural history of Texas and suggest long-term solutions to those challenges, including actions focused on both private and public lands.As Texas approaches the daunting challenge of conserving its wildlife, Texas Natural History in the 21st Century serves as a rallying cry for addressing the scenarios imperiling Texas's natural history in our present day and in the future.

In 1936, the Texas centennial was celebrated across the state. In The Frontier Centennial, Jacob Olmstead argues that Fort Worth's celebration of the centennial represented a unique opportunity to reshape the city's identity and align itself with a progressive future. Olmstead draws out the Frontier Centennial from its inception as a commemorative fair to theme park enshrining the mythic West to show the various ways centennial planners, boosters, and civic leaders sought to use the celebration as a means to bolster the city's identity and image as a modern city of the American West. Olmstead's retelling of the Frontier Centennial looks at two distinctive processes. The first addresses the interplay of memory, identity, and image in the evolution of the celebration's commemorative messages. Fort Worth's image as a progressive western metropolis also impacted other areas, less central, to Frontier Centennial planning. Debates over how outsiders would interpret features of the celebration, carried on by club women and others, reveal the interest the citizenry held in upholding or contesting the city's modern image. Overlapping with the issues of memory and identity, the second process addresses how the larger narratives of the mythic West influenced the content of the celebration. Though drawn from actual events and people, the myth reduces the past to its "ideological essence." Mythmakers, like historians, draw upon facts to explain and give meaning to a particular worldview.

The Mallet Ranch, from its founding to the present, has followed the arc of most Texas ranches. It has experienced booms and busts, and its owners have fretted over droughts and floods as well as fights in courtrooms. Despite hardships that may have outnumbered successes, the Mallet, headquartered in Hockley County, Texas, perseveres to this day.But More Than Running Cattle is more than just a ranch tale. It is the story of a family both unique and conventional among Texas stock raisers. David M. DeVitt, like many before him, was not "born" to be a Texas cattleman. DeVitt began his career as a reporter in Brooklyn, New York, before he decided to leave that path behind to try his luck on the wide-open ranges of West Texas.David DeVitt passed down his hardy, independent spirit to his two daughters. Although Christine and Helen were raised in Fort Worth, both from a young age learned the lesson that the West Texas land—and the Mallet Ranch—were part of their souls. When their father died, the two sisters fought to retain control of the Mallet for the family.The discovery in 1938 of oil on the ranch, and the subsequent drilling of more than a thousand oil wells over the next few decades, transformed the Mallet from a struggling enterprise into one of the most profitable such entities in the nation. From that financial windfall sprung from the land, Christine and Helen generously reinvested back into the region. The two non-profit organizations founded by the DeVitt sisters have distributed more than $200 million.The story of the Mallet Ranch told within these pages illuminates and delves into this remarkable story of a family, their operation, and the land that made it all possible.

Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted about thirty years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township’s story where it belongs: along the continuum of settlement in Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of conscious efforts that helped Black pioneers develop Blackdom Township into a frontier boomtown“Blackdom” started as an inherited idea of a nineteenth-century Afrotopia. The idea of creating a Blackdom was refined within Black institutions as part of the perpetual movement of Black Colonization. In 1903, thirteen Black men, encouraged by the 1896 Plessy decision, formed the Blackdom Townsite Company and set out to make Blackdom a real place in New Mexico, where they were outside the reach of Jim Crow lawsMany believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However, new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued to exist throughout the twentieth century in other forms. During Blackdom’s boomtimes, in December 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from a regenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Nelson has uncovered new primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newly discovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or contextualized until now. Reoriented to Mexico’s “northern frontier,” one observes Black ministers, Black military personnel, and Black freemasons who colonized as part of the transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into the American West. Nelson’s concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a “Turnerian West,” but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian “Borderland.” Its history highlights a brief period and space that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom’s civic presence was not lengthy, its significance—and that of the Afro-Frontier—is an important window in the history of Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and the notion of an American West.

In 1919 there were just 6.7 million cars in America. There was no interstate system. The national park system was thirty-seven years young.In this fledgling environment for long-distance travel, H. A. Spallholz and family set out from Salem, New York, to see America's national parks. In his 1917 Haynes Roadster, Henry packed his family and a camera and headed west. From storied New England through Great Plains grasslands, up the Rocky Mountains and down the west coast, this book documents firsthand what America looked like from very early highways and byways. Collected here into a book for the first time, the Spallholz photographs are a fascinating picturesque time capsule of early twentieth century America. See its cities and monuments. See Yellowstone Park pristine and wild. See the dirt and muddy roads that connected our states and metropolises and the tremendous challenges that came with traversing them. See a young family energized and beleaguered by the length of the journey: 10,400 miles.These family photographs were lost for a generation before they were uncovered by Art Vaughan, a hobbyist photographer who was stationed in Portland, Maine, with the Coast Guard. He found the glass slides and original lamp projector in a Salvation Army shop. Years later, when he posted some of the photographs online, the Spallholz descendants recognized their grandfather's photographs and contacted Mr. Vaughan. This serendipitous story, some fifty years in the making, is documented herein.This book provides a unique view across generations of American travelers and belongs on the coffee table of anyone who loves photography, American history, and the great outdoors.

The Edge Rover chronicles the expansive life of Isaac Slover, a fur trapper who was born in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War and who ranged throughout the early American West. The variety and extensiveness of Slover's encounters among Indigenous peoples and the Hispanic Southwest distinguish his experience from that of other "mountain men" of his time.A lifespan from 1777 to 1854 meant that Isaac Slover saw a transformed America, and he endured through frequently shifting borders, particularly in what became the young country's southwest region. Among his numerous adventures are a youth consumed by the Revolutionary War in Western Pennsylvania, then later farming in Kentucky, trapping and trading in New Mexico, and finally making his way to Southern California. Throughout, Slover sifted between cultures, jumped across borders, navigated conflict, and hid along the margins of history.Sparse evidence documents Slover's adventures, but what remains is meticulously compiled here for the first time by Timothy E. Green, who grew up with fireside tales of the mountain man's exploits. At any given stage of his life, Isaac Slover can be situated at a critical juncture in the history of the West, roving beyond the edges and back again. The Edge Rover is therefore a welcome addition to early American West biographies, showing that boundaries, borders, and identities during this early period could be as fluid and wild as the land itself.

Birds of the Texas Coast: Photographs is the first large-format photography work covering the entire Lone Star coast and its representative bird life. Through Ron Grimes's dramatic photography of more than 200 coastal species, this book encompasses a deep and wide natural history of the region. The Texas Coast is one of North America's premier regions for bird life due to the diversity of its physical landscape, such as barrier islands and estuaries and its central geographic location within the Western Hemisphere. Longtime chronicler of the Texas coastal environment B. C. Robison provides the written text, which is organized according to the natural habitats that make up the coastal zone. Its 367-mile reach from Louisiana to Mexico traces through wetlands, lakes, ponds and bays, sandy shores, grasslands and prairie, upland forests, and the thornscrub world of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Each chapter deals with one habitat and presents color photographs of the prominent species that occur there. All the major families of Texas coastal birds are depicted: songbirds, waterfowl, marsh birds, herons and egrets, cranes, hawks and falcons, swifts and swallows, owls and harriers, eagles and kites, grassland birds, gulls and terns, pelicans and cormorants, and shorebirds such as plovers, sandpipers, oystercatchers, and skimmers, as well as many others. Birds of the Texas Coast will be a valuable addition to the birder's library of works on Texas bird life.

Since the frontiers of the American West were explored and settled, the horse has become its icon, representing freedom, individualism, toughness, determination, and the idiosyncratic way of life inherent to the region. The horse was a vital partner of the cowboy, Native American, and settler of this new frontier. As time went on, the image of the horse came to represent a new romanticism of the West, with many artists devoted to depicting the singular partnership between horse and cowboy. Building on their expertise in Western art and horses in particular, Heidi Brady and Scott White have collected pieces from artists who have spent their lives capturing and creating images of these majestic animals. The chapters, or profiles, were compiled from interviews with artists and are rendered in their own voices.A study of award-winning contemporary artists, Artists of the Horse: Capturing the Spirit of America's West profiles painters, photographers, and sculptors, each artist describing the circumstances that influenced how they approach the portrayal of the horse. Through different styles and perspectives, this book works to preserve the heritage of the Western way of life and the centrality of the horse in telling its story.

In 1936, the Texas centennial was celebrated across the state. In The Frontier Centennial, Jacob Olmstead argues that Fort Worth's celebration of the centennial represented a unique opportunity to reshape the city's identity and align itself with a progressive future. Olmstead draws out the Frontier Centennial from its inception as a commemorative fair to theme park enshrining the mythic West to show the various ways centennial planners, boosters, and civic leaders sought to use the celebration as a means to bolster the city's identity and image as a modern city of the American West. Olmstead's retelling of the Frontier Centennial looks at two distinctive processes. The first addresses the interplay of memory, identity, and image in the evolution of the celebration's commemorative messages. Fort Worth's image as a progressive western metropolis also impacted other areas, less central, to Frontier Centennial planning. Debates over how outsiders would interpret features of the celebration, carried on by club women and others, reveal the interest the citizenry held in upholding or contesting the city's modern image. Overlapping with the issues of memory and identity, the second process addresses how the larger narratives of the mythic West influenced the content of the celebration. Though drawn from actual events and people, the myth reduces the past to its "ideological essence." Mythmakers, like historians, draw upon facts to explain and give meaning to a particular worldview.

During the second half of the 19th century, Americans dramatically altered the landscape of the arid American West—especially its precious few rivers. Engineers built ever more ambitious dams, canals, diversions, and reservoirs until, by the dawn of the 20th century, only the federal government wielded the resources needed to continue the development. At the forefront of the federal effort was Frederick Haynes Newell: son of a rambling New England businessman, graduate of MIT, advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, and prophet for scientific conservation of natural resources. For more than twenty-five years, Newell defined the federal government's role in Western water. Newell's unlikely rise to power as the first leader of the Bureau of Reclamation and his subsequent fall from grace is a story not well remembered. His influence, however, is imprinted on every facet of the incomprehensibly complex system manipulating the West's water. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization." If the Bureau of Reclamation—with its landscape-scale infrastructure and herculean feats of water management—can be said to be the lengthened shadow of one man, that man is Frederick Haynes Newell.

Down in the Dirtchronicles more than fifty years of multidisciplinary artist Terry Allen's printmaking and visual storytelling. Rooted in West Texas yet reaching far beyond, Allen's work fuses image, text, music, and performance into layered narratives shaped by memory, geography, and personal mythologies. The book, anchored by the 2021–22 exhibition of the same name, explores how Allen's art inhabits the shifting space between fact and fiction, autobiography and invention.Peter S. Briggs traces Allen's evolution from early experiments at Cirrus Editions in Los Angeles to later collaborations at Landfall Press and Tamarind Institute, highlighting landmark works such as Juarez: A Simple Story—a multimedia suite combining lithographs, music, and text. Recurring themes include love, violence, humor, the American Southwest, and the tension between home and exile. Allen's imagery—beds, highways, deserts, saints, and outlaws—functions like fragments of stories that resist closure, encouraging viewers to assemble meaning from ambiguity.The book also situates Allen within the post–World War II printmaking revival, noting his embrace of technical experimentation, serial imagery, and collaborative processes with master printers. Essays examine how Allen's prints, like his songs and performances, blur boundaries between media while reflecting on place, memory, and identity.Ultimately, Down in the Dirt presents Allen as a restless storyteller whose work defies linear narratives, inviting audiences into a world where personal history, regional culture, and artistic invention collide across decades of creative output.