"The year was 1931 - well into the Great Depression and on the brink of the worst days of the Dust Bowl. Tascosa, once a booming Wild West town, complete with outlaws, cowboys, and gamblers, was all but deserted. Its only resident was Frenchie McCormick, a famous dance-hall girl from Tascosa's glory days. In 1931 she was a frail and lonely woman in her eighties, living in a tumble-down adobe shack and waiting for Tascosa to rise again." "This story is about Tascosa, Frenchie, the Christmas pageant of 1931, and twelve children stranded in a one-room school house by an untimely blizzard."--BOOK JACKET.
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.
Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.
Texas Myths and Legends 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. The more than a dozen stories answer questions such as: Is the "Navidad Wildman"—aka Bigfoot—alive and well in Texas? Was the creature in one Texas woman's freezer the legendary blood-sucking beast known as the chupacabra? Just what are the mysterious Marfa Lights? Manifestations of otherworldly beings? Can they be explained scientifically? Is Jefferson the most haunted city in Texas? Or should the title go to San Antonio, which has enough ghosts to warrant at least three advertised ghost hunt tours? From rumors of Jean Lafitte's buried treasures to the hanging of Chipita Rodriguez and the love story of Frenchy McCormick, Texas Myths and Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the state's most fascinating and compelling stories.
"The ranching boom of the 1880s made the Texas Panhandle town of Tascosa 'the cowboy capital of the world.' Through it passed many people, good and bad, who made history in the West. Yet when the large ranches broke up, Tascosa disappeared as quickly as it had risen"--Provided by publisher.
Among the famous ranch brands of Texas are the T Anchor, JA, Diamond Tail, 777, Bar C, and XIT. And the greatest of these was XITThe XIT Ranch of Texas. It was not the first ranch in West Texas, but after its formation in the eighteen-eighties it became the largest single operation in the cow country of the Old West and covered more than three million acres, all fenced. The state of Texas patented this huge rectangle of land, at the time considered by many to be part of "the great American desert," to the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company of Chicago, in exchange for funds to erect the state capitol building in Austin. This "desert" became a legend in the cattle business, and it remains today a memory to thousands who recall the era when mustangs and longhorns grazed beneath the brand of the XIT. The development and operation of this pastoral enterprise and its relation to the history of Texas is the subject of this great and widely discussed book by J. Evetts Haley, now made available to readers every where. It is the story of a wild prairie, roamed by Indians, buffalo, mustangs, and antelope, that became a country of railroads, oil fields, prosperous farms, and carefully bred herds of cattle. The XIT Ranch of Texas is the epic account of a ranching operation about which many know a little but only a few very much. It is the one volume that, more than any other, portrays the early-day cattle business of the West.
Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.
Winner, 2021 National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Western Heritage Award, Art/Photography Book (The Wrangler) Sometime in 1947, a letter arrived in the mailbox of Harold Dow Bugbee, already a well-known and highly sought illustrator for western pulp magazines and other publications. “Sir,” it began, “I have seen several of your pictures in the Cattleman. Sure like them and I am writing you to ask if you have all of your pictures in a book—if you do—we want to buy one.” “After seventy years of waiting,” writes Michael R. Grauer in this colorful survey of Bugbee’s life and career, “here is such a book.” Bugbee and his family arrived in Clarendon, Texas, in 1914, from Massachusetts. He helped his father with the 1,000-acre family ranch and eventually attended the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, where he studied architectural drawing. Subsequently, he enrolled at the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines, Iowa, but left after two years when the founder of the school told the young Texan that he had learned all the school had to offer. Bugbee avidly absorbed cowboy scenes and the lifestyle that birthed them. He filled canvases with colorful, authentic images that capture the spirit of the American West of the early to mid-1900s, especially in and near his beloved Texas Panhandle. By the 1930s, Bugbee was providing pen-and-ink sketches for magazines such as Ranch Romances, Western Stories, Country Gentleman, and Field and Stream. This richly illustrated overview of the man and his art provides a valuable and entertaining resource for collectors and students of western and Texas art.
