Midland was a young farming and ranching community on the southern edge of the Llano Estacado when the real-photo postcard era began near the opening of the 20th century. Businesses, residents, and promoters embraced this new technology to produce images capturing Midland's unusual rural-and-cosmopolitan mix. As postcards changed to linen and chrome, Midland also underwent dramatic changes. The city on the plains worked hard to become an indispensable part of the vast 1920s Permian Basin o...

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award**A New York Times Notable Book**Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award*This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revela...

Evil Among Them"Skinwalker" is the Navajo term for a demon in human form. But no mythical beast was as frightening as the true-life fiend who for four years spread fear throughout the deserts of the Shiprock, New Mexico area. The nightmare began on Thanksgiving 1996, when a feast of horror was served up to Joseph Fleming, 24, and Matthew Trecker, 18. Both young men were stabbed and slashed to death in an alleged attempt to cover up a robbery.Body CountThe reign of t...

Though the Republic of Texas existed as a sovereign nation for just nine years, the legacy lives on in the names that distinguish the landscape of the Lone Star State. Austin, Houston, Travis, Lamar, Seguin, Burnet, Bowie, Zavala, Crockett--these historical giants, often at odds, fought through their differences to achieve freedom from Mexico and Santa Anna, establishing a republic fit to be the twenty-eighth state to join the Union. In nineteen historical tales, Jeffery Robenalt chronicle...

From the 1890s through the 1920s, the postcard was an extraordinarily popular means of communication, and many of the postcards produced during this 'golden age' can today be considered works of art. Postcard photographers traveled the length and breadth of the nation snapping photographs of busystreet scenes, documenting local landmarks, and assembling crowds of local townspeople only too happy to pose for a picture. These images, printed as postcards and sold in general stores across the...

By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses.While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the po...

Many people are surprised to learn that the city of Amarillo was actually founded twice. Originally settled by J. T. Berry in April 1887 and known as Oneida, the site of the town was located on such low ground that many residents feared it was susceptible to flooding. In 1888, one concerned resident named Henry B. Sanborn began buying land a mile east of the site as a potential place to relocate the town. In 1889, the town's fears came to fruition when heavy rains flooded the original town...

"I grow up a dirt farmer and retired a dirt farmer. Never got rich and didn't want to be. My childhood stomping ground is now concrete, stores and houses. I remember the good times and bad. It was not the money we made but how to stretch that last dime. It was not the wind, rain or snow. It was about the love that flow. It was not the hot sunshine nor the clouds that hung low. It was the grace of God that help us swang that hoe. I want my grandchildren to understand. My grands, your grands...

South of Phoenix�s South Mountain, west of Interstate 10, north of the Gila River Indian Community, and east of Arizona state land lies the picturesque village of Ahwatukee-Foothills, home to some 87,000 people. Its proximity to adjacent cities, cultural centers, shopping, and dining combines with these natural boundaries to give the area its beautiful topography, sense of peaceful isolation, and high desirability as a great place to live, work, and play. But long before there was a freewa...

Muskogee was formed in 1872, when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT or 'the Katy') established a depot on an open plain just a few miles to the south of the confluence of the Arkansas, Grand, and Verdigris Rivers in Indian Territory. A small settlement there soon grew to become the center of political and commercial activity in the territory prior to Oklahoma becoming a state in 1907. Muskogee, once known as the 'Queen City of the Southwest,' enjoyed major growth after statehood due ...

In Sutherland Springs, Texas, Richard B. McCaslin explores the rise and fall of this rural community near San Antonio primarily through the lens of its aspirations to become a resort spa town, because of its mineral water springs, around the turn of the twentieth century. Texas real estate developers, initially more interested in oil, brought Sutherland Springs to its peak as a resort in the early twentieth century, but failed to transform the farming settlement into a resort town. The dec...

Today Fort Lancaster sits as a ghostly ruin in west Texas, far removed from any major highway. However, this frontier post once played a major role in the protection of the primary southern route to California after the discovery of gold. Built along Live Oak Creek near the junction with the Pecos, Fort Lancaster was established in 1855 as one of a chain of posts along the Military Road from San Antonio to El Paso. Until the establishment of Fort Stockton by troops from Fort Lancaster, thi...