Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2015 i Texas Highways Magazine

JUST TWO MILES FROM SEYMOUR, A handful of paleontologists and volunteers meticulously scrape and brush flecks of red and gray dirt away from their latest discovery: a fossilized Dimetrodon that they’ve named Mary. The jumble of bones might confuse the untrained eye, but the excavators know exactly what they’re looking for as they prepare the skeleton for the short move to the Whiteside Museum of Natural History. At the museum in Seymour, located 50 miles southwest of Wichita Falls, staff members and volunteers will clean Mary’s fossilized bones, cast replicas, and study them for clues into Mary’s life and times—all the while demonstrating the process and their findings to museum visitors. Opened in June 2014, the Whiteside Museum is dedicated to exploring and interpreting the paleontological treasures of Baylor County…

PECANS PERMEATE THE SHADY TOWN of San Saba, emerging in pies, jams, and candies; infusing local coffee, beer, and steaks; forming a canopy over three lush parks; and providing a 1,200-trunk challenge to golfers plying the fairways of the San Saba River Golf Course. Here in the Pecan Capital of the World, where four- to five-million pounds are produced every year, it’s good to know how to crack open a nut. Thankfully, at the Great San Saba River Pecan Company store, in the midst of a 7,000-tree pecan grove, I found plenty of options. The Texan York Sheller looks like a big, red claw. Or, here’s a little aluminum squirrel that cracks the nut under its mouth when you push on its tail. Yet another cracker consists of four birch…

FOLKS FLOCK TO THE TINY EAST Texas arts enclave of Edom for several reasons. They come for its artisans, who make jewelry, pottery, and birdhouses; for its live music and arts festivals; and also to pick blueberries and blackberries each summer at Blueberry Hill Farms. As much as anything, though, visitors come to chow down on home-style cooking at the quintessential roadside eatery, The Shed Cafe. I know the way to The Shed as if I’m going to grandma’s. Most of the verdant, 19-mile drive from my Tyler home to Edom meanders west along FM 279. I pass the Coltharp-Beall House, a 19th-Century stagecoach stop and post office at Edom’s original site. Then I dip into the Neches River bottom, where the twolaner straightens out to cross a narrow concrete…

BIG BEND COUNTRY >El Paso Cinema Classics Celebrate the magic and nostalgia of cinema at El Paso’s Plaza Classic Film Festival, which screens an array of films in the beautifully restored 1930 Plaza Theatre. Taking place August 5-16, the festival will showcase 90 feature films, about 60 percent of them from before 1970, including hits like Gone With the Wind and Midnight Cowboy. Put on by the El Paso Community Foundation, the festival will also screen short films by local moviemakers in the Foundation Room, as well as screenings of contemporary documentaries, children’s films, and foreign films. There will be outdoor movies downtown and a screening of The Natural at Southwest University Park, home of the El Paso Chihuahuas. www.plazaclassic.com. HILL COUNTRY >Austin Pioneer Painter Often referred to as “the…

ONE LAST THOUGHT “There’s some big black clouds blowin’ in from the west, I’ve been drivin’ all day lord I sure could use some rest. There’s a motel up ahead where I can unwind, ’cause I sure love thunderstorms and neon signs.” —Texas musician Wayne Hancock, from his song “Thunderstorms and Neon Signs” To order a print of this photograph, call 866/962-1191, or visit www.texashighwaysprints.com.…

GOT SOMETHING TO SAY? OUR FAVORITE SOCIAL MEDIA OF THE MONTH... Next spring, I’m touring Route 66, come hell or high water. I’ve put it off too long. Dave Craft, San Antonio It is perfectly normal for a Texan to actually believe there is NO PLACE ELSE on the entire planet where you can see a big sky. Mary Sariti Comerford, Elgin Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram TEXAS Fun If you have a bucket list of “must-see” activities or children wanting to remember a fantastic family outing, we just saw TEXAS [July] on the opening night. Think: the backdrop of a canyon wall, the sunset, a cool breeze, lasers, pyrotechnics, equestrians, and, of course, a musical drama performed under the stars with dance. Simply outstanding and family friendly.…

Dinner guests can stroll a short distance from the restaurant to a lodge with marvelously comfortable rooms. JUST A FEW HOURS INTO OUR FIRST VISIT TO RANCHO Loma, it was clear that my husband and I were destined to return again and again. I told Marshall so, as we sat near the crackling flames of the fire pit, winding down with conversation and coffee after an extraordinary dinner at this remote ranch house restaurant. He nodded in happy agreement. Earlier that day, however, Marshall had asked me as we drove westward from Fort Worth, “Tell me again: What’s in Coleman, Texas?” It was a valid question, after all. I reminded him that our dining destination was actually 10 miles outside of Coleman, about an hour southeast of Abilene, and that…

The DISTANCE to CASTROVILLE San Antonio 30 miles; .5 hour Houston 220 miles; 3.5 hours Dallas 300 miles; 4.5 hours Midland 340 miles; 4.75 hours McAllen 260 miles; 3.75 hours SEATED AT A SOFTLY WHIRRING POTter’s wheel at Castroville Pottery, artisan Mark Dykes leans forward, his fingertips shaping a blob of morphing clay. “Right now I’m throwing the stems,” he explains, deftly forming the base-and-axis component of a wine goblet. “Working on a batch of 80— did the cups yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll put the pieces together.” In response to a query about the ceramic type, he adds, “It’s stoneware, the strongest, which requires the maximum temperature, almost 2,400 degrees, when we fire the pieces in the kiln—and also the right kind of clay.” On that note, Tim Kelley, the facility’s…

30º 00’ 12.09” N 99º 22’ 55.80” W Heading six miles southwest along Texas 39 from Hunt, travelers encounter a barbed-wire fence with wooden posts capped by upsidedown cowboy boots and other footwear. Most of the boots run along a roughly eighth-of-a-mile section on the west side, but a few pop up along the fence on the east side. Country lore holds that folks would put their boots on a fence to prevent rain from rotting the posts, honor the passing of a person or horse, or (before telephones) indicate that a rancher is home. For more information on nearby attractions, visit the Kerrville Convention and Visitors Bureau, kerrvilletexascvb.com.…

ENGINEER-TURNED-WINEmaker Raymond Haak and his wife, Gladys, didn’t intend to stir up controversy when they started making Texas Madeira at their winery in Galveston County. The couple, who had been making wine from blanc du bois, Jacquez, and other grapes since they opened their winery in 2000, had brought some of their port to a symposium at Fall Creek Vineyards in 2004. When they offered it for a tasting, Master of Wine D.C. Flynt remarked that it tasted a lot like Madeira, a fortified wine from the Portuguese islands of Madeira. He wondered: Had they ever considered making a Texas Madeira? After all, Madeira was the libation of choice in early America, and in early Texas. The U.S. founding fathers toasted with glasses of Madeira upon signing the Declaration of…

REAL TEXAS STORIES BORN AND BRED THE COMMERCE STREET BRIDGE— one of the state’s oldest bridge sites— stands at a confluence of time and place in downtown San Antonio. The historic span has supported a parade of historical events and personalities for more than two-and-a-half centuries. The bridge is located on the “great bend” of the San Antonio River, at the original ford between San Antonio de Bexar (the village) on the west side and the Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) on the east. Texas soldiers, fighting for independence from Mexico, fled across a rickety footbridge here in their retreat to the Alamo. In later years, an array of historical figures crossed the span during their travels, from Robert E. Lee to Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Charles…