Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i Texas Highways Magazine

The richness of Texas offers limitless opportunities for exploration and discovery. It can take a lifetime to experience the variety of what it has to offer, so each year in January, our editors focus on one travel intention for the year ahead. I’m resolving to introduce my family to Rockport. Before my kids get too old to appreciate its slower pace, I want them to experience the charm of the close-knit community, the beauty of the crystal-blue beach, and the eclectic mix of shops, art galleries, and historic homes. Here’s what the rest of our editors have their sights set on this year: Michael Hoinski, Deputy Editor: I bought my first tent a year ago, after rain during an overnight music festival seeped through my wife’s old tent and on…

Big and Bright Texans have indeed been doing wonderful things to preserve our night-sky heritage [“The Stars at Night,” December]. Your readers might be interested to know Cindy Luongo Cassidy, of Driftwood, whom you quote in the article, received the International Dark Sky Association’s highest award in November, for lifetime achievement in reducing light pollution. And she’s not done yet! Paula Marks, Buda The December cover image features one of my favorite Texas destinations, Big Bend National Park. However, the caption on Page 5 reported the photo as being from Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The Guadalupes are fantastic, but that park is not certified by the IDA as a dark-sky park. Big Bend recently achieved this official designation and is proud of it. Lance Ray, Denver, Colorado TH: December’s cover photo…

What kind of Texan are you if you’ve never been to a rodeo? You’ve no doubt been to a football game, a barbecue, a bluebonnet patch—Texas rites of passage—but what about the most Texan thing of all? Seriously, if you’re one of the many who consider Larry McMurtry’s cattle-driving epic Lonesome Dove our state’s sacred text, shouldn’t you treat livestock like holy cows? Embrace our cowboy heritage at this year’s Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. The 23-day affair, from Jan. 17 to Feb. 8, was conceived in 1896 as an economic driver for the newly formed Stockyards and in recent years has drawn roughly 1 million visitors annually. This year, the show moves from its longtime home, Will Rogers Memorial Center, to the new Dickies Arena, a $540 million,…

IT’S NO SIMPLE TASK, following the footsteps of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first nonnative to step foot in Texas and live to write a book about it. First off, if you want to do it right, you’d have to do it naked. And hungry. And how do you find traces of a thwarted Spanish conquistador, thirsty for gold and glory, who washed up on the coast near Galveston one cold November in 1528 and then walked hundreds of miles over many years, encountering dozens of native groups along the way? Further complicating matters, we don’t know exactly where he went. Although the book Cabeza de Vaca later wrote about his wild trek, La Relación, is full of juicy details, scholars rely on educated guesses to surmise his route.…

For “A Golden Journey” (Page 52), Contributing Editor E. Dan Klepper recreated part of Cabeza de Vaca’s 16th-century journey through the Gulf Coast and West Texas. Collaborating with Writer-at-Large Clayton Maxwell, he staged a photo shoot in which Rodrigo Trevizo, Klepper’s friend and a Presidio native, portrays de Vaca. “We wanted to show de Vaca as he might have appeared after his shipwreck—when his journey through Texas began—and how the journey changed him by the time he arrived in present-day Presidio,” Klepper said. Klepper devised costuming for Trevizo using available references illustrating what a Spaniard like de Vaca would have looked like during the period as well as how the native people of the region might have adorned themselves. While the team encountered few challenges in Big Bend, shooting in…

A towering 400-foot arch and twisted array of 58 cables suspend the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the Trinity River, creating a striking fixture on the Dallas skyline. Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the bridge opened in 2012, linking downtown with West Dallas. Dallas will celebrate New Year's Eve this Dec. 31 with Over the Top NYE 2019, a midnight show featuring fireworks launched from the top of Reunion Tower.…

Taking place on Jan. 20, the MLK Grande Parade in Houston celebrates the legacy of civil-rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Starting in Midtown and following a 1-mile route, the 26th annual parade is expected to feature more than 15 floats and 30 marching bands from around the South. With an annual turnout of 300,000 spectators, it’s one of the largest single-day multicultural events in the United States to honor the life of King. It’s also one of the most-watched parades in the country after the Rose Parade and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, drawing nearly 4 million television viewers. A Battle of the Bands follows the parade with high schools showcasing their marching band expertise and spirit. After the parades have come and gone, the work continues with the…

Mo Amer has a hard time remembering when he last traveled purely for fun. Sure, he’s seen plenty of places in his career as a stand-up comedian. But these last several years, he’s been working at a supersonic pace, with little time to relax. So when he makes it back home to Houston (he currently splits his time between Houston and New York City), sightseeing isn’t really on the agenda. “People ask me that all the time—‘What do you do when you’re in Houston?’” he says. “I sleep. I hang out with my family. I see my mother.” It’s the kind of comfort you can only get from your hometown, and the 38-year-old reps Houston with huge pride in his Netflix special, The Vagabond. During the hourlong set of stand-up…

Retired rancher Bob Cates has been chasing the cowboy lifestyle since he was a boy. Born in the Oklahoma Panhandle, he spent his career raising cattle across the High Plains, from Oklahoma to New Mexico. In 2007, Cates and his wife, Jimmie, retired to the tiny Texas Panhandle town of Channing—10 blocks wide and surrounded by the rugged breaks of the Canadian River—to be closer to family. He found new purpose in Channing’s most noteworthy structure: the 121-year-old general office of the legendary XIT Ranch. At its peak in the early 1900s, the XIT was the largest fenced ranch in the world, encompassing 3 million acres and 150,000 head of cattle. When Cates learned of plans to move the building to Lubbock, he organized a local campaign to preserve the…

The Day the Eagle Flies The Texas Eagle runs along the 1,306-mile train route between Chicago and San Antonio that the Texas and Pacific Railway built in the late 1800s. In 1948, the T&P, in partnership with the Missouri Pacific Railroad, introduced The Texas Eagle as a passenger train from St. Louis to San Antonio. The route was discontinued in 1971, but Amtrak rebooted it in 1981, and expanded its reach. Today, The Texas Eagle uses double-decker “Superliner” trains, known for their awesome observation rooms. Superliners chug through Texas towns you’ve likely never heard of—like Joshua, Bartlett, and Blum—and many big cities you have. Three days a week, The Texas Eagle connects in San Antonio with the Sunset Limited, which cruises west to El Paso and on to Los Angeles,…

★★★FIRST, SHE OVERCAME GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE MILITARY. THEN SHE SAVED LIVES AT SOUTHWEST. MEET CAPTAIN TAMMIE JO SHULTS, AMERICAN HERO TWICE OVER. CAPTAIN TAMMIE JO SHULTS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO FLY THAT PLANE THAT DAY. But her husband, Dean, a fellow Southwest Airlines pilot, knew their son had a track meet at the end of the week and Tammie Jo coached him in the throwing events. So, like he’d done so many other times, Dean switched their schedules to make sure she could get back in time. That’s how Tammie Jo Shults ended up piloting Southwest flight 1380. The runways at New York’s LaGuardia Airport are usually a mess of congestion, but that morning, April 17, 2018, Shults and First Officer Darren Ellisor were cleared for takeoff before they even…

MAGNOLIA FILLING STATION 1101 Fiorella St., Castroville. Open Mon-Sat, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. 830-538-5001; facebook.com/magnoliafillingstation Even before US 90 linked the remote farming towns west of San Antonio in the 1960s, travelers could count on finding a place to rest and refuel in Castroville. Magnolia Filling Station opened on the corner of Fiorella and Lafayette streets in the 1920s, after automobiles displaced horse-drawn carts. In the years since, the station has supplied everything from new tires to bus tickets in “the little Alsace of Texas.” French diplomat Henri Castro founded Castroville in 1844. (Castroville celebrated its 175th birthday in September.) Settlers from the Alsace region of northeastern France built the town, which mimics a charming European village in a Texas landscape. Visitors take walking tours of the historic homes—especially in spring…

Had you traveled to Bell County, just west of Killeen, in the early 1930s, you might have met John Wesley Blankinship and his daughter Floy at their family store on the banks of Clear Creek. On the back of this photo, Floy, who died at age 79 in 1996, recorded her memories: “Probably the happiest and carefree days—minding the store, being the center of my mother and daddy’s life. … [In] the Depression of the 1930s, with so many people coming by trying to escape from starving cities, my parents fed many hungry people. We grew our own food. My mother grew 100-pound watermelons behind the store. We cooled them in the spring and shared their goodness. All strangers became friends. No one ever harmed us.” When the government condemned…