Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2020 i Texas Highways Magazine

I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about the generations that have come before us. There are few things more comforting during hard times than hearing stories about people who survived even harder times. The photo above was taken by famed Depression-era photojournalist Dorothea Lange in June 1938. Her description of the photo is sparse—“wife and child of Negro laborer of the Brazos riverbottoms.” While we don’t know the details of their lives, we know enough about the time period to know their day-to-day existence must have been arduous. And yet they are surviving, standing strong and proud amid the wildflowers. Our aim with this issue is to highlight the resilience Texans have displayed during some of the most difficult moments in our state’s history. Our cover story,…

The Barrow Gang As a new subscriber, I was disappointed to see an article about murderers and thieves made out to be folk heroes [“Flipping the Script,” October]. Bonnie and Clyde left a trail of death everywhere they went through several states. They carried a large arsenal with them at all times and had no remorse for killing anyone. The fact that they made a glorified movie about these murderers is a disgrace. The only heroes were the Rangers that killed them. They prevented uncountable deaths. G H Ryder, Hawkins Pecan-troversy Your article on pecans (Carya illinoinensis) stated that they are the only nuts native to North America [“Deep Roots,” October]. Not true! In Texas alone, there are also the black walnut (Juglans nigra) and the black hickory (Carya texana).…

9th Texas’ order among the U.S. states to ratify the 19th Amendment 1918 Year white Texas women got the right to vote in primary elections 386,000 Number of women who registered to vote in the 1918 Democratic primary Women in the U.S. now turn out to vote at a higher rate than men, a fitting tribute to the women who began fighting for the right to vote in the late 1800s. During that time period, Texas women formed suffrage clubs in cities like Denison, Taylor, Granger, Dallas, and Fort Worth. The Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), headed by New Waverly native Minnie Fisher Cunningham, took the lead in 1915. Its members wrote letters to state and federal legislators, canvassed neighborhoods, marched in parades, and handed out literature supporting the cause.…

TWO HUNDRED-THIRTEEN NAUTICAL MILES ABOVE THE EARTH, BERNARD HARRIS JR. HAD AN UNOBSTRUCTED CELESTIAL VIEW AS HE FLOATED OUT OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY HATCH AND INTO HISTORY. But his noticeable pause “for a little bit,” as he recalled, prompted NASA’s Mission Control to ask, “Why are you doing that?” Harris was marveling at his surroundings, as space shuttle Discovery orbited at a dizzying 17,000 miles an hour, circling Earth once every 90 minutes. He gathered himself and quickly responded, “Oh, nothing.” But the unfolding event was very much something. Mission STS-63, which launched Feb. 3, 1995, broke ground in many ways. It marked the first rendezvous of the American space shuttle with Russia’s space station Mir. Also on board, Eileen Collins, an American, became the first woman to pilot…

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Turkey can get a bad rap due to our collective memories of bland preparations from Thanksgivings past, but husband-and-wife team Lynn and Nakia Price are changing minds one turkey leg at a time. At Turkey Leg Hut in Houston’s Third Ward, the Prices take turkey to a new level, serving tender, slow-smoked drumsticks stuffed with fillings like dirty rice, shrimp alfredo, and crawfish mac and cheese. The Prices’ creative combinations, which blend Cajun, Creole, soul, and Southern flavors, have attracted an avid fan base. A line of eager customers often stretches down the block, and the restaurant has its share of celebrity enthusiasts, including actor Kevin Hart and rapper Snoop Dogg. On good days, Turkey Leg Hut serves as many as 2,500 of its namesake dishes. In spite of their…

For history buff Jac Darsnek, it wasn’t hard to find images of past Texas hardships for “Tales of Texas Grit” (Page 38). He runs the popular Traces of Texas website and social media accounts, which showcase historic photographs. To choose the photos for the story, he dove into various public archives as well as his own to find characters who conveyed a message of resilience. “When I look at a photo, do I see a person who is rising up or a person who has been defeated?” says Darsnek, who started Traces of Texas in 2005. “I wanted to show that Texans rebuilt—that even in the face of terrific tragedy, Texans were making the best of it. Texans were banding together.” In these images, the Austin-based photographer found a message…

Photographer George W. Ackerman took this picture of a Coryell County farmer taking a break from the fields in September 1931. Ackerman worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, documenting rural life across the country throughout the early 20th century and the Great Depression. Though the subject’s name was not recorded, he evokes the common agrarian lifestyle of the time. In 1930, Coryell County, which is in Central Texas, was home to roughly 3,000 small farmers, who mainly raised cotton, cattle, sheep, and goats, according to the Handbook of Texas.…

IN 2014, MAGGIE DIETRICK established Margrit Co. in Lorena, just south of Waco, with the idea of creating her own signature jewelry line. Her eye-catching earrings, bracelets, and pendants incorporate colorful pieces of recycled glass in geometric forms, which she frosts to look like sea glass and then artfully wraps in metal wire. Her casual-chic designs, produced in a range of hues, evoke summer days spent on the beach. “I had always planned to one day start my own business—it just happened sooner rather than later,” she says. “I wanted to share my love for fashion and jewelry.” As for inspiration, she doesn’t have to look far for successful role models: Kendra Scott, Mica May, and Marcey Futris are all fellow Texans. “I love to see those women’s creativity and…

Tim and Emilie Love opened a tiny steakhouse in Fort Worth’s historic Stockyards district in June 2000. Before its official debut, they scraped together enough money to pay for their plumbing by selling beer at a street party. Today, the pair owns 14 restaurants in Texas and Tennessee without the backing of a corporation or investors. Such a feat requires unusual energy and a never-say-die mindset. “Tim sees an opportunity and says, ‘Let’s do it,’” Emilie observes. “He cannot sit still—he rarely sleeps.” Despite opening Ático, a Spanish-style bar atop the Springhill Suites by Marriott in the Fort Worth Stockyards, in January, Tim says this year may have delivered his biggest challenge yet. When COVID-19 ground the restaurant industry to a halt, many of his 400 employees were laid off…

For Cliff Strain, executive director of the Port Aransas Preservation and Historical Association, the tall, swaying sea oats surrounding the Chapel on the Dunes look like “proud feathery flags.” This wild coastal grass is important to the stability of the dunes on Mustang Island. Their latticed root structure holds sediment and stimulates plant growth. Colonies are generally isolated as the weight of their seeds inhibits them from traveling far with the wind. “The fact that sea oats are not found everywhere makes them a unique attraction,” Strain says. “To the eye and mind of a naturalist, they bring a feeling of beauty and strength in our local environment.”…

When we all went indoors in March, Suzanne Koett went outside. A canceled vacation meant the Austin-based photographer and artist had a bunch of film and time on her hands. “I just decided to pop in on my friends and see how they were dealing with everything,” she says. She took their pictures—her outside, her friends inside. Many of her subjects bore serious, even grim expressions, but there was an exception: Chalimar Chieza, who was beaming with enthusiasm as her whole happy family posed while jammed into the window frame of their red back door. There was Tatenda Chieza, her soccer coach husband; Rubye and Solomon, her daughter and son; and Ezekiel, her new baby, whom Koett was seeing for the first time. “I wanted to take a photograph of…

To receive free travel information from the following destinations, simply circle the number on the attached reply card that corresponds to your selection, fill in your name and address, and drop it in the mail. To find our advertiser information online, go to texashighways.com/advertiser-information. 1 Abilene Convention & Visitors Bureau 2 Alpine Bed & Breakfast 3 Andrews Chamber of Commerce & Convention & Visitors Bureau 4 Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum 5 Bandera County Convention & Visitors Bureau 6 Beaumont Convention & Visitors Bureau 7 Blanco Chamber of Commerce 8 Boerne Convention & Visitors Bureau 9 Brady/McCulloch County Visitors Center 10 Burnet County Tourism 11 Cedar Park Tourism 12 Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum 13 City of Bee Cave 14 City of Bryan 15 City of Gonzales 16 City of Huntsville 17…

It’s a late October morning in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, and Molly Cummings is atop a scaffold, foraging alligator juniper berries from a wild tree. With her feed bag over her shoulder, she gently grasps the branches, relieving them of their fragrant dusky green fruit. Her day’s haul—between two and 10 pounds—should be enough to produce one batch of her WildBark West Texas Dry Gin. Cummings, a University of Texas biology professor, founded Austin-based WildGins Co. in 2019. The spirits company produces two gins, WildBark and WildJune, which are both distilled from rye and malted barley and infused with juniper berries native to the Davis Mountains. “I knew that we have eight species of juniper in Texas, and I really wanted to create a product that used our…

It takes tenacity to live on the Texas coast, and perhaps nobody knows that more than the people of Palacios (pronounced Puh-lash-iss). This bay front town, halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi, has weathered many storms in its day. It’s not a town of crowds and kitschy souvenir shops. Instead, it’s all sun, serenity, and bay side treasures. City by the Sea Museum At this museum located on historic Commerce Street, visitors can learn about local history from the native Karankawa tribe to Camp Hulen Army base, which brought 14,000 soldiers to town during World War II. Most impressive is the story of the French ship La Belle and how a team of experts excavated the 17th-century shipwreck from the depths of Matagorda Bay. If you pick the right day,…