Pecos River Art
About 10,000 years ago, ancient peoples occupied rock shelters and deeply recessed caves tucked into canyons along the Pecos and Devils rivers. They left behind some of the most complex and diverse rock art sites in the world. Over 300 paintings, created between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, sprawl across the limestone walls of these […]
Interurban Electric Railroads
In 1901 the first electric interurban or trolley, began operating on a 10.5-mile track between Denison and Sherman in North Texas. The thirty-minute trip on the seventy-pound steel rails cost twenty-five cents. The line proved so successful that a second route between Dallas and Fort Worth opened the following year. A fourteen-mile track started between […]
Judge Roy Bean: Law West of the Pecos
As the railroad spread westward across Texas it was often said, “West of the Pecos there is no law; west of El Paso there is no God.” The Texas Rangers were called in to quell the criminal element that followed the railroad crews through the desolate Chihuahuan Desert of southwest Texas. The rangers had been […]
Lost Mission of San Saba
The Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission, built in 1757, is the only Spanish mission in Texas destroyed by Indians. So thoroughly was the destruction that it took another 235 years for archeologists to finally confirm the site on the banks of the San Sabá River about 120 miles northwest of San Antonio. Construction of […]
Texas Interurban Railways
In 1901 the first electric interurban, or trolley, began operating on a 10.5-mile track between Denison and Sherman in North Texas. The thirty-minute trip on the seventy- pound steel rails cost twenty-five cents. The line proved so successful that a second route between Dallas and Fort Worth opened the next year. A fourteen-mile track began […]