Industry & Invention

Dallas, TX

This influential Baptist newspaper traces its roots to 1888, when Lewis Holland and John H. Boyet founded The Baptist News in Fannin County. Relocated to Dallas and renamed The Baptist Standard in 1892 under J. B. Cranfill, it moved between Dallas and Waco before settling permanently and, in 1914, coming under the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Guided by editors like J. B. Gambrell, it grew into the largest state paper in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bastrop, TX

After Bastrop's short-lived Colorado Reveille folded in mid-1852, young Mississippi printer William J. Cain bought its press and launched the Bastrop Advertiser as a weekly from a Main Street shop in March 1853. The paper stayed in the Cain family for generations — passing from William to his brother Thomas and then to Thomas's son — before its 1920 sale to the Smith family of Elgin. Apart from an interruption during the Civil War, it has served Bastrop continuously ever since.

Town of Oyster Bay, NY

For centuries, the shallow waters of Oyster Bay supported "baymen" — independent watermen who tonged for clams and oysters and hauled in fish, passing the trade from father to son. By the late twentieth century, pollution, development, and shrinking harvests had pushed that hard, weather-beaten livelihood toward the brink, and this monument stands as a tribute to it. Its inscription borrows the words of Oyster Bay native Billy Joel, whose 1989 song "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" gave voice to a bayman watching his way of life slip away.

Baytown, TX

The Baytown Sun grew from the Goose Creek Gasser, a weekly launched in 1919 just as an oil refinery began transforming the tri-cities of Goose Creek, Pelly, and Baytown. Through a chain of mergers and renamings—driven partly by the Great Depression—rival papers combined into a single daily, which took the name The Baytown Sun after the three towns consolidated in 1948. Expanding presses and rising circulation tracked the community's growth from oil-boom camps into a permanent city.

Schellsburg, PA · est. 2012

In 1910, as the Progressive Era's faith in applied science reached into rural life, Bedford County opened one of the country's first cooperative extension offices in the small town of Schellsburg, with A. B. Ross serving as its county agent. The idea was radical in its simplicity: send a trained expert to teach working farmers the new agricultural science and lift their yields. The model spread until nearly every county in America had an extension office, carrying practical knowledge on crops, 4-H, and home economics to millions.

Rankin, TX

The Texas Railroad Commission named this field in 1950 for Michael Late "Mike" Benedum, the legendary "great wildcatter" who spent nearly seventy years finding oil from West Virginia and Louisiana to Mexico, Colombia, and across Texas. With partner Joe C. Trees he opened field after field, and the discovery of the Big Lake field in 1923 on University of Texas land helped unlock the vast wealth of the Permian Basin. The Benedum field's first well was completed in 1948 at more than 12,000 feet, adding to the oil revenues that built Texas's public university and school endowments.

Washington, DC

Towering nearly twenty feet over Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, the Big Chair has anchored the heart of Anacostia since the late 1950s, when the Curtis Brothers furniture company commissioned it as a giant advertisement and neighborhood curiosity. Once billed as the world's largest chair, it became a beloved meeting spot and an unofficial symbol of the Southeast Washington community. The 2006 re-dedication marked the chair's restoration and its enduring place in local identity long after the furniture store had closed.

Green Bay, WI

This modest Green Bay house, built in 1868, is remembered as the birthplace of Earl "Curly" Lambeau, the hometown athlete who in 1919 helped found — and then coached — the Green Bay Packers, one of professional football's most enduring franchises. Standing on its original foundation with its original exterior, it is one of the oldest surviving homes in the city, a rare mid-19th-century survivor from Green Bay's early decades as a Great Lakes port and lumber town. From these ordinary streets came a figure who would tie a small Wisconsin city to the national game for a century.

Corsicana, TX

In 1894 a crew drilling a water well for the city of Corsicana struck something unexpected at 1,035 feet: oil, in commercial quantities. It was the first such strike in the entire mid-continent region west of the Mississippi. What began as an accident became the seed of a Texas oil boom that would remake the state's economy.

Galveston, TX

Built between 1886 and 1893 for Colonel Walter Gresham, a Galveston civic leader and U.S. congressman, the Bishop's Palace is one of the most lavish Victorian homes in America, designed by architect Nicholas J. Clayton in an ornate Renaissance style. Its treasures include a prize-winning silver-and-onyx mantel and murals painted by Mrs. Gresham. The Catholic Diocese bought the mansion in 1923 — giving it its familiar name — and converted a room into a stained-glass chapel.

Town of Lewisboro, NY

These ruins are the remains of a grand mansion raised around the turn of the 20th century, when prosperous families built large country houses in the hills of Westchester County within reach of New York City. Constructed over roughly a decade between 1890 and 1901, the estate has since fallen to ruin, leaving stone walls and foundations as traces of its former grandeur.

Mission, TX

Completed in 1942 and designed by Dallas architect William J. Moore, the Border Theater was a fine mid-century movie house with regional stylistic flourishes, seating 740 and housing the office of its owners, Mr. and Mrs. R. N. Smith. Later changes added a raised marquee and a tile canopy. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1997.

Palestine, TX

Built in 1878 as merchant Henry Ash's home, this house was bought in 1884 by railroad official Andrew L. Bowers, who spent decades transforming it with a cupola, gazebo, circular galleries, and ornate detailing. Bowers was a leading figure in Palestine—an International & Great Northern Railroad executive, salt and coal company president, banker, and long-serving mayor active in the county's oil discoveries. His family held the elaborate mansion for 72 years.

Braselton, GA

In 1876 William H. Braselton, Sr. and his wife Susan Hosch Braselton established a 796-acre farm in western Jackson County, where their children grew up building the store, fertilizer, and mercantile ventures that became the family's fortune. The railroad's arrival in 1902 and a state highway in 1927 let the operation expand, and in 1921 the brothers incorporated as Braselton Brothers, Inc., running a mercantile, grocery, grist and flour mill; the town of Braselton itself was incorporated in 1916. The family even published a monthly booster paper to promote the growing community.

Cuero, TX

Begun in 1883 as a modest one-story dwelling for Walter Kibbe Breeden and his wife Margaret, this Cuero home grew with the family's fortunes. In 1889 Walter and his brother Charles founded Breeden Brothers, a well-known mercantile firm and cotton factorage, and a second story was added in 1907. Their son Paul, born in the house, carried on as a partner, banker, and civic leader, making the family the home's third generation.

Jefferson, TX

Built in 1872 in Victorian style with long galleries and bay windows, the Brooks House operated as a hotel in the booming riverport of Jefferson. It gained lasting notoriety in 1877 when guest "Diamond Bessie" Moore was killed at a picnic west of town, and fellow guest Abe Rothschild was tried for her murder in a sensational case that was later dramatized.

Burnet, TX

Established in the early 1870s, the Burnet Bulletin has published continuously for well over a century, its first recorded editor George Whitaker serving until 1874. Bought by the pioneer Chamberlain family in 1898 and held by them until 1960, the paper weathered hardships including a 1920 fire that destroyed its offices. Since 1979 it has operated from this 1872 building, itself a veteran of duty as store, mortuary, telephone office, and even a temporary 1930s courtroom.

Waco, TX

In the years after the Civil War, Waco was growing from a Brazos River crossing into a busy commercial city. Champe Carter McCulloch, a local merchant who later served as mayor from 1890 to 1894, bought this property in 1871 and enfolded an earlier 1860s two-room house and detached kitchen within a handsome two-story Greek Revival residence. He and his wife Emma raised ten children here, and their family occupied the home for a full century.

Odessa, TX

The cable tool rig, which dropped a heavy bit on a steel cable to pound its way downward, replaced the older spring-pole method and let drillers reach the deep formations of the Southwest. Introduced in Texas in 1866, it brought in the first great wells of the Permian Basin, including reconstruction from rigs used at the legendary Santa Rita No. 1, which blew in near Big Lake in May 1923. Texas pioneered much of the surrounding industry, from the first oil lease to the first pipeline and storage tanks.

Canton, TX

The Canton Herald has published continuously since 1882, making it one of East Texas's enduring community newspapers. In 1915 Ellis Campbell, already publisher of the Wills Point Chronicle, bought the Herald, and with his wife Mary Jane built a family publishing business that spanned several generations. From offices in Canton and presses in Wills Point, the paper chronicled local life for more than a century.

Canyon, TX

The Canyon News traces its lineage to the Echo of 1889, the first newspaper in this Panhandle town, and to the Stayer of 1896, later renamed the Randall County News. Its most celebrated editor, Clyde W. Warwick, ran the paper for forty-five years and won state and national honors for outstanding weekly journalism, including a 1949 special edition rated the best in the nation. The paper carried on under new editors into the postwar decades.

Del Rio, TX

In the 1938–39 season, the Carter Family — A.P., his wife Sara, and sister-in-law Maybelle — began broadcasting from XERA, a powerful border station just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio owned by the notorious Dr. John R. Brinkley. Beaming across the country, the station carried their gospel and folk standards to a national audience, often opening the "Good Neighbor Get-Together" with "Keep on the Sunny Side." These broadcasts helped lay down the foundations of American country music.

Los Angeles, CA

On November 5, 1913, a crowd of some 40,000 people gathered at The Cascades to watch water tumble down the final stretch of the Los Angeles Aqueduct after its 233-mile journey from the Owens Valley. This was the terminus of an audacious engineering feat that made the growth of modern Los Angeles possible, and the site of chief engineer William Mulholland's famously terse dedication remark, "There it is. Take it." The moment marked both a triumph of Progressive-era public works and the beginning of bitter water conflicts with the Owens Valley.

Del RIo, TX

Italian stonemason G.B. Cassinelli came to America to build in New York, but when that project collapsed he and his partner found work on the railroads and then on stone buildings at Fort Clark and the Val Verde County Courthouse. Cassinelli settled in Del Rio and prospered as a merchant and contractor, and in 1903 he built a cotton gin here beside San Felipe Creek. Its upper floor, used for dances and receptions, made the gin house a hub of early Del Rio social life.

Quitman, TX

Attorney and Texas legislator Benjamin Franklin Cathey bought lots on the north side of Quitman's public square and by 1922 had built a row of brick commercial buildings — a post office and a mercantile — beside a theater and the local newspaper. Fire destroyed three of them in 1932, but Cathey rebuilt through 1941. The block charts the growth of Quitman's downtown in the early 20th century.

Eureka County, NV

Nevada's broad valleys have supported cattle since the 1850s, and by the 1870s stockmen ranged herds across the northern part of the state. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 was the spark that made ranching pay: Texas longhorns were driven to Nevada's grasslands to fatten, then shipped by rail to markets as far as Omaha and San Francisco. As the mining booms cooled, it was these ranching empires that kept the state's economy alive.

Bastrop, TX

Created by Franklin Roosevelt and Congress in 1933 to put unemployed men to work, the Civilian Conservation Corps sent Company #1805 to Bastrop that November to reforest the logged-over "Lost Pines" and build a state park. Working in native stone and timber in the rustic National Park Service style, the recruits — aided by local experienced men and architect Arthur Fehr — crafted the park's refectory, roads, trails, bridges, and lakes, finishing the work in 1939. A second company later extended the effort to nearby Buescher State Park.

Rockport, TX

As automobiles put the Texas coast within easy reach in the 1920s and 1930s, tourism became central to Rockport's economy, and The Cedars—built in 1928 by Dr. Joe and Mabel Bryant—grew into a favorite retreat of "resort houses" and cottages. Through a succession of owners it drew fishing and birding groups and returning families year after year, its rustic outhouses and iceboxes giving way over time to running water, gas stoves, and refrigerators. In 1973 eight families organized as an association, each keeping a cottage and sharing the common ground, carrying on traditions like the annual "pier review" repair day.

Okanogan County, WA

Below this sign lie the remnants of the China Ditch, dug by Chinese miners sometime between 1860 and 1880 to carry water three miles from a diversion on the Methow River to sluice gold from the sandbars of the Columbia. Chinese laborers were central to gold recovery across the Far West, often reworking claims others had abandoned, yet their contributions were long overlooked and frequently met with hostility.

Katy, TX

The land where Katy stands carries layers of Texas history — Karankawa buffalo hunters into the 1820s, the San Felipe Road that carried Santa Anna toward San Jacinto in 1836, and a Confederate camp where soldiers died in 1863. The town itself was platted after the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad — 'The Katy Line' — reached the point in 1895, and rice cultivation begun in 1897 became its signature industry. Rebuilt after the 1900 hurricane and boosted by nearby oil, Katy grew into a tri-county municipality.

Orange, TX

Settlement at the bend of the Sabine River began around 1828, and the community—first called Green's Bluff, then Madison—took the name Orange in 1858 after becoming the seat of the new Orange County. Its economy grew from lumber and sawmilling, and the arrival of the Texas and New Orleans Railroad in 1876 made it the leader in East Texas sawmill activity. Deep water and abundant timber later drew shipbuilding, which peaked during both World Wars.

Tuscola, TX

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 to put jobless men and World War I veterans to work, Abilene donated land for a new state park near Lake Abilene. Company No. 1823, made up entirely of World War I veterans, built a stone refectory, roads, picnic areas, and a swimming pool from native sandstone, dedicating the park in May 1934. In 1935 a reactivated Company No. 1823 of African American veterans returned to add culverts, a water tower, and stonework before moving on to Kerrville, leaving craftsmanship still visible in the park today.

Denison, TX

As the Great Depression deepened, Grayson County partnered with the federal government to build a public lake and park, calling in the Civilian Conservation Corps to do the work. In late 1933, some 200 young men of CCC Company 857—many from Wisconsin, later joined by local recruits—arrived to raise a dam, roads, culvert bridges, stone picnic units, and a ballfield. Renamed for Judge Jake Loy, the park has served area families ever since.

Canyon, TX

When Texas acquired 15,000 acres for Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps supplied the labor to make it usable. Beginning in July 1933, companies of World War I veterans, later joined by segregated African American enrollees and youth workers, carved the road from the canyon rim to its floor and built sandstone lodges, cabins, bridges, culverts, and trails. By December 1937 the project stood as one of the few to employ all three CCC groups—veterans, African Americans, and juveniles.

Clarendon, TX

Clarendon began as the Rev. Lewis H. Carhart's dream of a colony grounded in Christianity, temperance, and education, and to promote it he launched The Clarendon News in June 1878—the very year the first colonists arrived. It was the first newspaper in the Texas Panhandle. Through many changes of name and owner, and from hand-set type to modern computers, it has never stopped chronicling its community.

Buffalo, NY

Buffalo's place at the eastern end of Lake Erie made it a vital hub of Great Lakes shipping, and with that traffic came the need to guard the often treacherous waters. The Coast Guard base here serves as both a lifeboat station and a regional headquarters, overseeing American coastal waters stretching from eastern Ohio all the way to the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River. The U.S. Coast Guard traces its lineage to the lifesaving and revenue-cutter services of the 19th century, whose surfmen rowed into storms to rescue stranded mariners.

Columbus, TX

Established in 1857 by Ben, James, and Hicks Baker, this Columbus newspaper was christened by the Rev. J. J. Scherer, a local minister and educator. Over the decades it changed hands and titles, appearing as the Colorado Times and the Colorado Citizen from a series of sites. Of the several papers that served the county in the nineteenth century, it alone survived.

Comanche, TX

Founded as a county seat in the late 1850s, the young town of Comanche dreamed of growth and got its own newspaper when experienced editor Geraldo Alonzo Beeman published the first issue of the Comanche Chief in 1873. The paper worked to draw settlers, secured a Texas Ranger force, and lobbied for public school lands, becoming a force in the region's social and political life. Among its early hands was teenaged Robert Thomas Hill, later celebrated as the Father of Texas Geology.

Comanche, TX

Organized in December 1889 with $50,000 in capital, the Comanche National Bank was the brainchild of John B. Chilton, who first gathered local businessmen in his upstairs living quarters to elect a board. It opened in March 1890 just as the town was poised to boom—the railroad reached Comanche in 1891 and a new courthouse rose the same year. Under Chilton's long presidency and those who followed, the bank weathered downturns and prospered for more than a century as a fixture of the courthouse square.

Mason, TX

German immigrant Anna Mebus came to Texas in 1858, married her merchant cousin, and after his death ran their Mason store and post office while quietly handling the cash of area ranchers. In 1901 she helped found The Commercial Bank and became its president, opening with just three thousand dollars in capital and, before a bank building was secured, carrying the money home each night for safekeeping. With her sons as officers, she led a family bank that endured until 1958.

Kermit, TX

For fifty years West Texas settlers met their religious needs through camp meetings, circuit riders, and singings held at ranches and schoolhouses. When this church was organized in 1928, it worshiped in Kermit's old 1910 courthouse, bought for a single dollar. After oil transformed the region, generous ranchers built the present brick edifice — the first brick building in Kermit — on the site of that first church, dedicating it in 1938.

Kerrville, TX

Built in 1890 in Kerrville's Tivy Addition, this Victorian house passed through several hands during the Texas Hill Country's Gilded Age growth, including the prominent physician Dr. R. H. P. Wright. It is best known for D. H. Comparette, a civic leader who organized and managed the Kerrville Telephone Company, whose family held the home for more than seventy years. One of Dr. Wright's daughters married future Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, tying the house to the state's political history.

Storey County, NV

In 1859 prospectors struck the Comstock Lode, a 2½-mile band of fabulously rich silver and gold ore, and Virginia City exploded into one of the West's great boomtowns. For twenty years its mines poured out wealth that helped bankroll the building of San Francisco and pushed Nevada toward statehood in 1864. The yellow tailings dumps still visible across the hills mark where legendary mines like the Ophir and Con Virginia burrowed into the earth.

Tyler, TX

This residence was built in 1906 for Walter Connally, a prominent Tyler businessman whose interests spanned banking, cotton-gin equipment, and hardware. After his death in 1918, his widow Gretta remained in the home with family, which held the property for more than 70 years. With its Mediterranean and Renaissance Revival influences, the house reflects the prosperity of East Texas commerce in the early 20th century.

Lockhart, TX

Businessman James G. Blanks bought this Lockhart lot in 1896, added a second floor, and finished the house in the classical revival style then in fashion. In 1908 he sold it to Dr. Thomas Benton Coopwood, a respected physician who served as Caldwell County health officer for more than three decades. The Coopwood family lived here until 1970.

Corpus Christi, TX

The Corpus Christi Caller published its first issue in 1883, launched by local newspapermen including Eli Merriman, with King Ranch founder Captain Richard King among the original stockholders. Over the following decades rival papers were bought, renamed, and merged — the Times emerged from the Daily Democrat, and in 1929 the Harte-Hanks group combined the two into the Caller-Times. It outlasted more than two dozen competitors dating back to the 1840s.

Galveston, TX

Built about 1882 for cotton buyer Bernard Roensch, this Galveston residence blends late Greek Revival lines with exuberant high Victorian detail, from gingerbread trim and an ornate tower to stained glass and slate mantels. It has weathered many of the fierce storms for which the island is famous. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Waco, TX

Stone contractor John Tennant began this ambitious sandstone house in 1890, when Waco's cotton-based economy was booming. It passed unfinished to cotton broker Ripley Hanrick before architect Roy Lane completed it in 1913 as a residence for businessman Alfred Abeel, its interior finished in marble and mahogany. Long known as "The Castle," it gave the surrounding Castle Heights neighborhood its name.

Longview, TX

Since its formation in 1873, Gregg County has housed its government in a succession of buildings, from cramped rented rooms above a hardware store to a French Second Empire courthouse with a mansard roof and clock tower. Structural failures forced repeated rebuilding, and a Romanesque Revival courthouse of 1897 gave way in 1932 to a modern Art Deco building when the East Texas oil boom overwhelmed county business. That Depression-era courthouse, much enlarged, still serves today.

West, TX

In the fall of 1896 a railroad passenger agent named William Crush hit on a spectacular way to sell tickets: deliberately ram two steam locomotives together at full speed. More than 30,000 people crowded the temporary town of "Crush" to watch, but the boilers exploded on impact against the engineers' expectations, killing two spectators and injuring others. The stunt became one of the most infamous publicity disasters of the railroad age.

Emlenton, PA · est. 2014

The Crawford family helped build the oil and gas industry that grew out of western Pennsylvania's fields. Eben Crawford ran an iron foundry and was an early oil and gas producer, and in 1926 his sons George and Fred organized the Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation, which became the world's largest integrated natural gas company. Cousin Harry Crawford became the first president of Quaker State Oil Refining.

Matagorda, TX

Built for George B. Culver in the late 1890s to a design by architect Roy Shoultz, this Colonial-style home rose from Louisiana pine and cypress, crowned by a cupola and dressed with fireplace tile shipped from England. Its wide galleries welcomed statesmen and railroad and church leaders. Culver himself was a pioneer of the intracoastal canal and drilled the townsite's first artesian well in 1904.

Belton, TX

Cotton broker William Ray Miller and his wife Ida built this grand house in 1902, its costliness earning it the nickname "A Monument to King Cotton." In 1914 attorney A. Lon Curtis and his wife Cora acquired it—bringing in a Kansas City decorator—and the family's 59-year residence gave the mansion its lasting name. Long a showplace of Belton hospitality, it was sold in 1973 and became a complex of luxury suites.

Belton, TX

Flush with profits from strong turn-of-the-century cotton years, W. R. and Ida Miller built this elegant house in Belton in 1902, blending fashionable Queen Anne detailing with the Shingle style then popular back east. The design lavished attention on fine materials and craftsmanship, down to a fireplace in every room. Later owners, especially the A. Lon Curtis family who held it from 1914 to 1973, preserved and enhanced the home, earning it Recorded Texas Historic Landmark status in 1977.

Bryan, TX

Bryan grew on land granted to the Houston & Texas Central Railroad in 1859, and in 1900 a second line — the Calvert, Waco & Brazos Valley, built by George Gould — arrived with a depot that doubled as a social hall until it was razed in 1990. When the tracks reached Waco in 1901 the CW&BV merged into the International & Great Northern Railroad, and the combined lines carried cotton and other goods to distant markets, along with passengers. Rail use ebbed after World War II, with brief revivals in the 1970s and 1990s.

Mankins, TX

Born in the era of the Wild West circus, the D. S. Dudley Show became the chief livelihood of tiny Mankins for more than half a century. Prize-winning bronc rider Dick "Cheyenne" Dudley bought the show in 1914, served overseas in World War I, then returned to marry a local woman and tour the Southwest eight months a year with as many as 250 performers and exotic animals. The troupe wintered in Mankins, and later generations of the family carried the show on.

Nacogdoches, TX

Nacogdoches was the cradle of Texas journalism, home to the state's earliest newspapers beginning in 1813. The Daily Sentinel grew out of that tradition in 1899, guided for decades by the Haltom family, and used its pages to champion civic improvements and chronicle the town's life; the addition of an Associated Press wire during World War I transformed it into a modern daily still publishing today.

Alpena, MI

In 1856, Daniel Carter came north to Michigan's Thunder Bay country in search of pine — the towering white pine that would fuel a lumbering boom across the state. He brought his wife Sarah and daughter Mary to the little settlement of Fremont, today's Alpena, and the family is remembered as its first permanent settlers. Their arrival marks the beginning of a community carved out of the northern forest.

Conroe, TX

Montgomery County's first prefabricated house rose in 1887–88, its parts shipped down from St. Louis and assembled by builder R. A. Corry. Fashioned largely of durable cypress, it kept hand-carved wainscot, a staircase, mantels, and original doors and hardware in use for generations. It has remained in the Davison family since 1889.

Uvalde, TX

Nicknamed "The Ditch," this community grew up along the canal of the Leona Irrigation and Agricultural Association, formed in 1874 to water the dry Uvalde County land. Irrigation brought rich crops and drew many families, whose schoolhouse doubled as church and dance hall for celebrations that often ran late. A flood in 1894 ruined the farms and scattered the settlers—many to Uvalde—leaving only a cemetery to mark where the town stood.