Westward Expansion

Canyon, TX

In 1959, along U.S. Highway 60 west toward New Mexico, teacher-turned-curio-shop-owner Harry Wheeler set out to lure travelers with something unmissable: a 47-foot, seven-ton concrete cowboy. Over ten months he shaped wire mesh, rebar and concrete into the figure, then dressed it in Levi-Strauss pants and a hand-stitched shirt topped with a Stetson-style hat. Highway reconstruction thinned his tourist trade and he sold the property in 1963, but 'Tex Randall' endured as a beloved roadside landmark of the Texas Panhandle.

Port Neches, TX

Woodward Maurice "Tex" Ritter, born in Panola County in 1905, grew from a Texas farm boy into one of America's most beloved singing cowboys. He carried cowboy ballads from a Houston radio station to Broadway—where he earned his nickname—and then into a long run of western films in the 1930s. A Country Music Hall of Fame member, he is best remembered for singing the haunting title song of the film "High Noon."

Georgetown, TX

Envious of the lucrative Santa Fe Trail trade crossing the plains, Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar launched the Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1841—a mix of soldiers, merchants with $200,000 in goods, teamsters, and a newspaperman, hauling their hopes north in twenty-one ox-drawn wagons. Their first day's march ended near this spot on the San Gabriel River. Six hundred miles of drought and unknown country lay ahead, and the expedition ended in betrayal, capture, and imprisonment in Mexico City.

Edna, TX

Jackson County's first Presbyterian congregation formed in 1855 under John Adams Brackenridge in Texana, a bustling riverport and county seat that has since faded into a ghost town. The members raised this frame sanctuary in 1859 on the eve of the Civil War. When Edna sprang up along the New York, Texas & Mexican Railroad, the building was hauled there in 1884, later served as a warehouse, and now survives as a witness to antebellum pioneer life.

Sweetwater, TX

When the Texas and Pacific Railway pushed west across the state in the early 1880s, it remade the map of West Texas one whistle-stop at a time. Sweetwater got its first train on March 12, 1881, and grew up along the tracks as a genuine railroad town—homes, stores, and shipping pens clustering where the line ran. For nearly a century the depot moved settlers in and cattle and crops out, until passenger service ended and the station came down in 1969.

Colorado City, TX

When the Texas & Pacific Railway pushed through this valley in 1880, it turned a scatter of tents and dugouts into the "Cattle Capital of West Texas." Ranchers like Charles Goodnight and the great XIT had already trailed herds into a country where the last buffalo were vanishing and Texas Rangers guarded against raids. By April 1881 the railhead served some 350 residents with a county government, school, and newspaper, and soon shipped out thousands of cattle and freighted in the barbed wire and windmills that fenced the open range.

Fort Worth, TX

On February 15, 1877, ranchers from northwest Texas met in the Young County Courthouse in Graham to fight the cattle rustling plaguing the open range. They formed the Stock-Raisers' Association of North-West Texas, pooling brands, marks, and ranch records to track stolen stock. Growing into a statewide body headquartered in Fort Worth, it drew in cattle barons like C.C. Slaughter and Burk Burnett and became a lasting force in the Texas cattle industry.

Houston, TX

On April 21, 1836, the small Texan army under Sam Houston formed for its decisive assault on Santa Anna's camp near the San Jacinto River. This marker records the order of battle: cavalry on the right under Mirabeau B. Lamar, infantry and the famed "Twin Sisters" cannon in support, Edward Burleson's regiment in the center, and Sidney Sherman's on the left. The surprise attack that followed lasted only minutes yet secured Texas independence.

Albany, TX

This marker honors the great cattle trail that drove Texas herds north to Dodge City, Kansas, and other markets between 1875 and 1890. In those years cowboys pushed longhorns across hundreds of miles of open range in the golden age of the trail drive. The route ran through this stretch of Shackelford County, part of the vast network that carried Texas beef to the railheads of the plains.

De Leon, TX

As railroad building revived after the Civil War and the 1870s depression, the Texas Central pushed westward through North Central Texas, reaching the Erath–Comanche county line in 1880. The line laid out the town of De Leon in 1881, where an official famously auctioned town lots from the back of a flatcar. With shops, offices, and a roundhouse, De Leon became the area's main shipping point for cotton and later peanuts, and the route survived into the era of "The Peanut Line."

Stamford, TX

Founded in 1930 alongside the Texas Cowboy Reunion, this association gathered aging cowhands—335 of them who had worked the range before 1895—to preserve the customs of the people who raised longhorns and endured droughts and freezes on the open range. Its early ranks even included Will Rogers, publisher Amon Carter, and bandleader Paul Whiteman. A donated bull funded a bunkhouse and roundup hall, and the annual reunion still features chuckwagon meals, square dancing, and what's billed as the world's largest amateur cowboy show.

Austin, TX

Johann Jacob Groos left Germany for Texas in 1845, part of the great wave of German immigration that reshaped the Hill Country, and put his surveyor's training to work opening the New Braunfels area to settlement. He held Comal County office for over a decade, served in the Confederate militia during the Civil War, and in 1874 was elected Commissioner of the General Land Office — the state agency at the very center of Texas's land-grant story.

Fort Worth, TX

These relocated log cabins recall the hard, resourceful life of North Texas pioneers in the Cross Timbers, where families felled oak, cedar, and heart pine and joined the corners with quarter-notch and dovetail joints because sawn lumber lay far beyond reach. Amid threats, poor crops, and primitive conditions, the cabin was both shelter and a welcome sight to travelers. Among them is the Isaac Parker cabin, the last home of Cynthia Ann Parker after she was taken from her Comanche family in 1860, gathered here as a Log Cabin Village to keep the frontier spirit alive.

Panhandle, TX

John F. Weatherly and his family were among the first landowners on the wide-open Texas Panhandle, starting a ranch in 1898 and running the country store, post office, and telephone exchange for their neighbors. The 1924 discovery of oil on their land helped spark the founding of Borger, and the family gave freely—donating ground for churches, schools, and a park. His wife, Maggie Marie Deahl Weatherly, later built Weatherly Hall at Texas Christian University.

Panhandle, TX

The three Simms brothers came to Texas in 1886 and reached this Panhandle county in the early 1900s, arriving after the hunters and soldiers who had cleared the range of buffalo and driven off the Comanche. Unlike the open-range cattlemen before them, these settlers bought their land outright and worked to pay it off, selling buffalo bones and collecting wolf bounties to survive the droughts. In the brutal winter of 1905–1906 they plowed a four-furrow railway firebreak on a hundred-mile trek, singing gospel hymns by the campfire each night.

Floresville, TX

Will L. Wright rose from a Wilson County deputy sheriff in the 1890s to one of the most respected lawmen on the Texas border, serving as county sheriff and then commanding Company D of the Texas Rangers from 1918 to 1939. Remembered as fearless yet diplomatic, he was credited with preventing bloodshed through honesty rather than force during turbulent years along the Rio Grande. Two of his seven children followed him into law enforcement.

Crosbyton, TX

In 1879 the Texas Rangers established Camp Roberts near here, the first Ranger station in the Panhandle, home to Company C of the newly formed Frontier Battalion. Commanded by the hard-riding Capt. G. W. Arrington, the small force—never more than 28 men—patrolled a vast, arid territory against raiders, outlaws, and rowdy cowboys. Each Ranger supplied his own horse, guns, and gear, living a spare, mobile life until the local Indian threat faded and the company moved on in 1882.

Decatur, TX

Born in Indiana and reared in Missouri, Ira Long was twice wounded in Confederate service before finding his calling on the Texas frontier. When the Texas Rangers were reorganized in 1874 he was commissioned a lieutenant, rising the next year to captain of Company A and serving as official escort to Ranger commander Major John B. Jones. Over six years he pursued outlaws and raiders and helped quell the violent Mason County War.

Comanche, TX

James Cunningham came from Alabama to settle Comanche County in 1855 and by 1858 commanded a Texas Ranger company charged with imposing order on a raw frontier. He led local men at the Battle of Dove Creek in January 1864, a bloody clash between Texas forces and Native fighters, and his sons went on to serve as sheriffs in three Texas counties. His career embodies the era's violent contest over the western edge of settlement.

Galveston, TX

After the pirate Lafitte was driven from Galveston, West Indian settlers arrived and the island grew into the chief port of a rising Texas, declared a port of entry by Mexico in 1825. It briefly served as capital of the Republic when President Burnet's cabinet fled the interior during the 1836 San Jacinto campaign, and Michel B. Menard soon bought the townsite for $50,000. During the Civil War, Confederate forces evacuated the city in 1862 but retook it in 1863 under General John Bankhead Magruder, capturing Union ships and troops and holding it to the war's end.

Kermit, TX

When Texas joined the United States in 1846 it claimed some 98,300 square miles reaching into five future states. After the Mexican War, anti-slavery forces sought to shrink the slave state of Texas, and in the Compromise of 1850 Texas gave up a third of its area for $10 million, using the money to pay Republic debts and seed a public school fund. A corner post four miles east marks the resulting boundary at the 103rd meridian and 32nd parallel, where Texas meets New Mexico's southeast corner.

Farmers Branch, TX

This site marks the first agency, opened in January 1845, of the colonization venture better known as Peters' Colony. Under a contract secured from the Republic of Texas in 1841, William S. Peters and his associates introduced more than ten thousand settlers across seventeen counties of North Texas, seeding communities like Farmers Branch.

West Columbia, TX

Thaddeus Constantine Bell, born in October 1822, is remembered as the first male child born within Stephen F. Austin's colonies in Texas — a distinction from the very first years of Anglo-American settlement under Mexican rule. He lived until 1871; his wife, Elizabeth Cayce Bell, born in 1830, preceded him in death in 1864. The marker records a life that spanned Texas's passage from colony to Republic to statehood.

Amarillo, TX

Established in 1877 by Colorado merchants W. H. Bates and D. T. Beals, the LX was one of the great open-range cattle operations of the Texas Panhandle, spreading across roughly 1,000 square miles between present-day Dumas and Amarillo. LX cattle were trailed north to Dodge City and on to the newly opened ranges of Montana and Wyoming as the buffalo vanished. A British firm bought the ranch in 1884, and when Potter County organized in 1887, the 38 LX cowboys voted to make Amarillo the county seat. Among its hands was Charles Siringo, later famous as a cowboy author and detective.

Rocksprings, TX

Built about 1895 by J.P. Taylor, an Englishman, this ranch house stood along the old Fort McKavett–Fort Clark Road when the country was still open range. In 1907 early settlers E.E. and Mary Sproul Morriss bought Taylor's acreage, patented more land, and turned the place into a social center for the region. Its name, "Chaparral," nods to the roadrunners and dwarf oaks that thrived across the surrounding brush country.

Cozad, NE

The 100th meridian is one of the most consequential lines in American geography — the rough boundary where the humid eastern farmland gives way to the arid, short-grass High Plains. Cozad grew up literally astride it, and the line loomed large in 19th-century settlement, railroad promotion, and the hard reckoning between eastern farming methods and a drier West. Marking the meridian turned an invisible line of longitude into a landmark travelers could stand on.

Buffalo, NY

Standing where Lake Erie meets the Niagara River, the Buffalo Lighthouse rose in 1832–33 just as the city was booming into the western gateway of the recently completed Erie Canal. Its 44-foot tapering octagonal stone tower guided schooners and steamers into one of the Great Lakes' busiest harbors. Remarkably, it remains the oldest building in Buffalo still on its original site, even after its lantern room was replaced in 1857.

Fort Worth, TX

As Anglo settlement pushed into the north Texas frontier in the mid-1800s, Native peoples grew increasingly determined to defend their lands, and raids and reprisals flared from 1859 into the 1870s. In September 1865, fifteen mounted warriors attacked two Denton County men near this spot; Wright was killed outright, and Smith, struck by an arrow, rode to Denton for help only to die of blood poisoning from the wound.

Colorado City, TX

In the late 1870s, cattlemen were the first wave to settle Mitchell County, and the 96 Ranch became one of its anchor spreads. Round Rock merchant James Durham Wulfjen caught ranch fever on an 1884 visit, filed on three sections along the Colorado River, and coaxed his wife Mary Jane from town comfort to a lonely cabin on an old buffalo hunter's camp. He registered the enduring "96" brand in 1885 and, with his sons, grew the outfit to more than 12,000 acres of fine Durham cattle and saddle horses. The Wulfjens also helped raise schools and a church, knitting a working ranch into a lasting community.

San Antonio, TX · est. 1936

For 13 days a small garrison held the former mission against a far larger Mexican force. Their deaths rallied Texas; weeks later Sam Houston's army won independence at San Jacinto.

Mercedes, TX

In 1905, at the dawn of the Lower Rio Grande Valley's transformation into an agricultural powerhouse, developer B. F. Yoakum gathered investors to turn arid brushland into irrigated farmland. Their company bought a quarter-million acres and built the townsite of Mercedes as its headquarters, and by 1908 pumps were lifting river water into a growing web of canals. Within a dozen years the system had swelled to three main canals and five pumping plants, and it passed to public water districts in 1930 that still serve Valley farmers today.

Alamo Heights, TX

Charles Anderson raised this mansion in 1859 as the headquarters of a 1,400-acre ranch, but sold out and left San Antonio on the eve of the Civil War, passing it to the poet Hiram McLane, who lived here three decades. When Alamo Heights was laid out in 1890, a developer named the house for his native Argyllshire in Scotland, and after 1893 the O'Grady family made the Argyle famous for its hospitality and cooking, immortalized in the 1940 "Argyle Cook Book."

Sarita, TX

This land, part of the Spanish "La Barreta" grant, was purchased in 1852 and became home to famed Texas Ranger John Barkley Armstrong after his 1878 marriage to Mollie Durst. Armstrong had ridden with Captain McNelly to bring order to South Texas and won national fame for capturing the outlaw John Wesley Hardin. On this ground—once a camp for Zachary Taylor's army and a stage stop between Corpus Christi and Brownsville—he built one of the legendary cattle ranches of Texas, still run by his descendants.

Sarita, TX

When Texas Ranger John B. Armstrong moved his ranch headquarters to this site in 1897, he began a residence that grew in stages until about 1900. Built first of plastered adobe and later expanded with a frame wing, the house was altered again after the devastating 1919 hurricane reshaped its front porch. Its layered construction traces the evolution of a South Texas ranch headquarters.

Washoe County, NV

This monument near Reno honors the Basque sheepherders who tended flocks across the Great Basin, carrying a poem, "Solitude," by the Basque artist Nestor Basterretxea. Drawn from the Pyrenees to the American West beginning in the nineteenth century, Basque immigrants became the backbone of open-range sheepherding, enduring months of isolation in the high desert. The work evokes the loneliness and endurance at the heart of their frontier labor.

Floydada, TX

By the 18th century the Comanche had made the canyons and plains of what became Floyd County their stronghold, dominating trade and warfare across Texas after pushing rival tribes south. In October 1871, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie led U.S. cavalry, guided by Tonkawa scouts, against the Kotsoteka and Quahadi bands who refused reservation life. In Blanco Canyon, Quanah Parker's warriors struck first and drove off the soldiers' horses; the fighting wounded both Mackenzie and Lieutenant Carter, and though the campaign frustrated the army, it began the destruction of Comanche power on the Southern Plains.

Canyon, TX

At dawn on September 28, 1874, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie's 4th Cavalry descended a treacherous path into Palo Duro Canyon and surprised a large Native encampment sheltering there. Though the warriors fought from the canyon walls to cover their families' escape, Mackenzie burned the camp and supplies and captured some 1,400 horses — destroying a thousand of them — leaving the tribes without shelter or mounts and forcing their return to the reservations.

Sprigg Township, OH

Formed in March 1853 by local landowners, the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society began as a vigilante band organized to chase down stolen horses and mules and bring thieves to justice. In the antebellum countryside, where a working animal was a family's livelihood and formal law enforcement was thin, such mutual-protection societies filled the gap between neighbors and the courts.

Shelbyville, TX

Frederick Lee Bickham, a prominent landowner and rancher, built this East Texas home between 1885 and 1888 on the site of his stepfather's earlier house, which had burned. The timber—cedar, cypress, and heart pine—was cut from the surrounding property, and here Bickham raised his family alongside his stepsiblings. Restored in 1972 and renamed "Welcome Hall," the house survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Snyder, TX

The Block 97 dispute grew out of Texas's practice of paying railroads in public land for the track they laid. In 1873 the Houston & Texas Central mistakenly claimed some 300,000 acres reserved for the Texas & Pacific; when the error surfaced in 1882 it voided countless deeds, and much of the land was unscrupulously resold, sparking a decade of tangled claims until the legislature declared it state school land in 1899.

Blue Springs, MO

This spring gave the Missouri city of Blue Springs its name. As settlers moved through and settled western Missouri in the nineteenth century, natural water sources like this one were vital landmarks, drawing travelers, farms, and eventually towns to their banks. The modest pool remains a quiet reminder of why the community took root where it did.

La Pryor, TX

In the spring of 1675, the humanitarian Antonio Balcarcel dispatched an armed expedition under Fernando del Bosque to escort Fray Juan de Larios on a mission north of the Rio Grande. Entering Texas near present Eagle Pass, the party marched nearly to the site of San Antonio, and on May 16 camped on the Nueces, where more than a thousand Native people gathered to hear Fray Larios chant the Mass and baptize fifty-five infants. That celebration is remembered as the earliest recorded high (sung) Mass in Texas.

Justiceburg, TX

The stretch of the Brazos River near Justiceburg has drawn people for centuries, and the marker traces the river's many names across cultures — the Caddoan "Tokonohono," La Salle's "Malingne," and "La Trinidad" recorded by Spanish expeditions in 1716. Legends of parched travelers, from Coronado's men onward, finding lifesaving water gave rise to the enduring name Los Brazos de Dios, "the arms of God." Fresh water and the arrival of the Santa Fe railroad in 1910 spurred the town of Justiceburg, named for rancher Jefferson Davis Justice, who donated the townsite.

Bertram, TX

John and Milda Bryson had this home built in 1906 by local craftsman Marcus Langford, on land Milda's family had held since 1855. The Bartons and Brysons had been neighbors back in South Carolina before both migrated to Texas, and their descendants have kept the turn-of-the-century house in the family ever since.

San Antonio, TX

This Neo-Classical Revival residence was completed in 1909 for Gen. John Lapham Bullis, a New Yorker who spent much of his career on the Southwestern frontier. In 1873 Bullis took command of a company of Seminole Scouts whose skill at tracking raiders on the Texas border drew national attention. He lived in the house, designed by San Antonio architect Harvey Page, until his death in 1911; nearby Camp Bullis bears his name.

Greensboro, GA

In the summer of 1787, amid frontier tensions along the Oconee River, Creek warriors crossed into the young settlement of Greensborough—then just twenty cabins, a log courthouse, and a fort—and burned it, killing many inhabitants. The violence flowed from the disputed Treaty of Shoulderbone Creek of 1786, which the Creeks bitterly resented. Some of those involved were later captured and jailed, though the record of their fate runs out.

Laughlin Township, NV

In 1855 Congress put up thirty thousand dollars to buy camels, betting that animals bred for desert heat and drought might outperform mules on the arid frontier. Lieutenant Edward F. Beale put the experiment to the test, surveying a wagon road from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River and driving his camels across into the future Nevada in the fall of 1857. The animals proved capable but impractical—clashing with domestic stock and soon overtaken by railroads—and the survivors passed into legend as camels supposedly glimpsed for years wandering the southwestern deserts.

San Elizario, TX

For more than two centuries the Camino Real, the "Royal Road," carried goods and travelers between Mexico City, Chihuahua, and the New Mexican towns of Santa Fe and Taos. First traced by Juan de Oñate on his 1598 expedition, the route threaded through the San Elizario–Socorro–Ysleta settlements and crossed the Rio Grande near present-day El Paso. When the river became the U.S.–Mexico boundary in 1848, this ancient artery of Spanish colonial commerce became part of the United States.

El Paso, TX

For over two hundred years the Camino Real, or Royal Road, was the great commercial route linking Mexico City and Chihuahua with Santa Fe and Taos. Juan de Oñate first traveled it during his 1598 expedition into New Mexico, and it ran through the El Paso valley settlements before crossing the Rio Grande and turning north. When the river became the international boundary in 1848, this stretch of the old Spanish road passed into the United States.

El Paso, TX

For more than two centuries the Camino Real, the Royal Road, was the lifeline linking Mexico City and Chihuahua to the Spanish outposts of Santa Fe and Taos. First traveled by Juan de Oñate on his 1598 expedition into New Mexico, it followed the San Elizario–Socorro–Ysleta road and forded the Rio Grande west of today's downtown El Paso. When the river became the U.S.–Mexico border in 1848, this stretch of the ancient route passed into the United States.

Socorro, TX

For more than two centuries the Camino Real, or Royal Road, was the great trade route carrying goods from Mexico City and Chihuahua north to Santa Fe and Taos. First traveled by Juan de Oñate during his 1598 expedition into New Mexico, it threaded through the Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario settlements and crossed the Rio Grande near present-day El Paso. When the river became the U.S.–Mexico boundary in 1848, this stretch of the ancient road became American soil.

El Paso, TX

For more than two centuries the Camino Real, or Royal Road, carried commerce from Mexico City and Chihuahua north to Santa Fe and Taos. First traveled by Juan de Oñate on his 1598 expedition, it wound through the El Paso valley, crossing the Rio Grande and pressing on into New Mexico. When the river became the U.S.-Mexico boundary in 1848, this segment of the ancient route became American ground.

Amarillo, TX

For more than twelve thousand years the Canadian River served as a travel corridor and home, supporting stone and adobe Native villages between the 12th and 14th centuries. It was among the first interior rivers known to European explorers: Coronado crossed it in 1541 hunting the fabled Quivira, Oñate followed in 1601, French traders came in the 1700s, and by the 1840s it guided Santa Fe traders and California gold seekers under military escort. Even its disputed name carries this layered past.

Amarillo, TX

For more than 12,000 years the Canadian River drew people to its banks, from ancient travelers to the stone-and-adobe village builders of the 1100s–1300s. It became one of the first interior rivers Europeans knew: Coronado forded it in 1541 chasing the golden rumor of Quivira, and Oñate followed in 1601. Later it guided French traders, Santa Fe merchants like Josiah Gregg, and California-bound emigrants escorted west by Captain Marcy in 1849.

Odessa, TX

The Caprock is a wall of flat-topped ridges and limestone-capped cliffs that rises sharply above the plains, marking the western edge of the escarpment where the Staked Plains break away from the lower country to the east. Coronado's expedition skirted it in 1540, and for centuries it sheltered travelers from storms while barring easy passage to settlers and eastbound wagons, including some returning from the 1850s gold fields. Only after wells and windmills tamed the dry tableland did farming and ranching take hold, and in 1881 railroad crews earned top Texas wages blasting the mile-wide chasm known as Colt's Big Rock Cut, where a dynamite accident killed three men whose graves are now lost.

San Antonio, TX

Chosen in 1731 by the Canary Islander settlers of San Fernando de Bexar, the Casas Reales served for more than a century as the seat of government on San Antonio's Main Plaza. From its steps, officials proclaimed the news of empires and republics to the roll of drums; Zebulon Pike passed through in 1807, the green flag of Mexican rebellion flew over it in 1813, and Moses Austin filed his colonization petition there in 1820. Santa Anna made it his headquarters during the siege of the Alamo in 1836, and four years later the deadly Council House Fight erupted here between Texan officials and Comanche leaders.

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.

Wimberley, TX

First patented to Amasa Turner in 1847, this Hays County ground held an early log cabin that doubled as church and school, served by circuit-riding preachers. When Pleasant Wimberley's young daughter Melissa died in 1876 she was buried on the church grounds, and after John H. and Callie Saunders bought the land in 1885 they gave an acre for a community cemetery. Among those resting here is W.W. Moon, remembered as the first permanent settler in Hays County.

Canyon, TX

This route retraces the path Charles Goodnight rode in 1876 when he drove 1,600 cattle down from Colorado into the sheltering depths of Palo Duro Canyon to found the first ranch on the Texas Staked Plains. Born in Illinois in 1836 and hardened on the frontier, Goodnight blazed some 2,000 miles of cattle trail with partner Oliver Loving, built the vast JA Ranch with John Adair, and became the archetype of the Texas cowman. He also preserved a buffalo herd, founded a college, and fought for law and order until his death in 1929.

Port Lavaca, TX

Between 1844 and 1887, the booming port of Indianola became the eastern anchor of the Chihuahua Road, an overland trade route running all the way to the silver-mining districts of northern Mexico. More direct than rival trails, it drew hundreds of wagons and Mexican carretas that outfitted at Indianola for a grueling haul through San Antonio, the Big Bend country, and across the Rio Grande. The trade seeded dozens of West Texas towns before an 1877 hurricane and the rise of railroads brought the road's era to an end.