Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Okay, here's the Arcane Texas fact of the day:
"The streets are paved with gold in Texas" may not be a farfetched as it may seem. The pavement on sections of U.S. 81 and U.S. 287 in Montague County contains gold. When the two highways were paved with in 1936, sand for the concrete was taken from a nearby pit. Seeing glints of gold in the sand, the owner of the pit had samples tested, but although the laboratory confirm that it was gold there was only about 54 cents worth of gold per ton of sand, and it was difficult to separate from the sand not making it worth the expense. In all, sand containing about $36,00 worth of gold, in 1936, was mixed into the concrete over 39 miles of the two highways. There is a historical marker five miles south of Ringgold, TX on U.S. Highway 81 noting this fact. That would be about $702,000 worth of gold today.

[Shakey Jake]

One of yesterday's threads had to do with guitarists. Well, Texas has had many great guitarists over the years with Stevie Ray Vaugn perhaps being on of the most recognized. His brother Jimmy Vaughn has had a good run of it as well. Today we're going to pay our respects to Freddie King. Freddie was known as one of the "Three Kings" along with BB and Albert. Freddie was born September 3, 1934 in Gilmer,TX. He began playing the guitar at the age of 6 learning the instrument from his uncle. Freddie was signed by Federal Records in 1959 and had two hit singles "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and the instrumental "Hide Away". He passed away at the age of 42 December 28, 1976. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 by ZZ Top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEmGbMd2duk

[Shakey Jake]

From the Traces of Texas Facebook group:
This magnificent circa 1916 photo of two cowboys was taken by noted border photographer W.D. Smithers in the Big Bend. TOT reader Rod Garcia found it years ago in an attic at a house in Houston that had been sold and which was being made ready for the new owners. The sellers were just going to leave all these wonderful photos to whatever fate and Rod couldn't stand it so he rescued them. He has scanned quite a few and I hope he sends in more.
Thank you, Rod. This is a sensational image!

[Shakey Jake]

San Antonio has a rich history being one of the first settled areas of Texas by the Spanish. Here's a picture of the San Jose y San Miguel deAguayo Mission. The mission was built by decree sometime before 1730. (There is a lengthy article on the TSHA web portal that I'll post below.) The mission served the Franciscans and peoples of San Antonio de Bexar for a number of years before falling in such disrepair it was no longer used (ca. 1868). There was an extensive restoration project that took a number of years beginning in 1932. Here is a picture of the mission in 1868 and pictures after restoration.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ent ... yo-mission

[Shakey Jake]

Here's a fine picture of Pine Johnson on the famous quarter horse Paco Bueno. The picture comes from the UTA digital library and was taken by J.W. Dunlop in the 1940's. Pine worked on the famous Waggoner Three D ranch. It's a lengthy read but here's the entry per TSHA.

The Waggoner (Three D) Ranch had its beginnings in the early 1850s when Daniel Waggoner, his son W. T. (Tom), and a fifteen-year-old Black slave trailed 242 cattle and six horses into Wise County. Waggoner left behind in East Texas the grave of his wife. He first settled on Catlett Creek near the site of present Decatur. Two years later, after buying an additional 200 head, Waggoner located his herd on a 15,000-acre tract on the West Fork of the Trinity River near Cactus Hill, in an area now under Lake Bridgeport. However, because of the increasing danger of American Indian raids, he was compelled to move his family east to Denton Creek temporarily. His first brand was a D61, but about 1866 he began branding with three Ds in reverse, a brand easy to recognize and difficult for rustlers to alter. He used a D71 brand on his horses until around 1881.
By 1869 Dan and Tom Waggoner had formed a partnership known as D. Waggoner and Son. Late that year they wintered a herd in Clay County, and in the spring of 1870 young Tom headed a drive to the Kansas market and netted a profit of $55,000, which was the basis of their ranch fortune. In 1871, with the westward push of the frontier, the Waggoners moved their headquarters to Clay County and settled temporarily on the Wichita River in southeastern Wichita County. From that site they moved the headquarters to the junction of China Creek and the Red River in northwestern Wichita County, just north of what is now Electra, which was later named for Tom's daughter. By the early 1880s their range extended thirty miles from China Creek to Pease River. In 1885 the need for more grassland prompted them to join other Texas ranchers leasing range land in the "Big Pasture," part of the Comanche and Kiowa reservation lands across the Red River in Indian Territory. With the passing of the open range, they began purchasing Texas land. Paying about $1 an acre, the Waggoners slowly built their cattle and horse empire. Between 1889 and 1903 the ranch came to cover a block running thirty miles east and west and twenty-five miles north and south, including more than a million acres. It extended into Foard, Knox, Baylor, and Archer counties but centered chiefly in Wilbarger and Wichita counties.
Among the notable employees on the Waggoner Ranch during its early years were Jimmie Roberts, E. B. Gillis, Walter Lowrance, Tony Hazelwood, and W. D. (Shinnery) McElroy. Roberts, who was a dead shot, proved an effective deterrent to rustlers. During the 1880s the Waggoners sold around 40,000 cattle a year. By 1900 the ranch, well-watered and compact, held 60,000 cattle. Three railroads afforded transportation to the markets, thus eliminating the annual long drives over the Western Trail to Kansas. In 1900 Robert L. More, noted for his collection of bird eggs, came into the Waggoners' administrative employ. By that time, they had abandoned the Big Pasture in the wake of the federal government's allotment of reservation lands to individual settlers. In 1903 the China Creek headquarters was sold as farming land in a development known as the Waggoner Colony. The Wichita and Wilbarger land eventually was broken into at least four divisions with headquarters known as White Face, Four Corners, Santa Rosa, and Zacaweista (also spelled Sachueista). Subsequently Zacaweista, south of Vernon, emerged as the main headquarters.
About 1885 the Waggoners began breeding Durham shorthorns, and Hereford cattle were introduced early in the 1890s. Since 1917 the stock has been predominantly Hereford, although experimental crossbreeding programs with Angus, Brahman, Simbrah, and Brangus bulls were tried.
Dan Waggoner died in 1904, and W. T. took over the ranch. In 1909 he divided the ranch among his three children, Paul, Guy, and Electra, as a Christmas gift mainly to give them training in ranching, and maintained a quarter section, called White Face for himself. The discovery of oil at Electra in 1911 (see WICHITA COUNTY REGULAR FIELD) caused the Waggoners to combine oil production and refining with ranching activities; the refinery cars and tanks bore the image of the Waggoner cattle brand. For years the area around the Zacaweista headquarters contained one of the major shallow oilfields of the world, which was developed by the Texas Company (later Texaco).
In 1923, the heirs apparently having declined to learn about ranching, W. T. consolidated the ranch under a trust with himself as the sole trustee and the only one empowered to make decisions for the property.
The ranch specialized in fine horses as well as cattle. W.T. always had a stable of fine thoroughbreds. When Buster Wharton, Electra’s son, inherited her portion of the ranch, he raised polo ponies. But the ranch ultimately became known for quarter horses. W. T’s son, E. Paul, bought a yearling called Poco Bueno at auction in San Angelo, Texas. The horse became the ranch’s foundation sire and probably the best-known quarter horse of all time. He earned several championships, sired several champions, and had a distinguished career as a cutting horse after he was retired from the championship circuit.
In 1931 W. T., then living mostly in Fort Worth, bought farm land near Arlington, Texas, and developed the Waggoner Arlington Downs Stables, a $2 million racing plant that remained in operation until the repeal of the state's parimutuel betting law in 1937.
After the 1934 death of Tom Waggoner, his widow, Ella Halsell Waggoner, became the sole trustee and served in that capacity until the 1950s when she was in her nineties. She relinquished authority to her only surviving child, E. Paul. In later years the trustee position was filled by several men appointed from outside the family. Although the surviving heirs owned the land, they had no voice in its management according to the terms of the trust, and each trustee found it difficult to navigate the increasing tension between branches of the family.
When Buster Wharton died in 1967, the issue of inheritance led to one of the most contentious lawsuits seen in Texas courts. Several parties filed lawsuits claiming rights to Buster’s portion of the ranch, and the matter was in the courts for six-and-a-half years. Ultimately the Texas Supreme Court named Buster’s son, Bucky Wharton, as the legitimate heir. Bucky and E. Paul’s daughter, internationally-known sculptor Electra Waggoner Biggs, became joint owners of the property.
In 1991 the ranch consisted of more than 520,000 acres in six counties—Wilbarger, Baylor, Wichita, Archer, Knox, and Foard. The largest ranch under one fence in the nation, it was still owned by Waggoner heirs, namely the families of A. B. (Bucky) Wharton III and sculptor Electra Waggoner Biggs.
About 26,000 acres were devoted to farming grain crops. The ranching operation consisted of fifteen camps or divisions, each with from 20,000 to 30,000 acres. A family resided at each camp to look after the livestock, fences, and water. Twice a year the wagon crew worked the cattle at each camp. During roundups the ranch helicopter was used in addition to cowboys on horses. Several reservoirs on the ranch properties, including Lake Kemp, provided public recreational facilities as well as limited leased housing.
In April 1991 Electra Biggs asked a district court to sell the ranch and distribute the proceeds to its shareholders. Bucky Wharton countered with an offer to split the ranch evenly. Biggs was primarily represented by her son-in-law, Gene Willingham. He and Bucky Wharton differed over how to protect the family fortune against low energy prices and land values, with Willingham contending that an even division would be too complicated given the nature of the assets. The ranch at the time had cattle, oil wells, mansions, aircraft hangers, and stalls and stables. The land alone was valued at $110 million, and with the assets added, the estate was estimated at a value of about $330 million. It was the major employer in the area around Vernon, Texas, present-day headquarters of the ranch, and many cowboys and their families had lived their entire lives on the ranch. Four generations of the Waggoner family had lived on the land.
Eventually, with the two factions unable to negotiate, the case ended up in the courts, which decreed that the land must be sold. In 2016 tycoon and sports mogul Stan Kroenke, owner of the Los Angeles Rams and husband of Walton heiress Ann Walton Kroenke, bought the ranch. Kroenke not only owns the Rams but also hockey, soccer, basketball, and lacrosse teams; ranches in Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, and British Columbia; three vineyards; and a luxury resort in California especially for wine merchants. Purchase of the Waggoner (Three D) Ranch has made him the ninth largest landowner in the United States.
Kroenke vowed to keep the Waggoner under one fence. No descendants of the Waggoner family live on the land for the first time in more than 150 years. In 2020 the only major change was that families were evicted from leased homes on the two lakes within the property, although one lake remains accessible to daytime fishermen and tourists. Surrounding towns have not seen the economic fallout that was anticipated.

[Mike_S]

What a rise and fall story!!! Thank you Shakey Jake!

[Shakey Jake]

Here's a fine picture of H.O. Kelly, the Texas artist, on his horse Babe taken by Herbert Key on October 11, 1950. H.O. was born in 1884 and died in 1955 a resident of Blanket, TX. Here's a link to his exhibit in Dallas five years after his passing that discusses parts of his life and paintings:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531 ... 3420/m1/3/

Here's the bio from TSHA:

KELLY, HAROLD OSMAN (1884–1955). H. O. Kelly, painter, was born in Bucyrus, Ohio, on March 6, 1884, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Kelly. Dreams of making a living on horseback and tales of the American West lured him away from home at an early age. Before settling down he worked in thirty states as a cowboy, sheepherder, cowhand, logger, bullwhacker, sharecropper, and, occasionally, rodeo rider. He sometimes hired out in grainfields or cottonfields, but he preferred to work with horses and mules. In the fall of 1929, with help from his family, he bought a farm near Dalhart, in the Texas Panhandle. When the Dust Bowl came, the Kellys were right in the midst of it. Well aware of his past restlessness, Kelly resolved to stick it out. He did what work he could in the daytime. At night, unable to sleep, he read the Bible, Melville, and particularly Dickens. He had always had a talent for sketching and painting and for years had made little pictures to send to friends and relatives as gifts. Now he undertook to do a series of small paintings illustrating his favorite book, The Pickwick Papers.
In 1939 the bank reclaimed the farm, and the Kellys moved to Blanket, where they lived for a while in a made-over chicken house. Kelly's health was broken, and he was unable to work; what little income the family had come from his wife's work in a Brownwood laundry. Kelly painted more and more, relying for subject matter on his remarkable memory of landscapes, small towns, and people at work and play. During the 1940s, at the suggestion of another artist, Doris Lee, he graduated to oil and canvas board. Lexie Dean Robertson of nearby Rising Star saw some of his paintings, which were receiving local acclaim, and took them to Jerry Bywaters, director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the Dallas Museum of Art), who sold them for the artist. Bywaters arranged a one-man exhibition of Kelly's work in 1950, when he also invited him to serve as artist-in-residence at the museum during the State Fair of Texas, a position he held annually until his death. Kelly painted slowly. His output was so meager that he never achieved the commercial success of other, more prolific, primitive painters. But, according to Francis Henry Taylor, once director of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Kelly was "one of the few genuine primitive painters we have had in our country." Kelly married Jessie Bowers in Arkansas, probably not long before 1920. They had one child. Kelly died on December 12, 1955. The largest collection of his paintings is at Texas A&M University.

[Shakey Jake]

On the night of August 2, 1976, the state contends, Fort Worth multimillionaire T. Cullen Davis, 42, unnerved by his estranged wife Priscilla’s victory in domestic court earlier in the day, arrived at his former mansion-residence carrying or wearing a crude disguise. The state believes that Cullen Davis met his 12-year-old stepdaughter Andrea near the front door and took her to a small room in the basement where he shot her to death. They believe Davis donned a woman’s black wig, wrapped a black plastic garbage bag around his hands, and lay in wait for his estranged wife and her 6-foot-10-inch live-in lover. They contend that Davis shot and wounded his wife Priscilla and shot and killed her lover, Stan Farr. Finally, they believe that minutes later Davis gunned down Gus Gavrel, a youthful visitor to the house, the night’s fourth victim, still alive but now paralyzed.
The city of Fort Worth exploded. A writer pronounced the murders “the biggest goddamn thing to happen to Fort Worth since the railroad.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran eight full pages of the story in one day. But quickly the actual crime was old news. As people tried to forget the killing of a 12-year-old girl, the murder became not a whodunit, but a gleeful trespass into the private lives of Fort Worth’s rich black sheep. Certainly the printing presses ran far behind the rumor mills. In one night alone, wild gossip spread that Priscilla had slept with everybody from “her old dyke lover” to a district attorney. Cullen fared little better in these glint-eyed, bar side sessions: one recurring tidbit was that “this isn’t the first time he’s ever worn a woman’s wig.”
The town split into camps. The Priscilla camp centered on close friends who defended her adamantly. One woman (who had in fact cancelled earlier plans to stay with Priscilla at the mansion that August night) said, “I adore her. Priscilla’s been very good to me. If she knew you were a pint low on blood, she’d give you a gallon. And I’ll tell you another thing — if I read one more distorted version of this thing, I’ll come after you with a shotgun. I’m serious.” Said another, “Cullen knew when he did this that the liars of Fort Worth, Texas, would eat her up. The men would drool, but the women would grind her up like a cheese grinder.” Cullen’s camp was not really so much pro-Cullen as it was anti-Priscilla. Cullen’s backers wondered aloud why he hadn’t shot her a long time ago. The barbs followed common themes: as one of Priscilla’s critics puts it, “All she ever did was create problems. She’s gone from white trash to millionairess on a fake pair of tits.”
Cullen Davis would eventually be acquitted of all charges. Priscilla died of breast cancer in February of 2001. Cullen Davis still resides in Fort Worth. No one has ever been convicted of the murders and attempted murder.

[Shakey Jake]

The "Two-fer" flood of 1915 hit Ft. Worth hard. It wasn't any better throughout Texas either. It was reported over 60 died in Austin as complete homes were carried away for miles. By standers watched in horror as a woman and her five children were swept away and died by drowning. On April 23 huge amounts of rain flooded the Trinity River that borders the west side of downtown Ft. Worth. The storm downed telegraph and telephone lines. The main gas pipelines were damaged as well leaving people without hot water and cooking fuel. The Trinity was 29 feet over flood level causing the spillway to overflow two days later causing a second flood that some referred to as "twofer" or "double trouble". In the back of my mind, it brings me to thinking if Joseph Scott and Larry Davies wrote "Texas Flood" with this event in mind. A lot more can be found on this website:

https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=30766

The picture below was taken during the flood in Ft. Worth, TX. There wasn't any credit on the photo.

[Shakey Jake]

Here are a couple of fine pictures I found on the UNT libraries digital directory. One is an undated picture of the XIT hadquarters in Channing, TX and the other is notated as "Chuckwagon in Childress, Tx 1886".