Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Gotta love Texas!

[Shakey Jake]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
Roughly 50,000 German POWs were held in Texas during World War II in towns like Temple, Hearne etc... This photo shows German POWs hard at work in the fields near Rosenberg, Texas.
Courtesy the archives of the Fort Bend Museum.

[Rifletom]

Thinking they had it better than POW's in Germany and surrounding areas had it.

[Shakey Jake]

Per Traces of Texas:
John Horton Slaughter (October 2, 1841 – February 16, 1922), also known as Texas John Slaughter, was an American lawman, cowboy, poker player and rancher during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Louisiana in 1841 and learned English and French from birth, then later learned Spanish from Mexican vaqueros. He also picked up many lessons from the Native Americans who roamed Texas. In the early 1860s, Slaughter defended American settlers against hostile Comanche as a Texas Ranger. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Army. After the war he formed the San Antonio Ranch Company with his brothers and settled in Atascosa County. It was in that capacity that he became one of the first people to drive cattle up the Chisholm Trail. He married Eliza Harris in August, 1871.
In the late 1870s, Slaughter left Eliza and his kids in Texas while he went to New Mexico to look for a new place to live. He spent two years buying cattle in New Mexico and then decided to buy a ranch in Arizona, where Eliza and his children joined him. Sadly, Eliza died of smallpox shortly afterward. Slaughter left his children in Arizona and went to fetch his cattle in New Mexico. While camped on the banks of the Pecos River, he met a family named Howell, whom he persuaded to combine their stock with his and move to Arizona with him. On the trip, on April 16, 1878, Slaughter married sixteen-year-old Viola Howell at Tularosa, New Mexico. The Slaughters settled south of Tombstone near Charleston, Arizona. Slaughter bought the San Bernardino Ranch near Douglas and in 1886 was elected sheriff of Cochise County. He served two terms, then helped the United States Cavalry against Geronimo's Apaches. Slaughter worked on his ranch until a few years before he died in 1922. Viola lived until 1941.

[Shakey Jake]

Oldest known standing homestead in Texas. It sits on property in Stony, Texas. Stony is on Farm Road 2622 two miles east of the Wise county line and ten miles west of Denton in far west Denton County. It was settled in the late 1850s and was named for the stony area in which it was located. Its population never exceeded fifty, probably due to the emergence of Justin, eight miles southwest, as a shipping point for area farmers. Stony had a post office from 1879 to 1918. In 1884 it had a mill, a gin, four churches, two schools, and a population estimated at 130. By 1890 the population had dropped to fifty. In 1914 the town had 100 residents, a doctor, a blacksmith, and at least two stores. From 1933 to 2000 its population was estimated at twenty-five. In 2004 a school building dating back to 1884 still stood in the community, and a restored 1839 log cabin (pictured), located nearby, was open to the public as local museum. Picture by Mike Doran.

[Shakey Jake]

Per Traces of Texas:
The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
Bovina, Texas, which is a town of about 1700 folks in western Parmer County roughly 70 miles southwest of Amarillo, was originally the Hay Hook Line Camp of the XIT Ranch. The ranch headquarters was one of Parmer County's earliest buildings. When the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway was built through the ranch in 1898, a switch was placed at the site to be used by cowboys to unload cottonseed shipped in as feed. Some of this feed was invariably spilled along the tracks, causing XIT cattle to gather at the unfenced right-of-way. Oftentimes the cattle would lay down, compelling railroad workers to get off their trains and prod them off the tracks. As a result, the site was labeled "Bull Town." I'm not sure why they replaced Bull Town with "Bovina" when the post office was established on January 31, 1899. It may be because "Bovina" sounds more elegant/worldly. In any case, Bovina soon experienced a boom and for a time shipped a larger volume of cattle than any other shipping point in the world.

[Shakey Jake]

This is what it looked like for a Model T to Cross the Wagon Bridge over the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, Lueders Texas 1915.

[Shakey Jake]

The Alamo at Christmas in 1900. Looks to be a great photograph that was taken. The photographer is anonymous.

[Shakey Jake]

Who has eaten here? The world famous Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo Texas! In 1960, R. J. “Bob” Lee opened The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo Texas on Route 66, the “Mother Road”. It’s distinctive architecture soon became recognized across the Mother Road as a good stopping place for great steaks grilled over an open flame. The Big Texan is famous for the FREE 72oz steak challenge, which includes eating a salad, baked potato, shrimp cocktail and 72 ounces of beef! Picture by Riverview Photography.

[cooperhawk]

We've eaten at the Big Texan many times as we pass through on our way south or going home. They actually
have their own campground which we stay at, complete with a stretch limo with longhorn horns on the hood to
ferry you back and forth to the restaurant.

The steaks are pretty darn good.