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.

[HenryFan]

Shakey Jake -

Has anyone ever eaten that much food? If so, how often does it happen?

Seems impossible to me.

[cooperhawk]

They have an elevated area with tables and they televise it all around the place.
When we've been there there are usually one or two folks trying. If you can't eat it all
then you pay full price and take left overs home.
I'll never try it myself. Can't eat that much.

[Shakey Jake]

Shakey Jake -

Has anyone ever eaten that much food? If so, how often does it happen?

Seems impossible to me.

According to Wiki about 10,000 people have completed the challenge successfully out of 90,000 that have attempted it.
Jake

[Shakey Jake]

Per Traces of Texas Facebook group:
"The Dodge City Peace Commission" in 1883. One of the most famous photos in Old West history. Several men here had Texas roots or spent considerable time here.
Luke Short, whose life story should be a Hollywood movie, was born in Arkansas but moved to Montague County, Texas shortly after birth and grew there. In 1862, Luke witnessed his father being ambushed and attacked by a group of Comanches in their yard. His father was surrounded by the group and attacked with arrows and lances. Inside the house, Luke helped the elder Short by dragging a large rifle to his brother, who then ran and handed it to his father, who successfully fought off the attackers. Later, on the night of February 8, 1887, an argument broke out between Luke Short and Jim Courtright in Fort Worth about the Courtright's persistence in demanding money from Luke's establishment for "protection". Short ended up killing Courtright in one of the Old West's most famous duels.
Bat Masterson was engaged in buffalo hunting on June 27, 1874, when he became an involuntary participant in one of the Wild West's most celebrated Indian fights: a five-day siege by several hundred Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne warriors led by Quanah Parker at a collection of ramshackle buildings in the Texas panhandle known as Adobe Walls. Masterson was one of 28 hunters who defended the outpost during the attack. The Comanche suffered the most losses during the battle, though the actual number killed is not known, with reports ranging from a low of 30 to a high of 70. The defenders of Adobe Walls lost only four men, one of whom shot himself by accident. After being fought to a standstill, Quanah Parker and his followers rode off. Later, Masterson was involved in a gunfight in Mobeetie, Texas, and sustained a bullet wound in the pelvis, from which he recovered. But that is why he started carrying his signature cane.
Wyatt Earp met Doc Holliday for the first time at the Cattle Exchange Saloon in Fort Griffin in 1878 --- a meeting Earp credited with saving his life. He subsequently had some serious adventures in Texas.

[RetiredSeabee]

Shakey Jake -

Has anyone ever eaten that much food? If so, how often does it happen?

Seems impossible to me.

According to Wiki about 10,000 people have completed the challenge successfully out of 90,000 that have attempted it.
Jake

I’m willing to bet that at least half of the 10,000 were nicknamed Bubba or Tiny.

[Shakey Jake]

Shakey Jake -

Has anyone ever eaten that much food? If so, how often does it happen?

Seems impossible to me.

According to Wiki about 10,000 people have completed the challenge successfully out of 90,000 that have attempted it.
Jake

I’m willing to bet that at least half of the 10,000 were nicknamed Bubba or Tiny.

Mel's Country Kitchen in Tomball has their own version of this but it's not free if you finish it. They will add your name to the "honor list" if you complete it withing an hour:
The Mega Mel Burger $29.99 One and a half pounds of ground beef, a FULL pound of bacon, 1/4 pound of cheese & all the trimmings. Finish & add your name to our wall!

[Shakey Jake]

Downtown Mineola, Texas in December during the early 60's. The picture is a bit grainy, but I thought it had some merits to post here. I remember my hometown used the same style of Christmas decoration. I guess it was the generic decoration for small towns. Mineola is in East Texas, about 26 miles northeast of Tyler. According to some, Maj. Ira H. Evans, an International-Great Northern Railroad official who laid out the townsite, named the town for his daughter, Ola, and a friend, Minnie Patten. Others say the name originated when Major Rusk, a surveyor for the I-GN, combined his daughter's name with that of Minna Wesley Patten. The town came into existence when the railroads-built lines through this part of the state. In 1873 the Texas and Pacific and the I-GN raced to see which could get to Mineola first. The I-GN reached the finish fifteen minutes earlier. The town's first government was organized in 1873 and incorporated in 1877.

[Shakey Jake]

Per Traces of Texas:
The Driskill Hotel in Austin is 137 years old today. It was on Dec. 20, 1886 that the grand old lady first opened its doors to the public. Here's a photo of the hotel circa 1920. The hotel was named for its builder, Jesse Lincoln Driskill, who was born in Tennessee in 1824 and moved with his wife to Texas in the early 1850s. He had several business ventures that were successful and then unsuccessful and rebuilt his fortune several times, ultimately becoming a trail cowboy and finally a rancher. Sadly, just two years after he opened his hotel, the Driskill family lost their fortune in 1888, when a late spring freeze on the northern plains killed 3,000 cattle. Payments on the hotel could not be met, and Driskill was forced to sell to S. E. McIlhenny. Jesse Driskill died, some said a broken man, on May 3, 1890, of a stroke

[Shakey Jake]

Miss Kathy Ellis, an entrant into the 1948 Birthday Party fashion show in Weslaco, Texas. Believe it or not, her entire outfit is made of produce. The Weslaco Chamber of Commerce held these annual parties to highlight the fruit and vegetables grown in the Rio Grande Valley and area citizens created and modeled clothing made from local fruit, vegetables, and flowers. In Kathy's case, her blouse and petticoat were made of white grapefruit membrane. Her laced bodice and overskirt were made of bougainvillea.
Courtesy the bodacious The Portal to Texas History .

[Shakey Jake]

You don't have to live up North to have a Santa Claus Museum. Check out this one in Columbus, TX. It's located at 604 Washington Street.
https://santamuseum.org/