Authentic Texas

On April 4, 2017, the Texas Department of Transportation — TxDOT, as most of us know it — kicked off a commemoration of its centennial year. Roger Polson, coauthor of Miles and Miles of Texas: 100 Years of the Texas…

On tiptoes, atop the checkerboard floor, she leans against the marble- topped soda fountain counter to ponder. It’s not easy with 64 original, homemade flavors and every color under the rainbow to pick from. “That one,” the pigtailed little girl…

Texas has plenty of back roads to explore but none quite like U.S. Highway 83.It begins at the Oklahoma Panhandle and runs almost 900 milesuntilreachingBrownsville, which is as far as any road in the state can take travelers north to…

The notorious gaudy cowtown of Tascosa, situated along the dramatic Canadian River breaks in the Texas Panhandle, was long known to harbor desperadoes, rustlers, fugitives and those who pursued them. Today it’s a ghost town — and the site of…

It was 1930. The Great Depression had begun, but falling crop prices and heavy debt had long plunged rural America into economic misery. In the West Texas city of Stamford, 13 community leaders met to propose a celebration to boost…

In the hot, dusty days of September 1915, events in El Paso and along the Texas border with Mexico reached critical mass as years of unrest and violence brought by Mexican revolutionaries spread across the Rio Grande River and into…

Houston’s oil barons have long invested in the arts, both for the city and for themselves. The crown jewel of a wildly eclectic museum scene is the Menil Collection, the 17,000-piece collection of Schlumberger USA president John de Menil and…

The Gulf Coast of Texas has a robust history, from the bold stories of the natives to European development of this “New World,” Texas. In 1721, Presidio La Bahía and Mission Nuestra Señora Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga were located on…