Texas Icons
January 17, 2023
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas Haven’t Left the Alamo
The organization may have lost the right to manage the historical site, but key members still have a major influence on its future.
Texas History
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Texas Icons
January 17, 2023
We’ve Always Claimed That Everything Is Bigger Here. It’s Time for Us to Prove It.
For more than fifty years, the state I call home has repeatedly surprised me. The Texas of 2023? Well, it’s got me thinking a lot about how far we have, and haven’t, come.
Texas History
January 10, 2023
The Black Cowboy Museum, in Rosenberg, Fills an Important Gap
Former roper and country music singer Larry Callies was always a cowboy at heart, but when he was growing up, he rarely saw any representations of Black cowboys, despite a rich history. So in 2017, he founded the Black Cowboy Museum, which features a collection of
Texas History
December 19, 2022
Opinion: Examining the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Parts of Texas Rangers History
In marking the Rangers’ bicentennial, we should engage with critiques of the organization’s history and have more open, honest discussions.
White Hats
December 13, 2022
White Hats, Episode 6: Memorials and Monuments
As Texas Rangers’ 2023 bicentennial approaches, debates around the Rangers’ legacy become urgent again.
White Hats
December 7, 2022
Opinion: The Texas Rangers Bicentennial Is a Time to Reflect, Not Celebrate Mythology
It is time to address Ranger history thoroughly so the many wounds done to communities across Texas can finally be addressed.
White Hats
December 6, 2022
White Hats, Episode 5: Bias Toward Action
How does the Texas Rangers’ legacy as frontier lawmen affect the men and women who wear the badge today?
White Hats
December 1, 2022
Who Owns the Narrative? Texas Law Enforcement Versus Tejano Journalists
At the turn of the century, Mexican American publications paid a price for challenging the local sheriff and elements of the Texas Rangers.
White Hats
November 29, 2022
Delve Deeper Into the Violent, Complex History of the Texas Rangers With These Eleven Stories
The truth is more nuanced, and more instructive, than the myth.
White Hats
November 29, 2022
White Hats, Episode 4: The Cold Case
The Texas Rangers face a reckoning at the Capitol—and go on to become pop-culture heroes.
White Hats
November 22, 2022
White Hats, Episode 3: La Hora de Sangre
The Mexican Revolution gave the Texas Rangers a new calling. But it also became the darkest chapter in Rangers history.
White Hats
November 16, 2022
The Friendship That Inspired a Myth: Texas Ranger Jack Coffee Hays and Lipan Apache Chief Flacco
The historic partnership became pop-culture lore, but Texas’s broken promises to the tribe illustrated a different reality.
White Hats
November 15, 2022
‘White Hats,’ Episode 2: Ghosts of the Wild West
From Enchanted Rock to Fort Parker to the Guadalupe Mountains, we trace three early Ranger legends that mean very different things depending on whose history you claim as your own.
White Hats
November 15, 2022
‘White Hats,’ Episode 1: Rangers and ‘Rinches’
On the first episode of ‘White Hats,’ we visit the museum that tells the Rangers’ official history, then drive to South Texas to hear about efforts to bring other perspectives into the mainstream.
Texas History
October 12, 2022
Luckenbach Is a Hill Country Treasure. Can It Be Saved?
A bitter feud is pitting Hondo Crouch’s descendants against longtime locals as well as encroaching developers.
Texas History
October 4, 2022
Did JFK Really Eat the World’s Largest Tamale?
How a San Antonio restaurant manager pioneered the art of taco diplomacy.
Style & Design
September 27, 2022
A Legendary 100-Year-Old Carousel Will Spin Again in Austin
The ride greeted families at Playland Park in San Antonio before it was disbanded and sold. Now an Austin entrepreneur is putting it back together again.
Travel
September 12, 2022
The Story Behind a 70-Foot Concrete Arrow Near Odessa
A hundred years ago, U.S. airmail pilots depended on a coast-to-coast bread-crumb trail of arrows—though most have been destroyed, buried, lost, or forgotten.
Texas History
September 8, 2022
Farewell to the Dean of Texas’s Capitol Press Corps
How Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka held the powerful to account—and made Texas a better place.
Sports
August 30, 2022
The Night the Astrodome Got Rained Out
As rains fall across Texas, remember the 1976 Houston deluge that improbably shut down an Astros game at the famed “weather-proof” Astrodome.
Texas History
July 21, 2022
The Real Meaning of Texas Ranger Monuments
In recent years, Seguin has honored the group with memorials. My father agreed to build one—but then started having second thoughts.
Texas History
July 11, 2022
Mister McKinney Is the Ms. Frizzle of Houston History
Okay, so it’s not a magic vehicle, but the fast-talking tour guide covers Houston’s neighborhoods from an open-air school bus.
Texas History
May 31, 2022
How Texas Monthly Chronicled the Eighties Oil Bust Via a Beloved Houston Clothier
Bobby Sakowitz dressed Houston’s most stylish through the seventies and eighties boom years. Then things went bust.
Texas History
May 31, 2022
How “Cowgirl Accordionist” Cleo Raymond Helped Texas Country Music Find Its Sound
The 99-year-old North Texas musician stumped for LBJ, toured with the USO, and still recalls hundreds of tunes.
Texas History
May 24, 2022
Remembering the Texas Town That Did, Indeed, Start the Fire
A museum in San Felipe, 40 miles west of Houston, commemorates the unique history behind Stephen F. Austin’s founding colony.
Texas History
May 23, 2022
How a Texas Monthly Editor Got Inside a Billion-Dollar Wall Street Power Play
Joe Nocera’s pitched profile of then-little-known T. Boone Pickens got him unprecedented access to Pickens’s 1982 attempt to take over Cities Service.
Texas History
April 28, 2022
A Texas Monthly Editor’s Journey Into the Heart of King Ranch
The legendary cattle empire had been largely closed off from the outside world until the magazine’s founding editor gained access to King Ranch.
Texas History
April 21, 2022
The Wet, Wild History of Aqua Thrill Way, Austin’s 1970s Water Park
It may not have been safe, but it sure was fun.
Texas History
April 6, 2022
A Vast Military History Archive Is Hiding in Plain Sight on This Texas Campus
The Texas Heritage Museum at Hill College has grown into a nationally recognized collection specializing Civil War history.
Texas History
March 28, 2022
The Texas Monthly Writer Who Set Out to Find “Real” Texas—in Marfa
Over several years, Richard West spent two months in seven Texas locales. His reporting eventually won the National Magazine Award.
Texas History
March 25, 2022
The Surprising, Fraught History of the Texan Jewish Experience
Galveston was once the Ellis Island of the South. But Jewish arrivals had to navigate a society marked by racial and religious politics.
Texas History
March 24, 2022
Tayhlor Coleman Didn’t Know How Hard Texas Made It to Vote—Until She Started Living the #Vanlife
The seventh-generation Texan is roaming the state in her van, registering voters—and digging into her family's history in the long struggle for voting rights.
Texas History
March 18, 2022
This Costumed Brownsville Historian Will Warm Your Heart
Gene Fernandez has an outfit for every story, but his infectious love for local history is the star of the show.
Texas History
March 15, 2022
The Forgotten Texas Scientist Who Helped Develop the Polio Vaccine
Northeast Texas–born Byron Bennett was one of four key researchers on the team that created the lifesaving vaccine, but the spotlight shone only on Jonas Salk.
Texas History
March 14, 2022
A Texas Monthly Editor Stumbles Into the Sordid World of the Massage Parlor King
Greg Curtis’s first story about Sam Corey was supposed to be a colorful human interest piece, but in some ways it was actually the beginning of a heinous murder.
Texas History
March 9, 2022
Two Guys in Houston Are Bringing Back 100-Year-Old Mosaic Tile Street Signs
Joey Sanchez and Eric Maier are behind the Blue Tile Project, a movement to locate and restore the original tile street signs across the Bayou City.
Texas History
March 4, 2022
How Legendary Sportswriter Gary Cartwright Joined Texas Monthly
He was the magazine’s first big hire and—over the next few decades—delivered some of its most memorable stories.
Texas History
February 28, 2022
The Story Behind the Story: “The Greatest Experience of Your Life”
A popular columnist embeds herself inside the exclusive world of girls’ summer camps.
Texas History
February 16, 2022
The Story Behind the Story: “The Coming of Redneck Hip,” November 1973
A pair of Texas Monthly writers chronicle an emerging scene that would end up defining a city and changing American music forever.
Texas History
February 7, 2022
Texas Monthly’s First Editor Looks Back at What He Got Right and Wrong
Bill Broyles—now best known as a Hollywood screenwriter—remembers the magazine’s first issue.
Music
January 25, 2022
Eighty Years Later, We’re Still ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’
How a simple, two-chord song written by an Iowan became (clap clap clap clap) our unofficial state anthem.
Texas History
January 17, 2022
The Secrets of Bonfire Shelter
Archaeologists are uncovering new clues at a canyon where ancient Texans once hunted bison en masse.
Texas History
December 15, 2021
The Quirky History of the Osage Orange, Texas’s Ugliest Fruit
Once eaten by woolly mammoths, and later used by Indigenous Texans and settlers for its sturdy wood, this strange plant has spread from Texas across the country.
Texas History
December 1, 2021
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Barbette, a Gender-bending 1920s Aerialist From Round Rock
Performing death-defying trapeze stunts in drag, he shocked Parisian audiences.
Critters
November 29, 2021
At a Camel Conference in the Hill Country, Cameleers Swap Tips (and Watch Out for Slime)
Need help saddling your 1,300-pound dromedary? The Southwest Camel Conference is the place to be.
Film & TV
November 16, 2021
The Legendary Flop of ‘The Legend of the Lone Ranger’
How an Amarillo oilman stole the mask right off the Lone Ranger’s face, and made one of film’s most infamous failures in the process.
Texas History
October 29, 2021
Houston’s First Black Cemetery Was Neglected For Decades. One Group Is Leading Its Rejuvenation.
Olivewood Cemetery is the resting ground of many Houston trailblazers and an important piece of the history of the African diaspora.
Sports
October 22, 2021
The Great Burkburnett Football Field Feud of 1972
Decades after the Wichita County town saved its stadium from an oilman’s plan to drill at midfield, the structure has been condemned—after pipes once donated by oil companies rusted out.
Books
October 21, 2021
What Texas Inherited From Larry McMurtry
A recent tribute in Archer City gave Texans an overdue opportunity to pay their respects to their state’s greatest writer.
Texas History
October 14, 2021
Why We Need Strong Texas Women
Ann Richards, Farrah Fawcett, Beyoncé. An excerpt from TM’s new book, ‘Being Texan,’ explores a strain of toughness in the iconography of the state’s females.