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This
Week's Column
Ben's
Pistol 5-8-08
Whatever became of Ben Thompson’s six-shooter?
Thompson, a British-born former Texas Ranger and soldier of fortune
with a penchant for booze and gambling, made quite a reputation
as city marshal of Austin in the early 1880s. His life ended violently
in San Antonio on the night of March 11, 1884 when someone gunned
him down along with former outlaw-turned-lawman King Fisher of Uvalde...
Announcement
Mike Cox's "The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900,"
the first of a two-volume, 250,000-word definitive history of the
Rangers, was released by Forge Books in March 2008.
Kirkus Review, the American Library Association's Book List and
the San Antonio Express-News have all written rave reviews about
this book, the first mainstream, popular history of the Rangers
since 1935.
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"Texas
Tales" focuses on little-known aspects of Texas history Cox runs across
in his research and travels across the state. Old-time Texas Rangers
used to say some men just need killing. Some stories just need telling,
and that's what Cox likes to do.
Columns
Indianola
Remnants 5-1-08
San
Jacinto Hero Henry Millard 4-17-08
Earth
4-10-08
Henigan
Water 4-3-08
Sam
Houston 3-27-08
Bull
in the Brush 3-20-08
Denison
UFO 3-13-08
Alamo
Backdoor 3-6-08
Coffee
Drinkers 2-28-08
International
Pavedway 2-21-08
Valentine’s
Day 2-14-08
Rock
Fences 2-7-08
Granite
1-31-08
Buffalo
Bill 1-24-08
Shumla
1-18-08
Travel
Trailers 1-9-08
Suddenly
Silly 1-3-08
Buggies
12-26-07
Oil
Patch Memories 12-22-07
More
News of the Odd 12-13-07
Santa
Robber 12-6-07
Staple
Shopping 11-29-07
Bosque
Treasure 11-20-07
Biscuits
11-17-07
Doe
and a Bride 11-8-07
Tramp
Printers 11-1-07
Chupacabra
10-24-07
Does a zoologically unknown, blood-sucking creature prowl the South
Texas mesquite?...
FDR
10-18-07
Valley
Talk 10-12-07
Sullivan
10-4-07
Cow
Patties 9-26-07
Pope's
Flying Machine 9-19-07
Camels
9-12-07
Carr
Boys 9-6-07
The
Banker 8-30-07
Austin
Happenings 8-22-07
Pan-Am
and the Valley 8-17-07
Gator
8-14-07
Transitions
8-3-07
Robert
Leroy Ripley 7-31-07
In
the News 7-17-07
CSA
Veterans 7-12-07
Chinese
Coins 7-5-07
Big
Map 6-27-07
Menard
Grave 6-20-07
Prairie
Fires 6-14-07
Armless
Judge 6-7-07
Dumont
5-30-07
Centennial
House 5-23-07
Kinch
West 5-16-07
Checkers
5-9-07
Road
Log 1922 5-3-07
Weird
News 4-26-07
From the Lone Star State in 1899
Hail
Storm 4-19-07
Just a boy at the time, Howard Campbell never lost his vivid memory
of the only time he ever saw both of his parents cry...
Capitol
No. 1 4-12-07
The story of a civil engineer from San Antonio who earned less than
the value of a good mule for designing a new capitol for Texas...
John
Ringo 4-5-07
"It didn't play out quite like a scene from "Gunsmoke," but
two of the Old West's more notorious characters faced each other
in Austin's red light district in 1881..."
Sam's
Mother-in-Law 3-30-07
"Despite the rocky beginning of their relationship,
Sam Houston treated Mrs. Nancy Lea, his mother-in-law, with all
due respect..."
Lindbergh
3-27-07
Bagdad
4-3-07
"Far from the Middle East, another Bagdad lay on the south
side of the Rio Grande at the river's mouth, just across from a
Texas town called Clarksville. (Not to be confused with the Clarksville
in Red River County.)"
Richard
Ellis 4-3-07
Stage
Coach 4-3-07
Reconstruction
Valentine 2-16-07
Tallest
Rebel 2-8-07
Henry Clay Thruston
Photographer
Louis de Planque 2-1-07
Priddy
Good Sandwiches 1-26-07
Baskin-McGregor
Act 1-23-07
Cotton
Picking 1-11-07
1907
1-4-07
New
Year's Day 12-28-06
Early
Hunting 12-21-06
Burnt
Boot Creek 12-14-06
Blue
Northers 12-7-06
Moctezuma
11-28-06
Lord's
Acre 11-23-06
La
Posada 11-16-06
Laredo's La Posada Hotel
Rockport
Ships 11-9-06
Mystery
Wall 11-2-06
Someone went to a lot of trouble to build the old stacked-stone
wall hidden in a thick stand of yaupon and other brush on a Lee
County ranch...
Dead
Man's Hole 10-30-06
Bowie
10-19-06
Extra
Slow 10-12-06
"Early day Austin newspaper editor Edmunds Travis liked to
claim he had a hand in putting out both the slowest and fastest
extras in Texas newspaper history."
Rankin
Hotel 10-5-06
Withers
9-28-06
Rural
Mail Routes 9-21-06
Moody
House 9-14-06
The two-story Victorian house in Taylor has been nicely restored...
Thurber
Booze 9-7-06
Mother
8-30-06
Disappearing
Cows 8-24-06
"... Not only did the animals move, many believed that unrested
souls flitted about. Strange things were said to happen..."
Texas
City 1914 8-17-06
"A small town with a big name, Texas City hosted an Army camp..."
Kid
Murray 8-10-06
Texas' least-known outlaw, newspapers dubbed him "Kid" Murray...
Humble
Fire 8-2-06
"...Hudson's enthusiasm for the oil business changed abruptly
on July 23, 1905. That evening, a thunderstorm triggered a bolt
of lightning that ignited the oil in one of the large tanks Hudson
had helped build.
Old
Sam Houston Song 7-27-06
"The song, reprinted in 1928 in a long-defunct Texas magazine
called Bunker's Monthly, lies on the pages of the few surviving
copies of that publication, long forgotten..."
Clairmont
Jail 7-20-06
Antlers
7-13-06
Down
in Texas 7-6-06
"'Down in Texas' captured what the rest of the nation wanted
to believe about the Lone Star State's petroleum boom towns..."
Rochester
Teacher 6-29-06
School teaching has never been the best paying avocation, but the
terms of employment have definitely improved over the last century...
Lehmann
Show 6-22-06
When Fred Gipson's family went to an old-settlers reunion and fair
at Katemcy to see the aging Herman Lehmann put on a one-man exhibition,
the Mason County youngster got a taste of the old west far more
realistic than anything he ever saw in a Tom Mix movie...
Llano
Gold 6-15-06
Washed in golden sunset, from a distance Llano County's Sharp Mountain
looks like a giant Paleolithic flint hide scraper lying on its side...
Few today know about the long-abandoned mine shafts the mountain
hides...
Austin
Will 6-8-06
Austin real estate agent Susanne Lee has fond memories of the house
in Houston she grew up in, but until recently she never knew it
had much of a history.
Sheriff
Kirk 6-1-06
"...The killing of Sheriff Kirk stands out as an Old West shootout
worthy of any Hollywood Western..."
Lolita
5-18-06
Eureka
5-12-06
"...Ozona did become the county seat. Today, Eureka-first known
as Couch Well - is not even a ghost town, only a ghost name..."
Karma
5-5-06
Plains
Pioneer Charlie Saigling 4-27-06
Prairiedom
4-21-05
Most people driving along U.S. 71 from Austin to Columbus don't
spend any time thinking about the highway bridges that afford them
the ability to cross streams and rivers without getting wet.
Wild
Navidad 4-14-06
The Navidad River is only 74 miles long but it is as tangled in
history and folklore as the vines and trees along its banks...
Baker
Talk4-11-06
The talk Captain Mosley Baker supposedly gave to the men of his
company at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836...
Bluebonnets
3-30-06
Wired
3-24-06
Barton
Springs 3-17-06
Houston
Ring 3-9-06
Adobe
Outposts on the Rio Grande 3-1-06
Line
in the Sand 2-23-06
Army
Booze 2-16-06
Earl
Abel's 2-13-06
1918
Flu 2-2-06
Cleo
Face 1-26-06
"The folks along Bear Creek in Kimble County always called
the mysterious stone carving the “Cleo Face.”
Gulf
U-boats 1-20-06
Columbus
Tower 1-13-06
"No matter how European it looks, however, the tower is the
product of Yankee – well, Southern – ingenuity."
Cowboy
Tree 12-22-05
Hudson
Bend 12-16-05
"Maybe some day a scuba diver will find the old bent rifle
barrel at the bottom of Lake Travis..."
Medley
12-10-05
Sam Houston and more
Bull
Creek Battle 12-3-05
"Now covered with spacious, expensive houses, the cedar-studded
canyons on the western edge of Austin used to be Central Texas’
version of Appalachia."
Crockett
News 11-17-05
"Volume one, number one of the newspaper appeared to enlighten
the citizenry of Houston County on Dec. 6, 1853. It had not been
an easy process."
Last
Cavalry Horse 11-17-05
"That cold winter morning, Dec.14, 1932, was a sad one for
old-time horse soldiers and civilians alike at Fort D.A. Russell
in Marfa -- they both realized they were witnessing the end of an
era."
Amarillo
Symphony 11-3-05
"The whistle was music to the railroad man’s ears. With tongue-in-cheek,
he called it the “Amarillo Symphony.”
Storm
of 1895 10-26-05
The dust storm in El Paso
Jackass
in Heaven 10-20-05
"Clay McGonagill may have been the ropingest cowboy
Texas ever produced..."
Dead
Ellis 10-13-05
Catarina
10-6-05
If you’re looking for a ghost, it figures you’d go to a ghost town
to find one.
Circus
9-29-05
The Gainesville Community Circus in the 1950s
Outlaw
Letter 9-20-05
An outlaw's love letter in 1878
Missing
Coat 9-15-05
"Third-term Sterling County Sheriff S.T. Wood..."
Galveston
1900 9-8-05
Lady
Doc 9-1-05
Dr. Sofie Herzog, first female surgeon in Texas
Exterminator
8-23-05
German immigrant J.C. Melcher of Fayette County and Port Lavaca
Nameless
Cave 8-18-05
Nameless, Texas, Nameless Cave and hermit's treasure.
Bombsite
8-10-05
The story of the Manhattan Project and its product, the atomic bombs
against Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945, has been well told. But buried
in all the official documents is another story, far less known.
Oddities
8-1-05
"The December 1938 issue offered some items of Texas trivia
just as interesting today as they were then."
Book
Burning 7-22-05
“Where they have burned books,” German poet Johann Heinrich Heine
wrote in the 19th century, “they will end in burning human beings.”
Indeed, Texans have done both.
Terrell
County 7-14-05
Bexar and Terrell County
Sam
Houston's Will 7-6-05
Rev.
Dancer 7-1-05
Namesake of Dancer Peak neat Llano
Poker
6-23-05
"Gambling was a Galveston institution early on."
Dare
Devil Rogers 6-16-05
:During the Depression, as the people of the nation collectively
dug deep into their pockets and often came up with nothing, Dare
Devil dug his own grave time after time, town after town."
Lost
Sword 6-8-05
"Somewhere in Texas is a sword with a history."
O.
Henry 6-2-05
"The mustachioed young man from North Carolina hardly seemed
the martial type, but as a citizen soldier in the Austin Grays he
demonstrated the qualities of a leader – even if it was to keep
from spending the night in the guardhouse...."
Stagecoach
Holdup 5-26-05
"Stagecoach robberies happened so often along the Texas frontier
it came to be considered something of a right of passage to hand
over one’s money and valuables to a masked man with a gun on some
lonely roadside."
Whiskey
Funeral 5-19-05
"He won his nickname when he got so desperate for a drink that
he traded his horse and saddle for a gallon of whiskey."
Bold
CSA Vet Thomas Evans Riddle, & Man o’ War 5-14-05
Thomas Evans Riddle bet on a dead racehorse. He lost.
Wells
Branch 5-7-05
"Today, as the rustic center piece of Katherine Fleischer Park,
the cabin sits in the middle of some 8,000 residences occupied by
20,000 people."
Freer
5-1-05
"In rhyme, Wilson tried to distill life in and around the Duval
County town of Freer, the state’s last truly wild and wooly oil
boom town."
Patriots
4-26-05
"The American Revolution lasted seven years, affording plenty
of men the opportunity to go down in history as patriots."
Freeny
Hanging 4-17-05
"James Washington White lost an arm fighting for the South
during the Civil War. He could have spent the rest of his life seething
with bitterness, but that’s not how it turned out."
Twin
Sisters 4-5-05
The most famous pieces of artillery in Texas history
San
Jacinto Monument 3-23-05
"Most people think the towering star-topped limestone monument,
built during the Texas Centennial in 1936, is the only San Jacinto
monument. Actually, it’s only the biggest."
Spanish
Cattle 3-21-05
"All those longhorns that revitalized Texas’ post-Civil War
economy had to come from somewhere. And where the breed came from
was the interior of Mexico. Via trail drive."
Jesus
3-21-05
When old “Hay-sus” died that winter afternoon, just about everyone
in Eagle Pass mourned.
Davy's
Widow 3-9-0
Elizabeth Patton Crockett
KKK
3-1-05
Mission
Rules 2-22-05
Around 1760, a now-unknown Franciscan priest at the Apostolic College
for Missionaries in Queretaro, Mexico set down rules for Texas missionaries.
The rules, laden with advice, were “meant for a missionary who has
never been in charge of a mission and is all alone and does not
know whom to consult for advice.”
Battle
of Brushy Creek 2-05
A little-known fight between Comanche warriors and Texas Rangers
August
Carl Weiss 2-16-05
During the Civil War not every Southern soldier served in the Confederate
army because he believed in slavery or hated Yankees. Some shouldered
arms only because they had to. That was the case with August Carl
Weiss, one of 2,000 men who soldiered for the South in Waul’s Legion,
a unit raised at Brenham by Thomas Neville Waul.
Chili
by Mike Cox 1-31-05
William Gerald Tobin’s career as a Texas Ranger left
a lot to be desired. But he had an idea that left Texas, and the
Southwest, an enduring gastronomical legacy.
Kaiser
Cows - Bovine Saboteurs of WWI 1-25-05
Jake,
the Bridge Ghost of Williamson County 1-17-05
Tejano
Hero Norberto Sierra 1-5-04
Austin
Grade School 1-1-05
Newspaper
Death 12-27-04
The Athenian of East Texas
Nice
Politics 12-20-04
Big
Foot Wallace and the Indian 12-12-04
Smith had plenty of interesting experiences during his long life,
but one of the best stories he told involved another character --
Big Foot Wallace. It is a tale of good and evil with a twist.
Pardner
Jones 12-12-04
"Jones was the go-to guy for shooting hats off actor’s heads
or cigars out of their mouths. A la William Tell, he also could
make instant apple sauce, albeit with a bullet instead of an arrow."
Buffalo
Man 11-29-04
Hollywood has seldom – if ever – portrayed buffalo hunters as civilized,
erudite men. Screenwriters and producers of Westerns usually have
their buffalo hunters play the role as coarse, scruffy men ready
to drink or kill anything. But as the story of one time buffalo
hunter John Cloud Jacobs demonstrates, reality is not always that
simple.
Kate
Ward 11-22-04
Whatever happened to the Kate Ward is far from the most daunting
mystery in Texas history...
Strange
News 11-15-04
Strange news and early 20th century urban folklore
New
Geography 11-4-04
Remapping the Lone Star State
& Place Name Tweaking of Several Counties and County Seats
Punkin
Center 10-26-04
The Punkin Center Phenomenon, and the old Irish folktale about Jack-O’-Lantern,
the enduring symbol of Halloween.
Which
Road 10-21-04
Asherton
10-15-04
Covert
Park - Mount Bonnell 10-4-04
Next time you’re in Austin, be sure to visit Covert Park
Tres
Presidents 9-23-04
Presidents' military records
Poison
Doc 9-23-04
Herman Webster Mudgett, America’s first serial killer
Lost
in the Flood 9-16-04
New
York 9-7-04
Its final voyage, and sunken treasure
Donna
8-26-04
Donna Hooks Fletcher, namesake of Donna, Texas
Alamo
Monument 8-17-04
In 1912, a San Antonio group began raising money to build a monument
to the defenders of the Alamo. But the memorial they wanted for
Alamo Plaza would not be any run of the mill monument. It would
be Texas-sized and then some, an architectural wonder.
Rooster
8-12-04
Word spread of Houston’s April 21 defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
Slowly, those who still wanted to give life in Texas a chance turned
to the west and went back to what was left of their homes. And that’s
when a nameless hero gave his all for Texas....
William
Christy 7-29-04
A forgotten Texas hero
Wind
Wagon 7-22-04
Palacios
7-14-04
Rust’s
Ride 7-7-04
Lost
Painting of Sam Houston 7-1-04
Jumper
6-26-04
Jumpers, diving horses and Sonora Webster
Summer
News from 1894
Surly
Stranger 6-15-04
Texas Ranger J.W. Fulgham and a Reeves County sheriff’s deputy
... left Pecos, Texas for a ride down the Pecos River, looking for
cattle thieves or fugitives in early September 1893. Back then,
the Pecos was a good place to find either variety of criminal....
more
Last
Buffalo 6-15-04
Slots
5-19-04
Kate
5-19-04
Catherine "Kate" Magill Dorman -- a little known Texas heroine of
the Civil War
Leaping
Lovers 5-12-04
Four landmarks known as Lover's Leaps
Racing
Parson 5-1-04
How a preacher held a horse race and build a church
Athens
4-27-04
Somewhere in northern Travis County or southern Williamson County
is the site of a long dead dream, a "delightful" community that
never was.
Joe
4-20-04
Travis' slave, who witnessed his death at the Alamo
Except
Texas 4-11-04
That spring of 1866, more than a year after the last great battles
between North and South, the United States still officially considered
Texas in a state of insurrection.
Camp
Bowie 4-2-04
On the night of May 5, 1837, two officers of the Republic of Texas'
army lay asleep in their tent at Camp Bowie. Only one of them would
wake up.
Range
Wisdom 3-25-04
Solomon's wisdom in the free range days
Meteorite
3-21-04
The Williams Ranch meteorite, truth or hoax
Sam
Houston Oak 3-12-04
In the vicinity of the tree on March 14, 1836, Sam Houston and several
hundred Texas citizen-soldiers spent one of the worst nights of
their lives
Alamo
Letters 3-12-04
The surviving words of someone who died in the old Spanish mission
on March 6, 1836.
Tyrant's
Gold 3-2-04
When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna came to Texas in 1836 he
left behind death and destruction -- and possibly gold.
Old
News 2-26-04
Tired of all the new news of war, politics and other forms of violence?
For a change of pace, here's some old news of war, politics and
other forms of violence.
Bevo,
the University of Texas' longhorn mascot 2-20-04
One of the more bizarre events in Texas collegiate history took
place in Austin on a January night in 1920.
Old
Armory 2-12-04
Is there really an historical treasure trove beneath downtown Austin?
Sarah
"Son," a wise old man once said, "always marry a Texas girl. No
matter what happens, she's seen worse."
Lindsey
City 1-29-04
A ghost town in Big Bend National Park
Hondo
1-20-04
Who made the word Hondo famous?
Cowboy
Gene 1-10-04
Gene Autry the Singing Cowboy
McDade
Hanging 12-17-03
The story of the McDade Christmas clean up has become one of Texas'
more frequently told Yuletide tales.
Barbecue
Bust 12-14-03
Where O. Henry, student protests, the Texas governor and barbecue
come together.
Elephant
A wild cowboy tale.
Hunting
Mishaps 11-28-03
Prominent Texans killed while hunting
Tascosa
and Boothill
Alien
Camp 11-28-03
World War II alien camp in Crystal City
Lechuza
10-27-03
"Lechuzas have been scaring people in Mexico and South Texas
for a long time.... Lechuzas are witches - brujas - who transform
themselves into birds...."
Range
King 10-27-03
"It can't atone for his murder, or even the apparent contempt
of those who buried him, but at least James W. King lies in a beautiful
cemetery."
Mustang
Gray 10-4-03
Someone wrote a ballad about him that many Texas mothers used for
years as a lullaby...
Tennessee
10-25-03
"Texas is probably more indebted to Tennessee for her independence
and subsequent development than to any State in the Union."
Llano
Boom 10-25-03
The Great Llano Uranium Boom
Sipe
Springs 9-14-03
But all that remains today is a mystery written in concrete: "Who
is the little girl, age 3?"
Bikes
9-9-03
In 1897, when a Texas peace officer needed to go somewhere to do
his job, he walked, rode a horse, went in a wagon or took a train.
Deputy sheriff Josh Messenger began using a two-wheeled bicycle.
Sergeant
Kelly 8-31-03
The unknown soldier of the Mexican War
Bear
Den 8-24-03
"One of the stories Vantine told was about the time he went
hunting for a bear and found an Indian...."
Bluffton
8-17-03
When all the engineering work for the long-contemplated dam was
completed in the mid-1930s, residents of Bluffton received some
hard news - the town would be inundated by the new lake.
Popeye
8-10-03
... So there it is, in black-and-white: Popeye, the Sailor Man is
a native Texan.
Hoo
Doo 8-3-03
A writer of Western fiction could get a dozen movies out of the
Hoo Doo War story...
First
Whites 7-27-03
Being known as an FWC was considered a mark of distinction, and
because of the honor attached to it, sometimes became a point of
controversy.
Pearl
7-20-03
He has the singular distinction of being the first and last man
legally hanged in the county.
Cranfill
7-13-03
For about the last quarter of the 19th century ... being a "wet"
or a "dry" defined a Texan politically much more accurately than
being Democrat or Republican....
Two
Braids 7-6-03
More Texans owned horses than automobiles in 1910, but when the
middle-aged man rode into Eagle Pass that summer, people noticed....
Elephant
2003
" Someday, perhaps, a work crew laying cable or pipe will unearth
a large set of bones near a busy Wichita Falls intersection...."
A.J.
Sowell 6-25-03
Lion
Hunt 6-23-05
News
from Texas 6-25-05
A
weekly column
Since July, 2003 |
Mike Cox
Mike
Cox, an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is the author
of 13 Texas-related, non-fiction books as well as numerous magazine
articles. The first volume of his two-volume narrative history of
the Texas Rangers, "The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900"
was released in March 2008.
A former award-winning journalist for the Austin American-Statesman
and other Texas newspapers, Cox spent more than 15 years as spokesman
for the Texas Department of Public Safety, handling media interviews
at the scene of some of the biggest news events in recent Texas history.
He is retired communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation
and now devotes most of his time to writing, editing/consulting and
public speaking
November, 2007
A popular professional speaker, Cox is available to talk to associations,
chambers of commerce and other groups about Texas history. For more
information, or to suggest story ideas or to comment on stories, feel
free to contact him at mikecoxtex@austin.rr.com
or
P.O. Box 302559, Austin, TX, 78703-0043. |
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Books
by Mike Cox
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