The Baca Float #5

The Baca Float #5

  Bob Sharp who managed the Baca Float from 1937 to 1952 wrote: “The Baca Float was one of the last big outfits to run under the code of the old time ranchers, a code which respected the knowledge of the men on the payroll.  When I first took over the ranch in...
Riders of the Purple Sage

Riders of the Purple Sage

Thank the Grand Canyon. Long before it was a national park—before it was even a game preserve, thanks to President Teddy Roosevelt—this steep-sided canyon of grandeur inspired one of the greatest storytellers of the American West. He was a writer who touched hundreds...
The Chisholm Trail

The Chisholm Trail

150 Years of Trail History The Texas cattle-trailing industry lasted only fifty years. From Texas statehood in 1846 until 1897, Texas drovers trailed over 12 million longhorns out of their state to mining camps, to Confederate enclaves, to railheads, to northern...
Pleasant Valley War

Pleasant Valley War

Feuds usually occurred in remote places and fighting flared when the law was unavailable, unable or unwilling to intervene. Conflicts usually involved two families and the factions that gathered around them. Bushwhacking was tolerated and even encouraged as each side...
The Murder Steer

The Murder Steer

For many years Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie regaled his students with Texas history at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a prolific author with books on Longhorns, Rattlesnakes, Lost Mines, Mustangs, Vaqueros of the Brush Country, Coyotes and a host of...