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  • Mike Cox

    "TEXAS TALES" by Mike Cox

    Syndicated weekly in 11 newspapers
    Email: texasmikecox@gmail.com
    Mike Cox's Texas book review blog

    "Texas Tales"

    "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

  • Stolen Bounty 5-15-13
    Howard Campbell never lost his vivid memory of the only time he ever saw his parents cry.
  • When Borden (County) Was Bone Dry 5-8-13
    Those who lived through the 1917-20 drought never forgot it.
  • Aransas Abattoir 5-1-13
    Packeries – also known as hide and tallow plants -- operated from Brownsville to Galveston, but Rockport soon became the Fort Worth of the industry.
  • Rafting Cotton from Bastrop to Matagorda 4-25-13
    Hard to imagine Bastrop as an inland port, but during the 1840s and continuing through the Civil War, Central Texans saw the Colorado River not so much as a source of drinking water or place to fish as a transportation artery connecting them with the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Smiths at San Jacinto 4-18-13
    Enoch K. Smith may have been the 17th Smith who took part in the Battle of San Jacinto.
  • The Oil Camp Boarding House - Hearty Food - Dainty Waitresses and No Tipping 4-10-13
    The best cook in West Texas’s storied Yates Field – Mrs. R.L. Rice.
  • Getting the Most Fun from "The Only Hanging for 50 Miles Around." 4-4-13
    The tale of one Sam Walker, told in the Shiner Gazette on Jan. 12, 1898 and rediscovered by Austin history buff Sloan Rodgers, is likely fiction disguised as news, but that surely didn’t lessen the pleasure of reading it.
  • A Stagecoach Named Houston 3-28-13
    The General Sam Houston, a sturdy New England-built Concord stage capable of accommodating nine, began carrying passengers between the relatively new capital city of Austin and Brenham in 1841.
  • Sucker Day 3-20-13
    For years now, a small town in the middle of Oklahoma has been throwing an annual event called Sucker Day...
  • Sarah’s Story 3-13-13
    Few Texas women ever lived a harder life than Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbens Stinnett Howard. A lady with true grit and more, the way she came by her long name is one of Texas’ more gripping tales.
  • Women Bandits Hijack Cotton in Civil War Texas 3-7-13
    None of the truly decisive battles of the Civil War took place in Texas, but in other ways the bloody conflict between the North and South had a major impact on the state.
  • Rubus Trivialis is Not a Rural Contestant on Jeopardy 2-27-13
    Rubus trivialis, or southern dewberry, grows along rural roads, railroad right of way, fence lines, in draws and old fields. Full of vitamin C, dewberries also have lesser amounts of vitamins A and B, along with minerals. And they taste good, sweeter than their relative, the blackberry.
  • Katemcy 2-20-13
    Early-day Texans and Comanches were not always trying to kill each other, it just seemed like it...
  • Dodging the (Confederate) Draft Through Postal Service 2-13-13
    Early in the Civil War, most Texans optimistically assumed life would be easier as citizens of the new Confederate States of America...
  • Love on the Frontier 2-6-13
    The lanky young ranger faced a tough choice, worse than life or death: Turn in his badge or lose the woman he loved.
  • Slow Times at Amarillo High 1-31-13
    When the seniors who would graduate from Amarillo High School in 1942 showed up for their first day of classes, they and all their underclassmates received an orange student handbook. The booklet ... included some things that would seem totaly bizarre to 12th graders today, like dating dos and don’ts.
  • Dr. Blair's Mobile Pharmacy 1-24-13
    With the cotton baled and money still in the pockets of hard-working farmers, every November the “doctor” and his son worked a familiar circuit in North Texas...
  • Three Brothers Well Suited for Early Texas 1-16-13
    Years later, long after wild and wooly Texas had been saddle-broke and gentled up, what Frank Jackson remembered most about his youth along the frontier was his first pair of pants...
  • The Great Texas / British TV Hoax of 1953 1-10-13
    On the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1953, television viewers over a large area of England supposedly saw on their screens the test pattern and call letters of KLEE – a TV station located 4,860 miles away in Houston.
  • Wichita Falls Falls for Flim Flam Brit 1-2-13
    Before the wild oil boom that came with the discovery of a rich field, Wichita Falls was just a cattle town of around 5,000 folks. When a crisp and proper gentleman who spoke with a classic British accent arrived and took a room at the city’s best hotel, word got around quickly...
  • Geographic Humor 12-27-12
    “I guess you know the true story behind the founding of Amarillo?” asked my old friend Larry Todd...
  • Crockett's Grandson Died a Bully 12-19-12
    While anyone with even a passing knowledge of Texas history knows Davy Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836, what happened to his grandson and namesake four decades later has largely been forgotten.
  • Judge Vs Marshal in Old Mobeetie 12-12-12
    Townsend’s stay at Fort Elliott in the fall of 1878 would be brief, but not dull. In fact, for a time it looked like violence might erupt in nearby Mobeetie.
  • Dying Doctor Bequeaths a Library 12-6-12
    Dr. Eugene Clark must have been a particularly skillful and compassionate physician. Certainly, as events would show, he also believed in the importance of public libraries in a democracy.
  • Railroad in the Red, and Brazilian Bats 11-29-12
    The first thing anyone notices while walking down the trail toward the old tunnel is the smell, the olfactory result of all the guano deposited by the 3 million or so bats that live there part of the year...
  • Austin Mystery Murders 11-21-12
    Only a village with a few hundred residents in 1841, Austin experienced at least a couple of homicides that year that by today’s standards read more like big-city whodunits.
  • "Dear Papa's 'Rules'" or Give Pease a Chance 11-13 -12
    Every parent who has ever helped their child move into a dorm room on a hot summer day at the beginning of their freshman year in college will understand the letter former Gov. E.M. Pease sent to one of his daughters in 1866.
  • Birthday Cake with 111 Candles washed down with "Good" whiskey 10-7-12
    Sullivan claimed his mother had been one of George Washington’s slaves. Eventually freed by the first president...
  • Mrs. Dach's Weight Reduction Regimen: It's Easy, It's Effective, It's Fatal. 10-31-12
    If there’s a haunted jail in Texas, it’s the 1882-vintage former lockup in La Grange, used for a mere 102 years to house miscreants and felons in Fayette County.

  • Big Tex: Son of Santa 10-24-12
  • The Fire in the State Capitol 10-18-12
    Shortly before noon on Nov. 9, 1881, the wind blew out of the north and a light rain fell from a sky as gray as an old Confederate Army coat. With the norther dropping the temperature, maybe the porter sweeping the floor in the Attorney General’s office on the Capitol’s first floor had in mind warming up the room. Or maybe Henry McBride just wanted to get rid of a basket of wastepaper the easy way, by stuffing the trash into the heating stove.
  • Highway's History is Personal 10-11-12
    SH 207 cuts through Palo Duro Canyon and crosses the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. That segment, one Texas’ most scenic drives, honors Will H. Hamblen who spent much of his life making that roadway a reality.
  • Typing in Tyler, The Business School Model in East Texas 10-4-12
    On Dec. 1, 1914, a 17-year-old teenager from Travis County took the train from Austin to Tyler and enrolled at Tyler Commercial College.
  • Wind and Water (or lack of it) 9-27-12
    In 1887, the Panhandle and much of the rest of Texas suffered from one of the worst droughts in the state’s known history...
  • Boy Captive becomes Department Store Draw 9-20-12
    To attract shoppers to their big downtown store, Sanger Brothers would have on hand for meeting and greeting customers a man who as a youth had been captured by Comanches.
  • Mosquitoes and Camp Bowie 9-13-12
    No one knew anything about West Nile virus back in 1918, but at what proved to be the mid-way point of the terrible conflict in Europe that would come to be known as World War I, the military was fighting mosquitoes in North Texas.
  • The Naming of Devils River 9-6-12
    When it comes to how the Devils River got its name, the Devil’s in the details...
  • Anecdotes on Antidotes, Early Stop Smoking Claims 8-30-12
    While 80 percent of the American population smoked cigarettes or consumed tobacco in other ways, some people as far back as the 1890s concluded that sucking smoke into your lungs could not be a good thing for your body...
  • Hoxie's Moxie 8-23-12
    Thirty-seven years after the Army abandoned Fort Davis, a celluloid cowboy announced plans to convert the old cavalry post into a motion picture colony and resort.
  • Jamming at the Rice Hotel 8-16-12
    But imagine some 3,000 people crowded into a hotel lobby on a sultry summer afternoon waiting to use the elevators in the days before air conditioning...

  • Survival in Kerr County 8-9-12
    "Only a handful of families lived in the area, but all knew of the circumstances that led to Goss’ disappearance and presumed death 18 days earlier."
  • Ghost Town without a Trace 8-2-12
    "By 1884 Texana nee Santa Anna had become a ghost town. Time and periodic river flooding soon erased virtually every trace of the once flourishing port."
  • Lincoln Slept Here? 7-26-12
    The “Lincoln slept here” assertion appeared in a Texas newspaper referred to a historic hostelry in New Braunfels.
  • Captain Hamer's Barber 7-19-12
    Knowing I had written some books on Texas Ranger history, Jim mentioned one visit that I sure ought to talk with Mr. Frost if I ever found him in the shop. Back in the day, he had been the legendary Capt. Frank Hamer’s barber.
  • "The Indians are coming! The Indians are coming!" 7-11-12
    Destined to gain a national reputation as a fearless Texas Ranger captain, when William Jesse McDonald came to the Panhandle in the winter of 1891 he expected to stay busy as a law enforcement officer in a still sparsely settled section of the state. But he sure didn’t anticipate what happened on the night of January 29 that year.
  • "Ten-Gallon Hats / Pint-Sized Brains"
    Otis P. Driftwood recalls Nacogdoches
    7-4-12
    A runaway mule in Nacogdoches helped change American entertainment history.
  • In Quercus Veritas 6-27-12
    When cartoonist friend Roger T. Moore, a West Texan with a sense of humor as big as one of the dozens of wind turbines looking down on his ranch, told me that the largest oak forest in North America covers some 40,000 acres near Monahans, it sounded like a setup...
  • The Forgotten Indian Traveler 6-21-12
    The men were Richard Irving Dodge, a young Army officer who would serve in the military for 41 years and John Conner, a noted Delaware Indian. The meeting happened at Fort Martin Scott...
  • Killer Skunks and the Myth of the Texas Desert 6-14-12
    On May 2, 1887, someone living in Crosby County using only the initials R.P.S. wrote a letter to the Austin Daily Statesman.
  • Veteran Recounts Battle of Adobe Walls 6-7-12
    Fifty years earlier, surrounded by hundreds of hostile Indians, Andrew Johnson and the other occupants of the Panhandle trading post and buffalo hunter’s camp called Adobe Walls fought desperately for their lives. Now an old man...
  • Found Horns and Lost Gold 5-30-12
    For a time in the 1920s and ‘30s, a Southerner who got to Texas as soon as he could reigned as Texas’ “Horn King.”

  • Hunting (and Fishing) for the Truth 5-24-12
    Folks who like to fish and hunt aren’t always out on the water or at their deer lease. Sometimes they’re just sitting around camp telling jokes about hunting or fishing.
  • Making Change in Ma Ferguson's Texas 5-16-12
    To fully appreciate the late C.W. Wimberly’s story, it’s necessary to understand “Fergusonism” – a once-powerful brand of Texas populism...
  • Fredericksburg in the Roaring Twenties 5-10-12
    Fredericksburg was just a small county seat town barely three generations removed from its founding by German immigrants when civic leaders first began to understand the importance of tourism...
  • One Man Two Graves 5-3-12
    Anyone wishing to visit the final resting place of John E. McGuire is going to have to travel to two different cemeteries...
  • The State of Jefferson 4-25-12
    If a state senator from Hall County had gotten his bill through the Legislature in 1915, the Panhandle and much of the rest of West Texas would have become a separate state named for Thomas Jefferson.
  • Dog Drinks Water - Saves Town 4-19-12
    Just about everyone has heard the expression “sick as a dog,” and most people have occasionally felt that way, but folks in the town of Hubbard once credited their economic heyday to a sick pooch.
  • John Wesley Hardin Slept Here 4-12-12
    The night the rooster crowed before midnight...
  • Volney Erskine Howard 4-5-12
    Reading vintage newspapers, it’s not hard to see how Texans early on helped to develop the long-standing notion that people from the Lone Star State are folks with whom it is best not to mess.
  • Blackie the Bear 3-28-12
    Nickels were hard to come by in the tough economic times of the early 1890s, but the cowboys patronizing Jim Scarborough’s saloon in Claude never minded standing Blackie a drink when they could afford to.
  • David E. Lawhon, Texas Ranger/Pioneer Publisher 3-22-12
    As a pioneer newspaper editor, David E. Lawhon may have subscribed to the belief that the pen was mightier than the sword, but as a Texas Ranger he never saddled up without his rifle and pistol.
  • The Poison Spring 3-15-12
    For as long as mankind has had the ability to tell and pass along stories, springs and wells have provided a free-flowing source of legend and lore.
  • Texas Navy vs The Press 3-8-12
    A war of words that could have escalated into real violence broke out in the spring of 1840 between the Texas Navy and a Galveston newspaper editor.
  • Storm Racing 3-1-12
    In 1900 it had not occurred to anyone that pursuing a tornado would someday be considered an adventure sport. Back then, people let storms do the chasing and took to their cellars when they heard a roaring wind.
  • Amarillo by Airmail 2-23-12
    “Dear Brother,” it began, “I am mailing you this letter by air mail. This is the first trip that the air mail makes direct from Amarillo. I am sending it special delivery and they tell me you should get it Saturday night or Sunday morning.”
  • Sam Houston's Duel 2-19-12
    Something that started in Tennessee and spilled over into Simpsom County, KY on Sept. 23, 1826 could have changed the history of Texas.
  • Indian Jim 2-13-12
    Barely 50 years after the U.S. Cavalry drove the last hostile Indians out of the Panhandle an Indian from New York made page-one news in Pampa and across the nation.
  • Lizzie Hay and the Demise of the Lone Highwayman 2-9-12
    Sometimes, no matter how good the story, a compelling tale gets forgotten. That’s sure the case with the Texas outlaw known in his day as “the lone highwayman.”
  • Booker, Texas 1-26-12
    The Lipscomb County town of Booker actually started out as LaKemp, OK ...
  • The Belle of Marble Falls and the Bear King 1-19-12
    If something’s printed in a newspaper, it’s got to be true, right? Good. Now consider the amazing story of Miss Ramie Arland...
  • Savoy Male and Female College 1-11-12
    When graduates of the long-extinct Savoy Male and Female College gathered for their first reunion in 1938, several of the men did a little reminescing about the Indians fights they had back in the day...
  • The Shooting in Donley County 1-6-12
    Finch wrote about his experiences in a now-scarce, self-published family history, “The Lives and Times of a Family Named Finch.” In his book, he told of an incident that convinced him Texas remained the Wild West...
  • The New Year’s Shooting 12-28-11
    “You boys drink beer?” the old man asked, his German accent heavy on that last word. “I’m buyin’.”...
  • What Became of Felipe Frais? 12-22-11
    Working his way up a desolate arroyo choked with catclaw and mesquite, Border Patrol agent Bill Crowe came to an exposed red sandstone formation...
  • Steamship Concho 12-14-11
    More than two years before the Titanic sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg, the Texas-based steamship Concho ran into something in the Gulf of Mexico on her way to Galveston...
  • Pinto Beans 12-7-11
    Pinto beans were a staple in 19th century Texas and continue to be today, but their history goes back even further...
  • Life in Frontier Texas 11-30-11
    Too bad Eleanor Jane Hobbs didn’t put more of her recollections down on paper, but at least she wrote what she did.
  • The Old Bugle in Fort Stockton 11-23-11
    Someone made a startling find: A battered but still useable military bugle. The instrument was found stashed beneath the flooring of the old residence. Adding to the mystery is that it was discovered in an officer’s residence. Being a bugler was an enlisted man’s job...
  • The Pitchfork Kid 11-17-11
    A cowboy’s cowboy, the Kid sat a horse well and had the reputation of being the best roper in the Panhandle...
  • Poetic Justice 11-10-11
    A tale of true poetic justice lies in a well-worn but seldom-opened docket book in the Travis County district clerk’s office.
  • Royalty for a Day 11-3-11
    For a man who had lost an arm to a rifle bullet during the Mexican Revolution, Alvaro Obregon seems to have been a bit lax with security matters. That attitude, born either of bravery or naivety, would prove costly, but it also set the stage for an experience that Ruth Wilkerson Henderson remembered the rest of her long life.
  • Haunted House in Mason County 10-26-11
    Folks said the old stone house in Mason County was haunted...
  • Dirigible Over Texas, U.S.S. Shenandoah 10-20-11
    Like a scene from a black-and-white science fiction movie, Texans stopped in their tracks and poured out of buildings to look skyward as the huge silver object sailed over head...
  • Widows by Death 10-13-11
    In the summer of 1915, when it cost just two cents to send a letter anywhere in the United States or its territorities, the following piece of mail arrived at the offices of the Cattleman Magazine in Fort Worth...
  • "Rangering" in Hamilton County 10-6-11
    The nation was barely a year away from the beginning of its cataclysmic Civil War, but in the spring of 1860, folks along Texas’ frontier had a more immediate problem on their minds – incursions by hostile Indians...
  • Flora’s Tree 9-29-11
    The giant pecan, which still stands outside Helen Bentley’s house in Fort Davis, grew from a sapling planted in 1873...
  • Drought and Skeleton 9-22-11
    Drought in Fort Clark and Skeleton in Brackettville...
  • America's Third Largest Fire 9-15-11
    John Cross had the day off that afternoon, March 21, 1916. Tall and heavy-set, the 20-year-old straddled his Indian motorcycle and rode to his girlfriend’s house, about a mile from downtown Paris, a thriving North Texas city of 12,000-plus. As the couple discussed plans for the evening, Cross heard the Central Station fire bell...
  • Harvey Hughes’ Short Literary Career 9-8-11
  • Like most elected officials, Brewster County Sheriff E.E. Townsend received a fair amount of correspondence, from postcards bearing descriptions of wanted felons to legal papers to magazines, but the package that arrived from San Antonio that day in March 1923 ranked as the most unusual piece of mail he ever received.
  • The White Wing Hotel 9-1-11
    Born with great expectations in the optimistic post-World War II days, death came 63 years later amid gangs and drug dealers. Only this was a brick and mortar Baby Boomer, not a person. Nevertheless, when the end came, it was not pretty.
  • The Beer Train 8-25-11
  • A wreck blocking the mainline between Austin and San Antonio was bad enough, but this derailment was even worse. Not only had there been casualties, ... the refrigerated cars telescoped on each other held a liquid cargo capable of causing problems. While not explosive or toxic, a trainload of beer could be problematic.
  • Alpine’s Holland Hotel 8-18-11
    Brewster County rancher John Holland built the hotel in 1912 just across from the town’s railroad depot. Though Alpine had neither dikes nor tulips, in pondering what to name his new inn, Holland saw Holland Hotel as imminently suitable.
  • Davy Crockett's Fiddle 8-11-11
    "Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but Davy Crockett surely had no time for one last tune when Mexican soldiers made their final assault on the Alamo. While Crockett did not survive the battle, his fiddle apparently did."
  • The Man under the Black Fedora 8-4-11
    "While Willeford had not been the first person to notice the Dillinger signature on the guest register, he was the first to try to prove or disprove its authenticity. One motivating factor was his awareness that there had been talk for years that Dillinger had spent some time in the Big Bend while on the lam."
  • Memories of What Might Have Been 7-28-11
    After taking one final look at the still form of his mother, Clifton Maxey Cobb discretely pulled the old letter from his coat pocket and placed it inside her casket. Later that December day following the services, funeral home workers covered her grave, the last chapter of a love story dating back to Reconstruction.
  • The State Capitol Dome 7-21-11
    Land Commissioner W.C. Walsh had been watching the construction of the new Capitol since the first shovel of dirt was tossed on Feb. 1, 1882... As the new Capitol slowly took shape, so did Walsh’s layman’s knowledge of architecture. Now, with construction about to begin on the dome, Walsh grew increasingly uneasy...
  • Texas Gold Rush 7-14-11
    Only four years after thousands of Forty-niners flocked to California in search of riches, a wave of Fifty-threers headed for the Hill Country in a little known and short-lived Texas gold rush.
  • Remembering J. Evetts Haley 7-7-11
    During his long life, J. Evetts Haley held down some of the best “jobs” a person can have: Collector of historical documents for a university library, rancher, and writer.
  • Lizzie Crosson had true grit 6-30-11
    Born and raised in New Orleans, she married George Crosson at Brenham in 1866. The couple moved to San Antonio, but Crosson spent much of his time as a freighter hauling goods to Santa Fe, and across the Big Bend to Mexico along the Chihuahua Trail. Crosson made a good living, but he had to keep his wife and children in San Antonio.
  • Horned Toads 6-23-11
    Wearing a lawman’s badge, Everett Townsend had killed men...
  • Ernst Tinaja 6-16-11
    A geologic feature in Big Bend National Park called Ernst Tinaja, a deep natural water hole dug out of the bedrock over the millenia by erosion—a place of beauty tainted by a history of death.
  • The Wonderful Boy 6-9-11
    His father a respected Uvalde County rancher, the quiet, good-looking Guy O. Fenley seemed like a typical teenager except for one thing – he could see underground water.
  • J. Frank Dobie 6-1-11
    It’s not mentioned in any of his biographies, but one of Texas’ best known authors wrote portions of one of his best-known books while sequestered in a tarpaper-covered shack in the Chisos Basin.
  • Lampasas County’s Longmeadow Cemetery 5-26-11
    Historical marker dedication May 21
    "Many of their forebears are buried in this small rural cemetery, a fenced graveyard accessible only by an unpaved private road..."
  • Telecommunication of the not-so-distant past 5-19-11
    For those knowing no form of electronic voice communication other than cell phones or Skype, a brief look at the not-so-distant past.
  • Star is Born 5-12-11
    Star of Mills County
  • Common Sense Justice in Marlin 5-5-11
    A Tammany Hall politician of the old school, “Battery Dan” Finn presided over one of Manhattan’s police courts in the first decade of the 20th century -- revered by most, respected even by those he fined or jailed.
  • Carnie Philosophy 4-28-11
    Edgar Stephens and Robert “Sunshine” Stubblefield spent most of their lives on the road traveling from town to town in Texas with the Bill Hames carnival.
  • Sleeper's Song 4-21-11
    As a long-time Texas lawyer, Ben Sleeper wrote many a legalese-laden petition alledging this or that in behalf of his clients, but few if any of them ever knew of – much less heard – the patriotic song he composed as a young Army officer in training back during World War I.
  • Rawhides: Business in Wild and Woolly Tee Pee City 4-14-11
    A buffalo wasn’t the only critter that could get skinned on the High Plains if he wasn’t careful.
  • Lubbock Ghost Stories 4-7-11
    Two Lubbock ghost stories and one strange tale of a man who made his amends for a ghastly crime one brick at a time.
  • The Boy With Two Tombstones
    Or Iraan's “Little Boy Lost.”
    3-30-11
    "Ellis…Son of [missing] Born March 3, 1870 – Died Nov. 28, 1872." Not only was it odd to discover a tombstone in a flower bed, the dates it bore presented a mystery on top of a mystery...
  • The Chilled Catfish of Concho County 3-24-11
    Running for his life, Cline made it over the bridge in time to beat the roiling flood surge heading in his direction. As Cline watched in horror, a watery cliff crashed into a wagon, sending it and its occupants tumbling downstream. That was shocking, but what Cline saw next was simply bizarre. No matter the tragedy that has just unfolded, men soon began gathering along the river and pulling big fish from the water...
  • Palo Duro Gold Rush 3-18-11
    Once upon a time, a shower of shiny gold coins fell from the sky over Palo Duro Canyon State Park south of Amarillo...
  • Fishing in Port Aransas 3-10-11
    Hard to believe, but Texans haven’t always fished just for fun. Along the coast, from the time of the fierce Karankawas until the latter days of the 19th century, fishing was about eating, not a recreational pursuit.
  • Pronghorn Antelope 3-3-11
    No thanks to Lester B. Colby and anyone else who may have done what he did, thousands of pronghorn antelope are still home on the range in the Panhandle.
  • Old Trail Drivers 2-24-11
    No matter the old cowpoke’s backstory, in his dotage he could round up words on paper just about as well as he once rode down and roped strays.
  • A Story of Two Veterans: They Didn't Take the War Personally 2-17-11
    Nacogdoches’ Oak Grove Cemetery is one of the oldest and most historical graveyards in Texas, but one of its better stories has hardly been told.
  • Davy Crockett Won 2-10-11
    “Davy Crockett Won,” reads the small-type headline on a back page of the Jan. 4, 1893 Austin Daily Statesman.
  • Wild Bill the Driller 2-3-11
    Not everyone immediately struck it rich during the West Texas oil booms of the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Aptly named cable too driller Wiliam Wells left his wife and kids in Oklahoma and headed for the Lone Star State...
  • The Sword in the Tree 1-27-11
    The story Todd heard as a kid is classic folklore: A Spanish mule train laden with gold coins from Mexico is shadowed by Indians. Desperate to lighten their load and escape attack, the teamsters bury all the gold on the bank of a stream that would come to be called Walnut Creek.
  • Comanche Raids in Coryell County 1-27-11
    The Comanches felt free to raid all along the state’s western frontier. Texas’ Confederate state government fielded companies of Rangers to patrol the outlying counties, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once. That’s how things stood on April 26, 1863 when a Comanche raiding party...
  • Old Rangers and Sam Houston's Grave 1-13-11
    The old Texas Rangers who gathered in Austin for a reunion in the early fall of 1897 surely figured they had fought their last fight. After all, they had battled and survived Mexican soldiers, Comanches and outlaws. But that’s before they heard what some folks in Tennessee were up to...
  • A Piece of Texas’ Past 1-6-11
    If you’re interested in history, and like getting out and about, you’ve probably stooped to pick up a piece of Texas’ past at some point in your life.

    More columns: 2003 to 2010 >

    A weekly column
    Since July, 2003
  • Mike Cox

    Mike Cox, an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is the author of 21 Texas-related, non-fiction books as well as numerous magazine articles. Author of a best-selling two-volume narrative history of the Texas Rangers, "The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900" and “Time of the Rangers: The Texas Rangers 1900 to Present,” Cox in September 2010 received the A.C. Greene Award for lifetime achievement as a writer.

    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 retired as communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation in 2007, but retired from retirement in 2010 to join the communications division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He still devotes much of his free time to writing, editing/consulting and public speaking.

    January, 2013



    A popular professional speaker, Cox is available to talk to associations, chambers of commerce and other groups about Texas history and other topics. For more information, or to suggest story ideas or to comment on stories, feel free to contact him at texasmikecox@gmail.com
    or
    P.O. Box 2958, Fredericksburg, TX, 78624
    Mayhem at Mount Carmel by Mike Cox

    Excerpt from "Time of the Rangers from 1900 to the Pesent"

    The morning of February 28, 1993... A Texas National Guard helicopter had been shot down and numerous federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents killed and wounded while attempting to serve a search warrant at David Koresh’s Branch Davidian ranch...
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