Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites

Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites

Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Building the Lone Star

Building the Lone Star PDF Author: T. Lindsay Baker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Texas has changed a lot since the first European settlers arrived. Instead of bare prairies and unfordable creeks, there are now bridges, highways, buildings, and people who use them. Life became easier because engineers thought of unusual and innovative ways to bridge rivers, provide water, and light up the Lone Star skies at night.

Texas Then & Now

Texas Then & Now PDF Author:
Publisher: Big Earth Publishing
ISBN: 1565795512
Category : Texas
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
By using the same locations and angles as in the original historic photographs, well-known Texas photographer Richard Reynolds retakes the images, illuminating the march of progress in the Lone Star State. Divided into six regions, the entire state is presented, from small towns to big cities and natural areas. An encapsulated history accompanies each photograph.

Brackenridge

Brackenridge PDF Author: Lewis F. Fisher
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595349677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Brackenridge Park began its life as a heavily wooded, bucolic driving park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the next 120 years it evolved into the sprawling, multifaceted jewel San Antonians enjoy today, home to the San Antonio Zoo, the state’s first public golf course, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Sunken Garden Theater, and the Witte Museum. The land that Brackenridge Park occupies, near the San Antonio River headwaters, has been reinvented many times over. People have gathered there since prehistoric times. Following the city’s founding in 1718, the land was used to channel river water into town via a system of acequias; its limestone cliffs were quarried for building materials; and it was the site of a Civil War tannery, headquarters for two military camps, a plant nursery, and a racetrack. The park continues to be a site of national acclaim even while major sections have fallen into disrepair. The more than 400 acres that constitute San Antonio’s flagship urban park are made up of half a dozen parcels stitched together over time to create an uncommon varied landscape. Uniquely San Antonian, Brackenridge is full of romantic wooded walks and whimsical public spaces drawing tourists, locals, wildlife, and waterfowl. Extensively researched and illustrated with some two hundred archival photographs and vintage postcards, Brackenridge: San Antonio’s Acclaimed Urban Park is the first comprehensive look at the fascinating story of this unique park and how its diverse layers evolved to create one of the city’s foremost gathering places.

Portrait of Route 66

Portrait of Route 66 PDF Author: T. Lindsay Baker
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806156163
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses. While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the postcards were made, and in describing how the production process worked, introduces us to an extraordinary archival collection, adding new history to this iconic road. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, held at the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, contains one of the nation’s largest collections of Route 66 images, including thousands of job files for postcards produced by Curt Teich and Company of Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker combed these files to choose the best examples of postcards and their accompanying photographs not only to reflect well-known sites along the route but also to demonstrate the relationships between photographs and their resulting postcards. The photographs show the reality of the locations that customers sometimes wanted "improved" for aesthetic purposes in creating the postcards. Such alterations included removing utility poles or automobile traffic and rendering overcast skies partly cloudy. This book will interest historians of art and design as well as the worldwide audiences of Route 66 aficionados and postcard collectors. For its mining of an invaluable and little-known photographic archive and depiction of high-quality photographs that have not been seen before, Portrait of Route 66 will be irresistible to all who are interested in American history and culture.

XIT

XIT PDF Author: Michael M. Miller
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806167963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The Texas state constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres of public land in the Texas Panhandle in exchange for construction of the state’s monumental red-granite capitol in Austin. That land became the XIT Ranch, briefly one of the most productive cattle operations in the West. The story behind the legendary XIT Ranch, told in full in this book, is a tale of Gilded Age business and politics at the very foundation of the American cattle industry. The capitol construction project, along with the acres that would become XIT, went to an Illinois syndicate led by men influential in politics and business. Unable to sell the land, the Illinois group, backed by British capital, turned to cattle ranching to satisfy investors. In tracing their efforts, which expanded to include a satellite ranch in Montana, historian Michael M. Miller demythologizes the cattle business that flourished in the late-nineteenth-century American West, paralleling the United States’ first industrial revolution. The XIT Ranch came into being and succeeded, Miller shows, only because of the work of accountants, lawyers, and managers, overseen by officers and a board of seasoned international capitalists. In turn, the ranch created wealth for some and promoted the expansion of railroads, new towns, farms, and jobs. Though it existed only from 1885 to 1912, from Texas to Montana the operation left a deep imprint on community culture and historical memory. Describing the Texas capitol project in its full scope and gritty detail, XIT cuts through the popular portrayal of great western ranches to reveal a more nuanced and far-reaching reality in the business and politics of the beef industry at the close of America’s Gilded Age.

The San Marcos

The San Marcos PDF Author: Jim Kimmel
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585445424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The San Marcos springs have flowed for around ten million years. In this ode to the river they form, Jim Kimmel brings us a picture of a watercourse brimming with life, past and present. Native, non-native, prehistoric, and modern-day plants, animals, and people have inhabited the river and its banks. Kimmel touches on them all with the affectionate and knowledgeable voice of one whose own life has been closely linked to the San Marcos. As readers journey with Kimmel from the river's headwater springs to its junction with the Guadalupe River, The San Marcos: A River's Story will capture the imagination and provide valuable information about the river and its crucial role in the ecological health of Texas. Original photographs by Jerry Touchstone Kimmel add a sense of the beauty and complexity of the river.

American Windmills

American Windmills PDF Author: T. Lindsay Baker
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806138022
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Presents nearly 180 striking images of historic windmills across North America, capturing the wind machines in a wide range of settings and uses and documenting both the construction of commercial machines and the innovative designs of individuals who built their own.

Galveston and the Great West

Galveston and the Great West PDF Author: Earle B. Young
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9780890967737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Traces Galveston's emergence as a key American port city: from its initial conception by risk-taking businessmen and daring civic leaders through the thirty-five years it took to realize the dreams of a world-class harbor.

Galveston

Galveston PDF Author: Jodi Wright-Gidley
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738558806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
On September 8, 1900, a devastating hurricane destroyed most of the island city of Galveston, along with the lives of more than 6,000 men, women, and children. Today that hurricane remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Despite this tragedy, many Galvestonians were determined to rebuild their city. An ambitious plan was developed to construct a wall against the sea, link the island to the mainland with a reliable concrete bridge, and raise the level of the city. While the grade was raised beneath them, houses were perched on stilts and residents made their way through town on elevated boardwalks. Galveston became a "city on stilts." While Galvestonians worked to rebuild the infrastructure of their city, they also continued conducting business and participating in recreational activities. Zeva B. Edworthy's photographs document the rebuilding of the port city and life around Galveston in the early 1900s.