Rough Rider
On nineteenth-century Texas’s primitive roads, riding on a stage line was hardly a glamorous affair.
Lonn Taylor is a historian and former museum curator living in Fort Davis.
Articles by Lonn Taylor
Chief Accessory
Though Quanah Parker and the way of life he represented is long gone, his headdress remains.
The Great Pyramide
A Christmas carousel built nearly a century and a half ago is a welcome reminder of Texas’s deep German heritage.
Out of the Box
Among other things, Charles Goodnight basically invented the food truck. (He called it the chuck wagon.)
Oil on Canvas
How the Spindletop gusher turned one prospector into an arts patron with an unusual flair for self-recrimination.
Sterling Success
A century ago, no battleship could do without a twelve-gallon silver punchbowl with matching cups and ladle.
The Apache Amulet
A keepsake taken from a fallen warrior’s body 135 years ago hasn’t lost its power.
Remember the Long Rifle
The most effective weapon of the Texas Revolution, even if it couldn’t save the mission’s defenders.
Cadillac Dreams
When an oil well on Joe Bowers’s Panhandle property came in, he knew just what he wanted to buy.
Saddle Up
Four generations of an illustrious border family have passed down a magnificent nineteenth-century example of Tejano saddlery.
That’ll Be the Frames
Buddy Holly’s trademark black-rimmed glasses were a key part of his public persona. But he was too blind to see it that way at first.
The Livermore Cache
Why did hunter-gatherers bury their arrow points on the tallest peak in the Davis Mountains?
Sam Rayburn’s Bates List Finder
The legendary speaker of the House had his own version of a little black book—and it included numbers for a florist, a fishing buddy, and two future presidents.
Spanish Gauntlet
Faced with the realities of a rugged land, a band of sixteenth-century explorers left behind their dreams of conquest, as well as this chain mail glove.
Sallie Tate’s Emancipation Dress
A rare relic of slavery in Texas—and one woman’s freedom.
