Wes Ferguson's Profile Photo

Wes Ferguson grew up in the Piney Woods of East Texas, but he ranges across the state while looking for stories about history, culture, true crime, travel, the outdoors, and anything else that catches his interest.

A contributor for Texas Monthly since 2016, Ferguson was a senior editor at the magazine from 2019 to 2022. His 2019 article “When ‘Angels in America’ Came to East Texas” was nominated for a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Ferguson was also a finalist for Writer of the Year at the City & Regional Magazine Awards in 2022; his story “How Texas Hunting Went Exotic” was also a finalist in the Leisure/Lifestyle Interests category that year.

Ferguson is a former managing editor of Texas Highways, where he has received two national awards for his travel writing. He has authored two nonfiction books, The Blanco River and Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine, both from Texas A&M Press. Early in his career, Ferguson reported on the crime beat for his hometown newspaper, the Longview News-Journal. More recently, he created the true crime podcasts Devil Town and Standoff, about the 1974 Huntsville prison siege.

A council member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Ferguson lives near Austin with his wife, Laura. You can also find him on their desert spread at the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains, where he was the artist in residence at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in the fall of 2017.

51 Articles

True Crime|
September 9, 2021

Who Shot Walker Daugherty?

A shoot-out at a Big Bend ranch captured the nation’s attention: first as an alleged ambush by undocumented migrants, then as a fear-mongering hoax. The real story is much more mysterious.

Books|
December 21, 2016

Let the River Run

Wes Ferguson has paddled and walked all 87 miles of one of the Hill Country’s most prized waterways. In this exclusive excerpt from The Blanco River, he uncovers a few of its natural secrets.

Entomology|
June 22, 2016

Meet the Beetle

How long it will take the dreaded emerald ash borers to fully establish themselves in Texas? And how many native ash trees will they decimate?

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