As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double over the next fifty years, this situation is about to become more, not less, challenging. This month we look at the past, present, and future of water and drought in Texas and explore the solutions that give us hope.
The Lower Pecos River rock paintings were created four thousand years ago by a long-forgotten people. But their apparent message may be as useful today as it was then: Follow the water.
Bad as the current drought is, it has yet to match the most arid spell in Texas history. Nearly two dozen survivors of the fifties drought remember the time it never rained.
Over the past year, state photographer Wyman Meinzer has roamed the Big Empty, documenting the drought’s toll. Will he ever take another pretty picture?
The future is likely going to require us to move large amounts of water from wet but sparsely populated places (a.k.a. East Texas) to thirsty, booming cities. Good thing there’s a plan for that. There is a plan, right?
As much as anything, the Texas economic miracle depends on water. Lots of water. So what are all those power plants, refineries, and factories going to do as the state gets drier and drier and drier?
Newsom, who grew up in Yoakum County, took a chance when he decided to grow grapes on the High Plains. Today his vineyard is one of the largest in Texas, serving more than a dozen of the state’s top wineries. My family has been in cotton farming for more than…
The most famous of three tapestry versions of Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, has found a new home at the San Antonio Museum of Art after being displayed for nearly 25 years at the United Nations headquarters in New York. There, in 2003, officials controversially covered it with a blue curtain during Secretary…
A brutal—and very funny—South Texas memoir by Domingo Martinez.
“Is there no end to TEXAS MONTHLY's fascination with Ted Nugent?”
The first serious coverage of water in TEXAS MONTHLY came just a couple months shy of our two-year anniversary, in a story by Greg Curtis entitled “Disaster, Part I. Lubbock is running out of water.” (A companion piece, “Disaster, Part II,” argued that Houston was sinking…
After a disappointing settlement with Dr Pepper Snapple Group, the family that owns Dublin Bottling Works, Inc. continues to thrive using the same ingredient that fans have enjoyed for years—pure cane sugar.
Bob Gomel's photo collection, the Sixth Floor Museum, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam, and folk singer Daniel Johnston . . .
Success has never come easy for the Toadies, but the Fort Worth–based rock band is back with its fifth studio album, Play. Rock. Music.
The Made in Texas exhibit, the Texas Rangers, Music Under the Stars, and the Conservative U.S. Pageant . . .
The Kashmere Stage Band, Art From the Ashes, the Dead Sea Scrolls & the Bible, and a Rolling Roadshow on the banks of the Guadalupe . . .
Meat Loaf, the Cow Pasture Golf Classic, ZZ Top, and Leslie Fest . . .
JUST WHEN I THOUGHT Oak Cliff couldn’t possibly shoehorn another modish restaurant into its gentrifying streets, along comes Driftwood and gives that notion a kick in the head. Silly me, I imagined that Lucia, Bolsa, Mesa Veracruz, Campo, Oddfellows, and Chicken Scratch—to name only the more recent ones—might signal impending…
TEXAS MONTHLY partnered with StateImpact Texas and KUT News to take a close look at how the state can manage a growing population amid a shrinking water supply. Listen to reports from NPR’s John Burnett, Texas state photographer Wyman Meinzer, and more audio and online reports.
In Republican-dominated Texas, the May 29 primary might as well have been the general election. And what it revealed is a party perfectly capable of doing battle with itself, no Democrats required.
Unwelcome shotgun blasts, unwanted mustaches, uncouth behavior, and the un-bare-able truth about going sockless in your cowboy boots.
When Dallas’s very own Marvin Lee Aday—that’s Meat Loaf to you—optioned one of my screenplays, he didn’t just offer me a glimpse of paradise by the dashboard lights. He also helped me write a novel.
Flamboyant Houston millionaire John Goodman’s trial for vehicular manslaughter was a circus. Somewhere in the middle of it, the guy I used to know was thinking . . . what exactly?
