This Day in Texas History: Last Passenger Train Leaves Dallas Terminal May 31, 1969 On this day in 1969, the last passenger train left Dallas’s Union Terminal. The Union Terminal Company was chartered in 1912 as part of a project to secure a union station for the seven railroads then serving Dallas. By 1916 the…
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This Day in Texas History: “Village Blacksmith of Cumby” Born in Tennessee May 31, 1839 On this day in 1839, Robert R. Williams was born in Henderson County, Tennessee. He moved to Texas in 1868 and in 1872 became a blacksmith at Black Jack Grove, later Cumby, where he organized the Masonic lodge. At the…
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This Day in Texas History: Soil Conservation Board established May 29, 1939 On this day in 1939, the State Soil Conservation Board was organized to implement state conservation laws and organize and assist soil-conservation districts across the state in response to the devastating Dust Bowl of the 1930s. State headquarters was established in Temple, and…
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This Day in Texas History: Congress Creates United States Border Patrol May 28, 1924 On this day in 1924, the U.S. Congress established the United States Border Patrol as part of the Immigration Bureau, an arm of the Department of Labor. Its duties included the prevention of smuggling and the arrest of illegal entrants into…
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Texas is well-known for the “Everything’s Bigger in Texas” phenomenon. Possibly because we have so much room to build any silly thing we can think of, we tend to make ’em just plain bigger. Or maybe it has nothing to do with sheer acreage, but more about raw Texas Pride (and swagger) that goes hand-in-hand…
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This Day in Texas History: Chisholm Trail Debuts in Print May 27, 1870 In its edition for this day in 1870, the Kansas Daily Commonwealth made the earliest known printed reference to the Chisholm Trail, the major livestock route out of Texas. Cattle drovers followed the old Shawnee Trail by way of San Antonio, Austin,…
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This Day in Texas History: “Goat-Gland” Doctor Dies in San Antonio May 26, 1942 On this day in 1942, John Romulus Brinkley, controversial medical charlatan, died in San Antonio. Although Brinkley never earned a diploma he was licensed by the state of Arkansas and set up a medical practice in Milford, Kansas. In 1918 he…
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This Day in Texas History: Stockade Case Trial Commences May 24, 1869 On this day in 1869, twenty-four defendants went on trial in the celebrated Stockade Case, which refers to the incarceration of thirty-five or thirty-six civilian defendants in a military prison at Jefferson in late 1868 and 1869 and the subsequent trial of twenty-four before…
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