Fort Croghan

We have moved from East Texas to Central Texas, to the Hill Country.

After Texas joined the United States in 1845 there was much immigration.

The settlers landed in the east and went west by covered wagon, often in convoys known as wagon trains. They fanned out to all parts of the available new territory throughout the USA. This is the type of covered wagon that transported the families’ total possessions.

The wagons were drawn by oxen rather than horses. Oxen were stronger but slower; however, this suited well as all able-bodied travellers walked alongside the wagons and the oxen plodded along at that pace. This is a photo from the archives.

The Hill Country offered good grassland for cattle and reasonable arable land, so settlers came in a steady stream. Problem was, it was Comanche territory and the warlike Comanches, led by Yellow Wolf, meant to defend it. Who can blame them? This is the stuff of my childhood cowboy B movies.

In 1849 the US military was tasked with establishing a fort to protect the settlers. This became Fort Croghan. There was no stockade and the fort community comprised a set of sturdy structures close together. This is one of the original buildings, the fort office and powder house. Not that impressive, but maybe what we need is a few Comanche arrows sticking in the roof and door.

The eyes of the fort was the lookout station, and here again we have the original moved from its position on a nearby hill. It looks somewhat like that essential building all houses used to have at the bottom of the garden.

Buildings from the fort’s era, and a little later, have been moved from their original location and rebuilt. This is a settler’s house with front porch.

It is surprisingly comfortable inside, however, no tele. 

Space could be very limited, though, as the inside of this next one-room cabin shows. A Mr & Mr Kinchloe lived here and raised 11 children.

 A schoolroom was provided, with teacher, paid for by the state. 

Inside the fort museum is a varied collection of memorabilia from the second half of the 19^th Century. For example, dozens of different types of barbed wire. Boring, you might say, but barbed wire was the invention that changed the west. Previously, land was mainly unfenced due to lack of materials like wood and stone to enclose such large areas. Roaming cattle ranchers clashed with dairy and crop farmers. Range wars between the two groups flared frequently. Then barbed wire came along in the 1870s and enabled large boundaries to be enclosed securely and cheaply, so the ranchers were kept off the farmland. The bits of wire themselves are still not that riveting, but having told the tale, a section of the museum’s display has to be shown. Also, you know how to deal with the neighbour’s dog roaming onto your garden. 

As anticipated, there are Native American artefacts, in this case Comanche items, being the local tribe. Two photos follow, of a headdress and then a beaded moccasin.

Another odd display, and seemingly out of place here, is a banjo. But it this is an historically important instrument, being one of only three remaining made by the banjo’s inventor. It dates from 1836. It was brought to this area in 1854 by a relation of one of the settlers to entertain the locals with vocal and instrumental banjo music. Unfortunately, the relation was killed by the Comanches (they couldn’t stand banjo music) but the instrument stayed with the family and was later donated to the museum.

 There were plenty of other household and farming items, but the above tell more unusual tales. The museum is run totally by volunteers who’s enthusiastic and knowledgeable presentation of their treasures brought the history to life for us, and would compare most favourably with the larger and more elitist collections.

Out and About in East Texas

Texans are Texans first, then American. They know the state’s history: they declared independence from Mexico in 1836, initially losing to superior Mexican forces at the Alamo (get those Davy Crockett hats out of the attic) but beating them later in that year. From 1836 to 1845 Texas was an independent republic, adopting the single star flag from which the “Lone Star State” description comes. The lone star symbol appears everywhere either on its own or in the state flag. This owner has painted his garage as the flag.

Practically all the USA countyside is fenced off as private property, with very few public footpaths or rights of way other than in County, State or National Parks. Texans fought harder than most to claim and retain their land, and are sure gonna defend it. This is not an unusual notice.

East Texas is rural with many pleasant small towns, like Rusk below. You perhaps can’t read the sign on the bottom right: “Ammo Sold Here”. Guns are part of Texan culture, as you might expect, but we haven’t noticed them much in evidence or being openly carried as they are legally entitled to do in this state.

 Housing standards vary more in the USA than in the UK. There are large numbers of residential trailer parks and most of the sites we stay on have a substantial permanent element. There are also many magnificent houses, like the one shown next and a good number of solid brick homes set in pleasant neighbourhoods.

At the lower end are the individual cabin type dwellings with some land. There are large numbers of these, of widely varying designs, everywhere in the south where winters are short and mild.

The various parks mentioned earlier are generally well maintained and have good walking and cycling paths. The downside is there is always a drive to get there, but Americans drive everywhere so that wouldn’t be viewed as a problem. The first park shown below is Tyler State Park, with a pretty  lake that we walked around.

Next up, Jim Hogg Park, with tall trees and woodland glades.

The parks are often located in places of local historical significance, in this case the Jim Hogg settlement. Good old Jim, whoever he was. The house is a reconstruction but the equipment outside is original- it’s for crushing sugar cane. Sugar cane is a semi-tropical crop and it is easy to forget how far south we are here. We are on the same latitude as Agadir in Morocco.

This part of East Texas is called the piney woods, rolling hills and lush grass. The downside is heat and humidity in summer, but it makes for great cattle rearing country. We end with a photo of a Mexican wedding photoshoot against a backdrop of those wooded hills and technicolour grass.

Tyler Roses

We are staying in Tyler, the rose capital of Texas. The major UK rose supplier David Austin is here within walking distance of our campsite.

Rose cultivation started here in 1900 to replace the peach growing industry that was wiped out by disease and bad weather. It was found that roses thrived in the climate and soil. Peaking between the 1940s and 70s, between 15 and 20 million rosebushes a year were produced in addition to cut flowers.

The industry has dropped back since then but still retains many nurseries, all in the Tyler area. Tyler City has a municipal rose garden and museum, and a rose festival each year in October, to take place in a few weeks. This is a small part of the rose garden.

Notice anything? Or rather lack of it? Yes, roses! The rose bushes are all there, literally thousands of them, beautifully laid out and labelled, but bearing few blooms. That’s because it’s the end of the season. An odd time, you might think, to hold a rose festival when there aren’t many roses. However, we searched out several spectacular blossoms, as below:

The park itself was delightful and interestingly laid out. This is the summerhouse and paths. Plenty of place for the kids to run.

Behind the summerhouse, a series of carp ponds. The kids now need to stop running or they’re in with the carp. No good running in the rosebushes either, they’re too thorny.

As a counter to the ordered ranks of roses there is a conventional garden with a winding path. We recognised some plants grown in the UK but reaching huge size here or indoor only back home. Here were some nice colour contrasts.

The garden becomes more exotic as we proceed through, with a cactus section and lush jungly plants that we couldn’t ID. The photo also captures a lush, jungly looking lurker.

We discovered that the rose festival was mainly about floats with people dressed in rose themed costumes, but it still seems about as logical as holding the Chelsea Flower Show in January. 

Texas Oil

The Indians and early settlers used oil seepage in a limited way, but in 1866 the first oil well was drilled using modern methods. Further wells on a small scale were commissioned until around the turn of the 20^th century when multiple new oil deposits were discovered and production soared.

We are currently staying in the East Texas oilfield. Oil was first struck here in 1930 in an area thought to be dry. Thereafter, new deposits were discovered at an immense rate, resulting in an incredible 32,000 producing wells. From the mid 1930 to 1960 the East Texas oilfield was the most productive in the world. This was especially important during WW2 when a pipeline was laid all the way to the east coast.

The principal town of the East Texas oilfield is Kilgore, which boasts an oil museum, so we drive over to pay a visit. Right outside the museum is a wooden oil derrick from the early days. These were used to feed additional sections of pipe as the drilling proceeded to greater depths.

These derricks were erected wherever the well was drilled, so old photos show how the town of Kilgore looked before WW2 when the field was in full swing.

The wooden derricks were replaced by metal as technology progressed, but the town still bore the stamp of buildings swamped by oil derricks.

From the 60s onwards production declined as the giant Alaska field and the Middle East took over. The oil reserves were running out anyway, but the derricks remained until it was decided to remove most of them. This turned out to be a bad mistake given the boom now in tourism: people will come to see original historical sites. There are a few of the derricks left, each one now topped with an illuminated Christmas star, as below.

 Inside the museum, we saw a collection of memorabilia from the boomtimes, including a full size tableau of the muddy main street during an incredibly wet 1930s as the boom frenzy got under way. A few mules even drowned in the mud it was so deep.

The life of an oil worker in the 30s was tough and much more physical than these days. Another tableau shows the drilling process where the workmen are joining on a new length of drill pipe. Don't imagine they need to oil the connection thread.

Fortunes were made and one of the magnates, a Mr H L Hunt, endowed the museum. For that he gets a statue prominently positioned, double life-size.

Gift shops generally sell goods relating to the subject matter of the museum, for instance Duxford has model aircraft and aircraft books, so I was disappointed not to see a selection of oils like 3-in-One or WD40 for sale. The books were there though.

East Texas still produces some oil, and I was surprised to find an example close to home, in fact right behind the campsite boundary hedge, the donkey engine steadily pumping away.

The Texas oil heritage is still here in this part of the state, those go-getting Texans of the oil boom years. It shows itself in large private vehicles- massive trucks- and more aggressive driving. A JR gene in each driver. Oddly, out of their vehicles, the Texans are laid back, friendly and polite, which JR wasn’t. 

Fort Worth Stockyards: Sept 29th

Fort Worth began as staging point for cattle drovers heading north on the Chisholm Trail with their great herds of longhorn, heading for railheads from where the cattle could be transported east to the main markets.

The Spanish conquerors brought the longhorn breed from Spain because it thrived on sparse pasture. Wild populations of the cattle multiplied successfully so there were millions for the taking, and after the Civil War the demand for beef soared. Worth a dollar per head in Texas, the longhorns fetched 40 dollars at destination. It was profitable business.

The railroad reached Fort Worth in 1876, from which time the town was the drover’s destination. Stockyards were built to hold the huge herds that were soon being processed into meat products locally for dispatch by train. In peak years the town received more than a million animals.

The stockyard buildings were extended and improved, and what we see today dates mainly from the turn of the 19^th century. In the 20^th century different trading and cattle raising practices saw the yard’s throughput decline and, finally, grind to a halt in the 1980s. This is the time-capsule.

The stockyard buildings are now mainly retail premises catering to the visitors, but the rail tracks where the cattle arrived are visible in the next photo.

Our lunchtime café was genuine 1900 but thankfully not run by cowboys.

No cowtown is complete without a Wild West show. So here are the performers, in the Cowboy Coliseum.

The stunt riding was too fast for indoor photos, but the lasso performer shows up well on in the spotlight. He lassooed some stampeding cattle, but who wants to see fuzzy cattle.

The chuck wagon, Indian wardance and cattle herding were all part of the show. The longhorns were impressive but we saw more magnificent beasts in greater number later. Of course it was touristy, but great fun.

Back out on the main street they’re having a cattle drive. It’s scheduled twice a day. The herd charges down the street and then turns down a side road towards the pens just before it reaches the spectators. You hope this isn’t the one time when the cows carry straight on….

Back in the pens, my favourite shot is of this mean-looking bull peering through the rails.

Oddly enough, Fort Worth has now returned to cattle dealing, but by remote link video and computers. Cattle for sale are videoed and then displayed on screens in an auction room where the deals are struck. This all happens in the original Stock Exchange building.

Fort Worth stockyards are a genuine slice of Texan history, Disneyed up for the tourist admittedly, but interesting and quite different to anything we have back in the UK- except perhaps the ancient Norfolk turkey drives to London for the Christmas market!

Dallas, Texas, 27th September

We arrive early afternoon, so plenty of time to get to our hotel. The plan is to see something of Dallas before picking up the camper on Monday: we have 3 days. First day out is a sobering one, to a museum on the site of the momentous events of JFK’s visit to Dallas in 1963.

November 22^nd 1963, 12:29pm. Lee Harvey Oswald is sighting his rifle through this window on the 6^th floor of the Book Depository, using the book cartons to steady his aim. The positions of the boxes have been exactly recreated.

This is the view Oswald sees as the President’s motorcade turns into Elm Street, the road running diagonally through Dealy Plaza. There was a lot less tree foliage than now.

12:30 pm. Oswald fires 3 shots. The first one misses, the other two hit and mortally wound President Kennedy. The assassination is caught on film as there are thousands of people lining the route, many with cameras, but the definitive record is Abraham Zapruder’s home movie taken from the grassy knoll overlooking the cavalcade’s path. This is Zapruder’s spot, and the white cross, just visible on the road surface, is where the fatal shot struck.

Although the original investigation attributed the assassination to Oswald working alone, there is significant evidence that a fourth shot was fired from behind the white wall on the extreme left of the picture below behind where Zapruder was filming. The red arrow indicates the window in the Book Depository from which Oswald’s shots were fired.

There is no consensus on who else was involved, if anyone, in addition to Oswald. He was a communist sympathiser, particularly of Fidel Castro whom Kennedy had tried unsuccessfully to overthrow, and belonged to a left-wing organisation. Perhaps the extra shot came from a left-wing accomplice with Oswald as the main gunman as he was an ex-military crack-shot.

Oswald was apprehended almost immediately at a nearby cinema although not without killing a police officer first. Oswald himself was assassinated while in police custody by night club owner Jack Ruby only two days later and never stated his motives. Ruby also cannot be fathomed as his professed reasons for killing Oswald were blatantly transparent. He had connections with the mob, but investigations here were inconclusive and he died of cancer before his final conviction was secured.

JFK was in office for less than 3 years but seems to have left a legacy far outweighing that short term. Many of his social and racial reforms started a momentum that carries forward today. He initiated the moon landing programme. He appears to have been an inspiration for achievement and public good particularly amongst young people at that time, and indeed his influence appears relevant now to many. 

USA Autumn 2018

Start: Monday 17^th September

We arrived at Heathrow in good time for the flight, which left and landed on schedule at Washington DC. Virginia largely missed the storm that hit the Carolinas nearby, and certainly the parts we were going to were unaffected.

After a few days visiting Claire we headed for Portsmouth to spend time with Ralph and family that now includes 3 month old Owen. We are seeing him for the first time, so let’s do the honours straight away and post up a picture.

Not to be out-cuted, this is Ginny, their 3 year old daughter who has energy to spare and is interested in everything. We have two lovely grandchildren!

Football- known as soccer over here- is increasing in popularity, especially for females and children. Ginny's already been signed up for the toddler team, and  we were lucky enough to watch her first practice from the touchline. Ginny's wearing the blue top. Goooooaaaal!

We get to visit some play parks with Ginny, and are impressed by the standard and variety of the equipment. Portsmouth isn’t a particularly affluent area but the play items are sturdy and well designed. The park below even had all-weather xylophones and musical pipes as well as slides and swings, but perhaps the most unusual feature was this panel showing deaf signage.

An event in the children’s calendar here that cannot be ignored is Halloween. It is huge, and spooky items are already on sale in quantity.  In general, the USA is fascinated by the supernatural, and it is said that if your house is reputedly haunted you can expect to get up to 30% less for it. Below are examples of the larger items on sale, all at affordable prices. The inflatable wraith at the back is literally 20 feet tall.

Portsmouth itself is an historic town dating back to the 1700s. The old town is all colonial style wooden dwellings. It’s on the opposite bank of the Elizabeth River to Norfolk, the principal US Navy Eastern base. The repair yards are clearly visible from the Portsmouth side.

Norfolk, with its naval presence, is a thriving town with a range of cultural activities. We ended up there late one afternoon, at an art gallery in a period house with stunning water’s edge grounds. The exhibits were mainly Far Eastern, and maybe not everyone’s cup of tea (!), but the setting was delightful- possibly even more delightful before the coming of the modern shipyards. The gallery building is silhouetted on the right.

But back to Portsmouth. It’s a favourite venue for a parade. We came upon this one, unexpectedly, passing through the High Street.

It looked military but turned out to be a local derby football match. This explains the cheer leaders in the next photo.

The parade consisted mostly of African Americans. There isn’t any evidence of racial tension here although it is obvious that the African Americans generally occupy the poorer housing areas. What is a bone of contention is the extent to which the Southern States still glorify their membership of the Confederate side in the Civil War. It is commemorated by place names, street names and monuments everywhere in the south. As the Confederacy was fighting to retain slavery, making a point of venerating those who led their armies and the battles themselves can be taken as supporting the values of the slavery regime. The counter argument is that they are celebrated for fighting and dying bravely, be it for a mistaken cause.

Virginia was an important part of the Confederacy, and in fact supplied its greatest general, Robert E. Lee. The monument in the photo is just such a memorial, in the centre of Portsmouth.

 Now it’s back to Fredericksburg for a few days and then on to Dallas, Texas and an important meeting with JR.