Superlative Century

When the Republic of Texas gave up its sovereignty to become the biggest State in the Union 91 years ago, it was given the privilege of splitting itself at any time into five states. This week at their Centennial Exposition in Dallas, Texans will begin a six-month celebration of the prime reasons they have never chosen to elect ten U. S. Senators instead of two. One is their enormous pride in Texas' bigness--the superlatives they can use in describing its vast distances, the size of its ranches, the statistics of its cotton, oil and cattle production, even the dimensions of its world's record grapefruit (26-in. circumference) and world's record watermelon (183 lb.). Another reason is Texans' fierce pride in their past, in the heritage of Austin, Travis, Houston and other heroes who tore away from Mexico, a century ago this year, the land which was to become more than one-twelfth of the U. S.

Stephen Fuller Austin was a wiry little Missouri trader and politician who went down to Texas in 1821 to found, at San Felipe, the first permanent Anglo-American settlement in that raw Mexican territory. His father Moses had dreamed of the project, died before he could carry it through. William Barrett Travis was an impetuous young Alabama lawyer-school-teacher who married one of his pupils, went to Texas to get away from her. Sam Houston, hard drinker and hard fighter, quit the Governorship of Tennessee and drifted to Texas because his aristocratic young wife had left him a few months after they were married.

Patient, tactful Stephen Austin curried favor with Mexican authorities who had just won their independence from Spain, wangled more & more land grants, opened the way for new settlers. By 1835 there were 20,000 Anglo-Americans, only 3,000 Mexicans in Texas. In Mexico City alarmed officials tried to stem the tide by issuing stern decrees against slavery and immigration. Stephen Austin and the vast majority of settlers were all for patching things up with the Government, but William Travis and a handful of other hotheads began to argue with guns. After a few skirmishes a provisional government was set up in November 1835 with big, tough Sam Houston as commander-in-chief of the army.

The scattered Mexican garrisons had been easy to dispose of, but in February 1836, Mexico's Dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande with an army of 6,000, a threat of death to every American in Texas. Against him, in the Alamo mission at San Antonio, Col. William Travis and Col. James Bowie stood with 184 men, including Davy Crockett and a dozen buckskin-clad Tennesseans. At tiny Washington on the Brazos River, 160 miles to the northeast, Sam Houston and some 60 citizens were drawing up Texas' declaration of independence. At Goliad, 140 miles to the southeast, Col. James Fannin lay with some 400 soldiers, unaware of the siege. For eleven days, in one of the great last stands of history, Travis and his men held the Alamo against Santa Anna's overwhelming force until every one of them, and 500 Mexicans, were dead. The Mexicans marched on, captured Fannin's contingent, massacred them to a man. At that most settlers began scrambling pell-mell to the north in the famed "Runaway Scrape," But the blood of 800 of them was up now, and when Sam Houston yelled, "Remember the Alamo!" they rallied to him. Outside the present city of Houston, near where Buffalo Bayou meets the San Jacinto River, they took Santa Anna's army of 1,600 by surprise one afternoon in April. In 20 minutes Sam Houston killed nearly half the Mexicans, captured the rest, including Santa Anna, lost only nine of his own men. In September the Hero of San Jacinto was elected first President of the Republic of Texas.

Starting without money in a two-room shack, the government of the new Republic ran deeper & deeper into debt, while the slaveholding South worked for its annexation to the U. S. and the industrial North stood firm against it. Bushels of almost worthless Texas scrip held by Northern speculators had much to do with the change of sentiment which brought the new State into the Union in 1845. Sixteen years later Sam Houston, no longer a hero, lost his Governorship because he opposed Secession. Texas gave its share of men & supplies to the Confederate cause but, though the last battle of the Civil War was fought at Palmetto Ranch near Brownsville when a wandering detachment of Confederates overcame 800 Union troops more than a month after Appomattox, the State was almost unscratched by the fighting. After throwing off its extravagant Reconstruction Government in 1874, big, resourceful Texas began to boom.

Cattle. All over Texas, on the coastal plain stretching up from the Gulf of Mexico, on the rich black lands, on the rolling central plains to the western mountains, there had run wild and multiplied for years the longhorn cattle introduced by Spaniards. Great ranches were established in south Texas by the time of the Civil War. In 1866 began the romantic era of trail-driving to northern ranches and railroads. Each spring huge herds moved north over the Chisholm, Goodnight-Loving and lesser trails, driven by hard-bitten cowboys who swam their herds across swollen rivers, fought Indians, blizzards, bandits and rustlers, lived off the country for months. Gradually the railroads pushed down into Texas, shortened the trails, finally put a stop to trail-driving by 1890. With the trails went the lean, rangy longhorns, long on endurance but short on meat. Texans now breed fat Herefords, produce 10% of the nation's beef. No. 1 cattle state in point of quantity, Texas' beef is surpassed in value only by Iowa's. Of the great ranches scattered across the State, most notable is the King Ranch, nation's and probably world's biggest, four-fifths the size of Delaware, which sprawls across 1,250,000 acres of southeastern Texas, grazes 125,000 steers.

Cotton. Texas' first cotton plantation was established in 1822, its first cotton gin set up on the Brazos three years later. From that start cotton has spread over almost the entire State, become the biggest and second richest thing in Texas. Since 1880 Texas has led the nation in cotton, regularly produces about one-third of the U. S. crop, about one-seventh of the world's. Production last year--greatest single crop of any kind grown in any state --was 3,050,000 bales.

Oil. In 1894 citizens of Corsicana, drilling for water, struck oil. Texans woke up, began to take interest in what had hitherto been a piddling business. But the real boom did not begin until the morning of Jan. 10, 1901 when Captain Anthony F. Lucas, drilling a few miles south of Beaumont in southeast Texas, brought in the great Spindletop gusher. For nine days, until the well was capped, it spurted 75,000 to 100,000 bbl. per day, some 200 ft. into the air. As wildcatters and company prospectors swarmed over the State, field after field was tapped-- Humble in 1905, Electra and Burkburnett in 1911, Ranger in 1917. These historical pools were topped by new and richer fields --Yates, Gray County, Duval (South Texas), Van Conroe. By 1930 a Texas visitor could ride through mile after mile of stark derricks and flimsy oil towns; the State seemed thoroughly explored. But in that year an old wildcatter named Columbus Marion ("Dad") Joiner discovered the great East Texas pool, biggest in the world. No. 1 oil state since 1928, Texas last year produced 37% of all U. S. oil--391,483,000 bbl.--as much as California and Oklahoma combined. At $835,000,000, Texas oil was worth more than twice as much as Texas cotton.

Loose Change. Though oil, cotton and cattle are the $100 bills in Texas' wallet, it has plenty of loose change in its pockets. Its sulphur wells along the Gulf coast produce three-quarters of the nation's brimstone, 60% of the world's supply. Pine from East Texas makes it one of the seven or eight leading lumber states. The lush Lower Rio Grande Valley has become one of the nation's prime vegetable and citrus fruit sections. From Texas' sheep comes one-fifth of the U. S. wool crop; from its Angora goats comes 92% of the nation's mohair. The world's biggest natural gas field, in the Panhandle north of Amarillo, produces more carbon black than any other state, turning out $10,500,000 worth last year. The Texas rose industry, centering in Tyler, grew $1,000,000 worth of roses last year. At Carrizo Springs is the world's biggest spinach farm (4,000 acres).

Cities. If Texas were as thickly settled as Massachusetts, it could hold the entire U. S. population and have room to spare. Predominantly an agricultural state, with two-thirds of its 6,000,000 citizens on the land, Texas has no huge metropolis to dominate the State. Visitors to the Centennial will find in Dallas a rich, up-&-coming city of 260,000, filled with tall, white buildings, smart shops, good restaurants, fine homes, sophisticated citizens. Financial and wholesale distributing centre of the Southwest, Dallas seems to other Texans a "stiff shirt" town. Its Little Theatre has long been one of the nation's best. It also has a symphony orchestra, Museum of Fine Arts, Southern Methodist University, Arlington Downs racetrack, the Texas State Fair grounds, 60 public parks.

Houston (pop. 292,000) is Texas' biggest city, world's biggest spot cotton market. Since Buffalo Bayou was dredged out to make a 55 -mi. ship channel down to the Gulf of Mexico, it has become the biggest cotton shipping port in the U. S. It is also the home of big Jesse Jones, RFChairman who built and owns most of its skyscrapers, hotels and theatres, publishes its Chronicle, is 'chairman of its National Bank of Commerce. Famed is its Rice Institute, where 2,000 collegians study free under the will of the late William Marsh Rice.

At the Century's turn a 135-m.p.h. West Indian hurricane battered Galveston for 18 hours, piled up a tidal wave which did $17,000,000 worth of damage, killed 5,000 people in the worst catastrophe of U. S. history. Galveston, lying on a narrow, 30-mile island once frequented by Pirate Jean Lafitte, rebuilt itself 7 ft. higher than before, put up a 71-mile sea wall, 17 ft. high and 5 ft. thick. Galveston's next catastrophe was completion of the Houston Ship Channel, which gave Houston most of its shipping. With the new Intracoastal Canal connecting it with Mississippi trade, Galveston still does considerable shipping, but is now chiefly a sleepy resort town, noted for an excellent beach, good tarpon fishing offshore.

Grown from an old Spanish settlement, San Antonio (pop. 232,000) is the New Orleans of Texas. Though surrounding oil & gas have turned it into a bustling busi ness city, its large and picturesque Mexican quarter, its lovely old Catholic missions, the remains of the ancient Spanish Governor's Palace still give it a hot Latin charm. Through its streets crowd soldiers from Fort Sam Houston, cadets and officers from the Army's nearby aviation fields -- Brooks, Kelly and Randolph ("West Point of the Air").

Only 33 miles west of Dallas, Fort Worth, where blustery Publisher Amon G. Carter of the Star-Telegram gives $20 Stetson hats to distinguished guests, prides itself on being a thoroughgoing Western cow town. Boasting itself the Southwest's No. 1 grain and livestock market, Fort Worth likes the virile stench of its stockyards, hates cultured Dallas, of late years has found the excitement of its annual rodeo surpassed by the excitement of watching its fast, rangy Texas Christian University football team play Dallas' fast, rangy Southern Methodists.

Texas' founding fathers picked Austin for the State capital because of its natural beauty, perched on bluffs above the Colorado River. The State Capitol of pink Texas granite, biggest in the U. S., was built by Chicago capitalists, paid for with 3,000,000 acres of public land which later produced oil, are now worth about $60,-000,000. University of Texas at Austin (enrollment: 7,000) scraped along on its 2,000,000-acre endowment until oil was struck in 1923, since when it has become the richest and one of the best state universities in the land.

El Paso (pop. 103.000), biggest border town, is crowded with Mexicans, tourists, consumptives. Small Laredo has begun to rival it for Mexican trade, is counting on a boom as U. S. starting point of the new Pan-American Highway. Brownsville, once headquarters for Confederate blockade runners, is now a market town for the Lower Rio Grande's fruits & vegetables. Once a smuggling port known as "Colonel Kinney's Ranch and Trading Post," Corpus Christi ships cotton, with shrimp and oysters as sidelines. Port Aransas is the world's greatest crude oil shipping port and a famed fishing resort. Port Arthur, founded by John W. ("Bet a Million") Gates, and Beaumont, birthplace of Athlete Mildred ("Babe") Didrikson, form the world's biggest oil refining centre.

Amarillo is a cow, oil & gas town put on the map by the uncomplimentary comments of Gene Howe, editor of its Globe-News, on Col. Charles A. Lindbergh and Mary Garden. Seven miles away lies a Federal gas processing plant which produces most of the world's helium. Waco makes its living from cotton, has a Cotton Palace, an annual Cotton Festival and Baylor University. "Dr. Pepper," the South's famed soft drink, originated in Waco and the late Mary Louise ("Texas") Guinan was born on a nearby potato ranch. San Angelo makes its living from sheep and from goats, of which Texas possesses 90% of the U. S. supply. Abilene is a livestock town, also markets peanut products, poultry remedies, artificial limbs. Uvalde is famed as the home of John Nance Garner and as the world's biggest honey centre.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.