In 1887, Vivian H. Whitlock went with his brother and widowed mother to live with his uncle, George Causey, a buffalo hunter turned rancher, at his ranch on the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) in New Mexico. Here Whitlock describes--vividly, realistically, and with humor--what life was like on those vast, desolate plains at the turn of the century.

The Author was a cowboy, during the period of which he writes, and is thoroughly conversant with every phase of cowboy life. After the lapse of many years, some of the most pleasant recollections engraved on the tablets of his memory are of the open plains, the wild cattle, and the irresistible cowboy. To portray this wild, active and strenuous life, and to give an accurate pen-picture of this past and forgotten industry, is the mission of CIRCLE-DOT.

The Llano Estacado—dubbed by author Paul H. Carlson as “heaven’s harsh tableland”—covers some 48,000 square miles of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. In this new survey of the region, the story begins during prehistoric times and with descendants of the Comanche, Apache, and other Native American tribal groups. Other groups have also left their marks on the area: Spanish explorers, Comancheros and other traders, European settlers, farmers and ranchers, artists, and even athletes. Carlson, a veteran historian, aims to review “the Llano’s historic contours from its earliest foundations to its energetic present,” and in doing so, he skillfully narrates the story of the region up to the present time of modern agribusiness and urbanization. Throughout the ten chronologically arranged chapters, concise sidebars support the narrative, highlighting important and interesting topics such as the enigmatic origins of the region’s name, fascinating geological and paleontological facts, the arrival of humans, the natural history of bison, colorful “characters” in the history of the region, and many others. The resulting broad synthesis captures the entirety of the Llano Estacado, summarizing and interpreting its natural and human history in a single, carefully researched and clearly written volume. Heaven’s Harsh Tableland: A New History of the Llano Estacado will provide a helpful, enjoyable, and authoritative guide to the history and development of this important region.

Offers twenty-four essays about African American men and women who worked in the Texas cattle industry from the slave days of the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.

Cowboys are an American legend, but despite ubiquity in history and popular culture, misperceptions abound. Technically, a cowboy worked with cattle, as a ranch hand, while his boss, the cattleman, owned the ranch. Jacqueline M. Moore casts aside romantic and one-dimensional images of cowboys by analyzing the class, gender, and labor histories of ranching in Texas during the second half of the nineteenth century. As working-class men, cowboys showed their masculinity through their skills at work as well as public displays in town. But what cowboys thought was manly behavior did not always match those ideas of the business-minded cattlemen, who largely absorbed middle-class masculine ideals of restraint. Real men, by these standards, had self-mastery over their impulses and didn’t fight, drink, gamble or consort with "unsavory" women. Moore explores how, in contrast to the mythic image, from the late 1870s on, as the Texas frontier became more settled and the open range disappeared, the real cowboys faced increasing demands from the people around them to rein in the very traits that Americans considered the most masculine. Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.

From the days of the Cattle Kingdom, to the sheriffs who rode out after such outlaws as George Musgrave and Black Jack Ketchum, to the rocket experiments of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, TREASURES OF HISTORY IV: Historical Events of Chaves County, New Mexico relates many exciting episodes in the history of Roswell, Chaves County, and Southeast New Mexico. This is the fourth book in the Treasures of History series and the third volume consisting mostly of stories that had their origins as feature stories in the Roswell Daily Record of Vision Magazine.Some chapters deal with famous characters who had connections with Roswell, such as Frank Chisum, the former slave who became a cattleman; George Causey, the famous buffalo hunter; Charles Lindbergh, the aviation hero; Wild West Show performer Uncle Kit Carson; and Milt Mabie of "Louise Massey and the Westerners" music group. Two early doctors and three sheriffs are chronicle. Two outstanding women-Amelia Church and Annie Laurie Snorf-are featured. Other interesting and important events are recorded in the book's 26 chapers.Although each chapter is a story unto itself, they are arranged in chronological order to place them in the appropriate period in the history of Roswell and Chaves County.

Using historical writings of early explorers, the author captures the mystery and magic of the great Llano Estacado or "Staked Plains" that begin in West Texas and extend north and west. Particularly amusing is the effort of early railroad surveyors to find underground water at the edge of the Llano (aka the caprock) only to miss one of North America's largest aquifers (the Ogalla) by a matter of miles and in some cases yards.

Loneliness pervaded the lives of pioneers on the American plains, including the empty expanses of West Texas. Most settlers lived in isolation broken only by occasional community gatherings such as funerals and religious revivals. In The Lonesome Plains, Louis Fairchild mines the letters and journals of West Texas settlers, as well as contemporary fiction and poetry, to record the emotions attending solitude and the ways people sought relief. Hungering for neighborliness, people came together in times of misfortune--sickness, accident, and death--and at annual religious services. In fascinating detail, Fairchild describes the practices that grew up around these two focal points of social life. He recounts the building of coffins and preparation of a body for burial, the conflicting emotions of the pain of death and the hope of heaven, the funeral rite itself, the lost and lonely graves. And he tells the story of yearly outdoor revivals: the choice of the meeting site and construction of the arbor or other shelter, the provision of food, the music and emotionally-charged services, and tangential courting and mischief. Loneliness is most recognized as a feature of life in the time of the early West Texas cattle industry, a period of sprawling cattle ranches and legendary cattle drives, roughly from 1867 to 1885. But Fairchild shows that it also characterized the lives of settlers who lived in West Texas from the beginning of permanent settlement of the Texas Panhandle (around 1876) through the population shift that occured around the turn of the century, as farmers and their families supplanted ranchers and their cattle. Fairchild draws on primary materials of the early residents to give voice to the settlers themselves and skillfully weaves a moving picture of life in the open spaces of West Texas during the frontier-rural period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.