A warm, witty memoir of a young family’s rugged adventure living in the newly established Big Bend National Park in the 1940s. A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a twenty-three-foot travel trailer in tow—which they named Porky, the Road Hog—she anticipated a brief, civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized she’d left her sheltered life behind for an experience in frontier living. In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family’s first years—1944–1946—in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking—and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months-long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

A warm, witty memoir of a young family’s rugged adventure living in the newly established Big Bend National Park in the 1940s. A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a twenty-three-foot travel trailer in tow—which they named Porky, the Road Hog—she anticipated a brief, civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized she’d left her sheltered life behind for an experience in frontier living. In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family’s first years—1944–1946—in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking—and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months-long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

This collection of writings and images by the legendary Big Bend photographer offers adventure, history, personal musings, and natural beauty. Photographer-naturalist Peter Koch first visited Big Bend National Park in February, 1945, on assignment to take promotional pictures for the National Park Service. He planned to spend a couple of weeks, and ended up staying for the rest of his life. Koch’s magnificent photographs and documentary films introduced the park to people across the United States and remain an invaluable visual record of the first four decades of Big Bend National Park. In this book, Koch’s daughter June Cooper Price draws on her father’s photographs, newspaper columns, and journal entries, as well as short pieces by other family members, to present his vision and many experiences of the Big Bend. The adventure begins with a six-day photographic trip through Santa Elena Canyon on a raft made from agave flower stalks. Koch also describes hiking on mountain trails and driving the scenic loop around Fort Davis; “wax smuggling” and other ways of making a living on the Mexican border; ranching in the Big Bend; collaborating with botanist Barton Warnock; and the history and beauty of Presidio County, the Rio Grande, and the Chihuahuan Desert.

Hallie Crawford's account of teaching school in Presido, Texas in 1916 and her life as a rancher's wife.

This book will help turn every trip to Big Bend National Park into a memorable adventure. Veteran naturalist Gary Clark and photographer Kathy Adams Clark help you choose the best hike or drive in Big Bend National Park, based on the season in which you visit; the number of days you have in the park; and your activity, age, and fitness levels. The Clarks provide valuable practical information, along with a descriptive list of items essential for being outdoors in desert and mountain environments and an overview of park rules. They describe more than thirty activities available in the park: two-hour or half- and full-day adventures; adventures for the physically fit or physically challenged; and adventures with children, for nature lovers, or in vehicles. The Clarks also point out scenic highlights and animals and plants that might be seen along the way.

50 year since founding the University of Texas, they have witnessed major evolutions in the world of publishing.

Known as a place of stark beauty, dramatic geographic dimension, and challenging desert terrain, Big Bend National Park is located in West Texas on the north bank of the Rio Grande, adjacent to the Mexican states of Coahuila and Chihuahua. Although a place of natural grandeur, the unique location of this 118-mile long, 1.5 million-acre corridor has led to many challenges between the United States and Mexico, two nations who share one ecosystem but inhabit different political worlds. Big Bend National Park explores the cultural and diplomatic history of this transborder region that was designated a national park on the US side and the site of a long-hoped-for “international peace park” on the other. Michael Welsh demonstrates the challenges faced and lessons learned by both the US and Mexico as they struggled against political and environmental vicissitudes in their attempts to realize the creation of a shared frontier. Geopolitical and environmental conflicts such as Cold War fears, immigration, the war on drugs, international water rights, and more stringent American border security measures after 9/11 all hindered relations between the two countries. But more recently, renewed cooperation and ongoing diplomatic relations have led to new developments. Mexican park personnel began assisting American officials with efforts to re-wild the American side of the river with animal species that had been eliminated, and the Obama administration relaxed some post-9/11 restrictions, allowing American visitors to cross over to the Mexican park and its nearby towns. The ambition of developing a park for peace has yet to materialize, even as individuals and their governments continue to work toward an accord. Big Bend National Park provides a greater understanding of this complex borderland and hopes to help fulfill the aspiration of creating a shared ecosystem and the dream of a park for peace.

In January 1952, Aileen Kilgore was teaching forty-three fourth graders at a public school in Northport, Alabama. Her life, filled with lesson preparations, in-service meetings, countywide meetings, and special projects, seemed grim, and she resolved to change it. Remembering tales she'd heard of the Big Bend region in Texas, she wrote to the school board at Alpine, applying for a position. To her surprise an offer came back to teach at a new school within the Big Bend National Park. She accepted. The young schoolteacher was at first overwhelmed by Big Bend--the wildness, the limitless space, the isolation, and the exuberant Texas children. But she soon came to love the area and the people. During her first year at Panther Junction, she met one special ranger named Art Henderson. When he was transferred to the Blue Ridge Parkway that summer, there was a hole in her life. During her two years at Panther Junction, Aileen wrote long and frequent letters--to her father working for the railroad at Boligee, Alabama, to her mother and sister living in Brookwood, Alabama, to her sisters in Tuscaloosa and San Diego, and finally, the second year, to Art Henderson. Those edited letters make up this book.

This is Patricia Clothier's story of growing up in the 1930s and 1940s on a vast ranch in the mountains and desert hugging the Mexican border in the Big Bend country of Texas, Before it became a national park. Her family weathered rattlesnakes and drought, accidents, loneliness and financial hardships of the Great Depression with fortitude, ingenuity, and grace. Like their scattered neighbors ? miles away over rugged roads ? it was the love of the land that gripped and held them there. Clothier paints a picture of this cast and glorious territory with words as vivid as any artist with a pallet of paints. A joy to read ? an adventure of Western life you'll never forget.' Jean Bradfish (award winning author and editor)

"The campfire for ages has been the place of council and friendship and story-telling. The mystic glow of the fire quickens the mind, warms the heart, awakens memories of happy, glowing tales that fairly leap to the lips." Contains stories from Jack London, Ellis Parker Butler and others. Originally published in 1921.