In 1936, the Texas centennial was celebrated across the state. In The Frontier Centennial, Jacob Olmstead argues that Fort Worth?s celebration of the centennial represented a unique opportunity to reshape the city?s identity and align itself with a progressive future. Olmstead draws out the Frontier Centennial from its inception as a commemorative fair to theme park enshrining the mythic West to show the various ways centennial planners, boosters, and civic leaders sought to use the celebration as a means to bolster the city?s identity and image as a modern city of the American West. Olmstead?s retelling of the Frontier Centennial looks at two distinctive processes. The first addresses the interplay of memory, identity, and image in the evolution of the celebration?s commemorative messages. Fort Worth?s image as a progressive western metropolis also impacted other areas, less central, to Frontier Centennial planning. Debates over how outsiders would interpret features of the celebration, carried on by club women and others, reveal the interest the citizenry held in upholding or contesting the city?s modern image. Overlapping with the issues of memory and identity, the second process addresses how the larger narratives of the mythic West influenced the content of the celebration. Though drawn from actual events and people, the myth reduces the past to its ?ideological essence.? Mythmakers, like historians, draw upon facts to explain and give meaning to a particular worldview.

A look at how aviation's frontier lasted only a scant 3 decades, then vanished as commercial and military imperatives made flying routine.

Texans faced two foes as the Civil War began in 1861: the Union armed forces and the Plains Indians. In this breakthrough volume, David Paul Smith demonstrates that through the efforts of the Home Guard and the Texas Rangers, the Texas frontier held its own during the eventful war years, in spite of a number of factors that could easily have overwhelmed it.

A must read for anyone with an interest in the far Southwest or Native American history.

Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo, Lickety Lickety, Zoo Zoo, Who Wah, Wah Who, Give 'em hell, TCU! Ezra Hood’s Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo! Football Comes to TCU (named after TCU's "Riff, Ram" cheer, one of the oldest known cheers in the nation) traces the origins of Texas Christian University, a tiny liberal arts college in Waco, Texas, to its induction into the Southwest Conference in 1922 as an up-and-coming collegiate football power. Drawing from numerous newspaper sources—most notably from the TCU Daily Skiff—Hood’s book provides an in-depth, game-by-game history of a football program that struggled to find its place amongst established Texas football programs in the early twentieth century. Hood begins with the university’s conception in 1873, when it was known as AddRan Male and Female College, and describes the rise of football’s popularity in Texas. From there, the book chronicles each of TCU’s football seasons from its first year in 1896 to its final year in TIAA play, before it joined the Southwest Conference and went on to become, in Hood’s words, “the prince of the Southwest in the 1930s.” Hood captures particular details of each season—noting significant coaching changes and highly-touted recruits—all the while providing anecdotes from local newspapers as a way to capture the community response to TCU football in both Waco and Fort Worth. And while the book focuses largely on the ups and downs of the program, Hood also captures the impact of the times on both TCU and the many towns of central and north Texas—the impact of the first World War, for instance, on the state of football nationwide and the loss of notable TCU players to the war effort. Thanks to Hood’s exhaustive historical account, this book will be a valuable reference for both fans and historians of TCU and the game of football.

"Centennial series of the Association Former Students, Texas A & M Univ. ; no. 50." Hay's colorful reputation and a host of nicknames earned during battles.

Sixteen women tell their stories, providing a personal history of the state of Texas.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is an enthralling celebration of the frontier. Brimming with the glory of America’s past, the story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe. In Centennial, trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters are brought together in the dramatic conflicts that shape the destiny of the legendary West—and the entire country. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii. Praise for Centennial “A hell of a book . . . While he fascinates and engrosses, Michener also educates.”—Los Angeles Times “An engrossing book . . . imaginative and intricate . . . teeming with people and giving a marvelous sense of the land.”—The Plain Dealer “Michener is America’s best writer, and he proves it once again in Centennial. . . . If you’re a Michener fan, this book is a must. And if you’re not a Michener fan, Centennial will make you one.”—The Pittsburgh Press “An absorbing work . . . Michener is a superb storyteller.”—BusinessWeek

For almost three hundred miles, the Pecos River cuts across far West Texas. It is an arid land, a land that in the last century offered danger and hardship to those who crossed it and those who settled it. Yet they came--army posts like Fort Stockton to challenge the Apaches' claim to the rugged land, settlers to supply the posts, cattlemen to eke out a living from the vast but sparse grazing ranges. They came and they stayed because the land held one overriding appeal: it was Texas' last frontier. The newcomers--cattlemen and sheepmen, individuals and corporations--included sturdy, law-abiding, industrious citizens, such as O.W. Williams, a renowned surveyor, jurist, and historian with a law degree from Harvard; Mexicans, both poor laborers and well-to-do entrepreneurs; kindly German merchants; fighting Irishmen; and fearless Anglo cowboys. There were also the gunslingers, including Sheriff A.J. Royal, who terrorized the citizenry, even after Texas Rangers had arrived, until he was mysteriously shot to death one afternoon, possibly by one of the town's leading men. The most detailed and thorough account available of the history of far West Texas, this tale is colored with human interest and drama. It will prove invaluable to scholars and richly rewarding to all those interested in the history of Texas and of the West.

Designing the Centennial is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the planning of America's first important world's fair -- the 1876 United States Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The conflicts between the players -- scientists and engineers, planners and politicians, organizers and their audience -- demonstrate wider cultural clashes between a traditional view of things as object lessons and our more current understanding of things as commodities. Bruno Giberti uses the official reports of the U.S. Centennial Commission and photographs of the Centennial Photographic Company, as well as the ephemera of the exhibition and literary accounts in books, magazines, and newspapers to examine the concept of world's fairs, contrasting the 1876 event with other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century exhibitions and related institutions. The author goes beyond previous works on world's fairs by investigating the design process and by considering the nature of display -- what people were looking at and how they were looking.