For years, veteran Houston photographer Ray Viator has followed the trail rides that lead up to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and has captured the color, the camaraderie, and the flavor of this popular annual event. In All Trails Lead to Houston: Riding to the Rodeo, which opens with a foreword from Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo COO Emeritus M. Leroy “Shafe” Shafer, Viator’s stunning photographs are accompanied by brief narratives and informative sidebars that provide insight into life on a trail—from sunrise to sunset. The trail rides began in January 1952 when Brenham rancher Reese Lockett and five friends were having lunch in Houston. The conversation turned to the joys of riding horses and its place in the Texas ranching tradition. Ultimately, the discussion sparked a challenge and an idea: stage a trail ride from Brenham to Houston as a way of publicizing and promoting the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. That first Salt Grass Trail Ride—named after the predominant source of grazing for cattle ranchers on the Texas Coastal Plain—started with Lockett, his friend and fellow rancher Emil H. Marks, and two others. By 1959, participation had soared to more than 90 wagons and 2,000 riders. In the years since, more rides, each covering a different route to Houston, have been organized with thousands of riders from all over Texas. While the Salt Grass Trail Ride claims pride as “the grandaddy of ’em all,” the movement also spread to other Texas cities and even other countries. Viator provides readers with colorful descriptions of the riders, horses, wagons, and western traditions celebrated each day on each of the twelve rides. All Trails Lead to Houston is a celebration of Texas, western ranching heritage, and culture.

Today’s Greater Houston is a vast urban place. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, Houston was a small town – a dot in a vast frontier. Extant written histories of Houston largely confine themselves to the small area within the city limits of the day, leaving nearly forgotten the history of large rural areas that later fell beneath the city’s late twentieth century urban sprawl. One such area is that of upper Buffalo Bayou, extending westward from downtown Houston to Katy. European settlement here began at Piney Point in 1824, over a decade before Houston was founded. Ox wagons full of cotton traveled across a seemingly endless tallgrass prairie from the Brazos River east to Harrisburg (and later to Houston) along the San Felipe Trail, built in 1830. Also here, Texan families fled eastward during the Runaway Scrape of 1836, immigrant German settlers trekked westward to new farms along the north bank of the bayou in the 1840s, and newly freed African American families walked east toward Houston from Brazos plantations after Emancipation. Pioneer settlers operated farms, ranches and sawmills. Near present-day Shepherd Drive, Reconstruction-era cowboys assembled herds of longhorns and headed north along a southeastern branch of the Chisholm Trail. Little physical evidence remains today of this former frontier world.

The story of Emil Henry Marks and the LH7 Ranch he founded records not only the history of a unique family but also tells something of the cattle business on the coastal prairies of Texas when ranching was the principal industry of the region, before Houston became a major metropolitan center and industry became king. It also chronicles the beginning of the Salt Grass Trail, one of Houston's most enduring traditions. Marks registered the LH7 brand in Harris County in 1898 and started the ranch with 63 acres of grass west of Houston and a few Longhorn cattle. By the early 1930s the LH7 was running 6,670 head on 36,000 acres. The city's shadow loomed over the LH7 in the 1940s and 1950s, and eventually a big bite of the ranch was condemned to protect booming Houston from flooding along Buffalo Bayou. At age seventy, Marks made the first Salt Grass Trail ride in January, 1952, which is reenacted each February to kick off the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

A critical survey of over 150 years of Texas women writers, including fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, and dramatists.

Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Features bibliographical, biographical and contact information for living authors worldwide who have at least one English publication. Entries include name, pseudonyms, addresses, citizenship, birth date, specialization, career information and a bibliography.