A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
For Doña Ramona as well as for countless generations of Mexican Americans, memories of rural life recall la querida tierra, the beloved land. Through good times and bad, the land provided sustenance. Today, many of those homesteads and ranches have succumbed to bulldozers that have brought housing projects and strip malls in their wake.
Now a writer and a photographer who have long been intimately involved with Arizona's Hispanic community have preserved the voices and images of men and women who are descendants of pioneer ranching and farming families in southern Arizona. Ranging from Tucson to the San Rafael Valley and points in between, this book documents the contributions of Mexican American families whose history and culture are intertwined with the lifestyle of the contemporary Southwest. These were hardy, self-reliant pioneers who settled in what were then remote areas. Their stories tell of love affairs with the land and a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
Through oral histories and a captivating array of historic and contemporary photos, Beloved Land records a vibrant and resourceful way of life that has contributed so much to the region. Individuals like Doña Ramona tell stories about rural life, farming, ranching, and vaquero culture that enrich our knowledge of settlement, culinary practices, religious traditions, arts, and education of Hispanic settlers of Arizona. They talk frankly about how the land changed hands—not always by legal means—and tell how they feel about modern society and the disappearance of the rural lifestyle.
"Our ranch homes and fields, our chapels and corrals may have been bulldozed by progress or renovated into spas and guest ranches that never whisper our ancestors' names," writes Patricia Preciado Martin. "The story of our beautiful and resilient heritage will never be silenced . . . as long as we always remember to run our fingers through the nourishing and nurturing soil of our history." Beloved Land works that soil as it revitalizes that history for the generations to come.
Ranching on the vast scale that Texas is famous for actually happened at King Ranch, a sea of grass that ultimately spread its pastures to countries around the globe under the fifty-year leadership of Bob Kleberg. This absorbing biography, written by Kleberg's top assistant of many years, captures both the life of the man and the spirit of the kingdom he ruled, offering a rare, insider's view of life on a fabled Texas ranch.
John Cypher spent forty years (1948-1988) on King Ranch. In these pages, he melds highlights of Kleberg's life with memories of his own experiences as the "right hand" who implemented many of Kleberg's grand designs. In a lively story laced with fascinating anecdotes he both recounts his worldwide travels with Kleberg as the ranch expanded its holdings to Latin America, Cuba, Australia, the Philippines, Europe, and Africa, and describes timeless, traditional tasks such as roundup at the home ranch in Kingsville.
Kleberg's accomplishments as the founder of the Santa Gertrudis cattle breed and a breeder of Thoroughbred racing horses receive full attention, as does his fabled lifestyle, which included friendships not merely with the rich and famous but also with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who shared his love of horse racing. For everyone interested in ranching and one of its most famous practitioners, this book will be essential reading.
A sophisticated ecological analysis of ranching in northern Nevada featuring a new chapter and new epilogue by the authors.First published in 1985, Cattle in the Cold Desert has become a classic in the environmental history of the Great Basin, brilliantly combining a lively account of the development of the Great Basin grazing industry with a detailed scientific discussion of the ecology of its sagebrush/grassland plant communities. The volume traces the history of white settlement in the Great Basin from about 1860, along with the arrival of herds of cattle and sheep to exploit the forage resources of a pristine environment and, through the history of John Sparks, a pioneer cattleman, illustrates how the herdsmen interacted with the sagebrush/grasslands of the cold desert West. As the story unfolds on two levels—that of the herdsmen adapting their livelihood to the challenging conditions of the Great Basin's scanty forage, aridity, and fierce winters, and that of the fragile ecology of the desert plant communities responding to the presence of huge herds of livestock—we see the results of a grand experiment initiated by men willing to venture beyond the limits of accepted environmental potential to settle the Great Basin, as well as the often ruinous consequences of the introduction of domestic livestock into the plant communities of the region. The result is a remarkably balanced and insightful discussion of the grazing industry in the Intermountain West. This new paperback edition includes an additional chapter that addresses the impact of wild mustangs on the Great Basin rangelands, and an epilogue that discusses changes in rangeland management and in rangeland conditions, especially the impact of recent wildfires. As concern over the future of the Great Basin's unique rangeland environment and its principal agricultural industry grows, Cattle in the Cold Desert remains essential reading for everyone who cares about this underappreciated region of the American West.
The Chickasaw Rancher follows Montford T. Johnson's family and friends for the next thirty-two years. Neil R. Johnson describes the work, the ranch parties, cattle rustling, gun fights, tornadoes, the run of 1889, the hard deaths of many along the way, and the rise, fall, and revival of the Chickasaw Nation.
This revised edition of The Chickasaw Rancher, edited by C. Neil Kingsley, Neil R. Johnson's grandson, is the perfect addition to any reader's collection of the history of the American West.
A born storyteller with a flair for words, Collins breathes life into the geology, history, and interdependency of land, water, and native and introduced plants and animals. He conjures indelible portraits of the hardworking, dedicated people he comes to know. With both humor and humility, he recounts the day-to-day challenges of ranch life such as how to build a productive herd, distribute your cattle evenly across a rough and rocky landscape, and establish a grazing system that allows pastures enough time to recover. He also intimately recounts a battle over the endangered Gila topminnow and how he and his neighbors worked with university range scientists, forest service conservationists, and funding agencies to improve their ranches as well as the ecological health of the Redrock Canyon watershed.
Ranchers who want to stay in the game don’t dominate the landscape; instead, they have to continually study the land and the animals it supports. Collins is a keen observer of both. He demonstrates that patience, resilience, and a common-sense approach to conservation and range management are what counts, combined with an enduring affection for nature, its animals, and the land. Cowboy is a Verb is not a romanticized story of cowboy life on the range, rather it is a complex story of the complicated work involved with being a rancher in the twenty-first-century West.
The rivers of the Texas Panhandle, the Canadian, and the forks of the Red break through the Cap Rock at the eastern edge of the Staked Plains. It’s rough, bleak country, with few trees and a great expanse of sky. Storms that form on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains sweep through with nothing much to slow them down. And the small dusty towns that serve this vast ranchland cling to the waterways as they have for over a hundred years, since their early settlement. Their names aren’t well known now, but they were once focal points in a rugged country where buffalo hunters, trail drivers, outlaws, and ordinary folks alike passed through.
Rufe LeFors was one such "ordinary" man. With his father and older brothers, he was among the first to settle this country, drawn to West Texas by tales of open land and good grass. His life story, set down near the end of his long and adventurous life, is the best sort of insider's history, the chronicle of a life lived fully amid the exciting events and rough landscape of the frontier's final years.
Rufe LeFors recorded his story over the course of a decade, finishing up in 1941 in his eighty-first year. His memoirs span the period from the War between the States to the early twentieth century, when the Panhandle was still scarcely settled, a true frontier. In his time LeFors was trail driver, pony express rider, and rancher. He traveled for a year with Arrington's Texas Rangers, and he wore the badge of deputy sheriff in the wild west town of Old Mobeetie. He rode a fast horse after claims in the Cherokee Strip, spent time as a horse trader, and finally settled in Lawton, Oklahoma, where, after some twenty years as a deputy, he was elected to the office of sheriff.
LeFors knew how to tell a story. Whether it is an account of an outlaw's capture or the rescue of a white girl from prairie fire by a Comanche brave, he weaves into his narrative all the color, drama, and character of the event. His version of the death of Billy the Kid adds another perspective to that much celebrated episode in western history. His encounters with Temple Houston, the governor's flamboyant son, rancher Charles Goodnight, and Ranger Captain Arrington add to our fund of knowledge about those legendary frontier figures. LeFors wanted to get the facts—as he remembered them—straight. With his sharp eye for texture and detail and keen ear for language and timing, he created a narrative that wonderfully captures the flavor of his life and exciting times.
Winner, San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2005
Runner-up, Carr P. Collins Award, Best Book of Nonfiction, Texas Institute of Letters, 2005
Until the U.S. Army claimed 300-plus square miles of hardscrabble land to build Fort Hood in 1942, small communities like Antelope, Pidcoke, Stampede, and Okay scratched out a living by growing cotton and ranching goats on the less fertile edges of the Texas Hill Country. While a few farmers took jobs with construction crews at Fort Hood to remain in the area, almost the entire population—and with it, an entire segment of rural culture—disappeared into the rest of the state.
In Harder than Hardscrabble, oral historian Thad Sitton collects the colorful and frequently touching stories of the pre-Fort Hood residents to give a firsthand view of Texas farming life before World War II. Accessible to the general reader and historian alike, the stories recount in vivid detail the hardships and satisfactions of daily life in the Texas countryside. They describe agricultural practices and livestock handling as well as life beyond work: traveling peddlers, visits to towns, country schools, medical practices, and fox hunting. The anecdotes capture a fast-disappearing rural society—a world very different from today's urban Texas.
In this memoir, Frison shares his life’s work and his atypical journey from rancher to professor and archaeologist. Herding cattle, chopping watering holes in sub-zero weather, and guiding hunters in the fall were very different than teaching classes, performing laboratory work, and attending faculty and committee meetings in air-conditioned buildings. But his practical and observational experience around both domestic and wild animals proved a valuable asset to his research. His knowledge of specific animal behaviors gave insight to his studies of the Paleoindians of the northern plains as he sought to understand how their stone tools were used most effectively for hunting and how bison jumps, mammoth kills, and sheep traps actually worked. Frison’s careful research and strong involvement in the scholarly and organizational aspects of archaeology made him influential not only as an authority on the prehistory of the northern plains but also as a leader in Wyoming archaeology and Northern American archaeology at large.
This book will appeal to both the professional and the lay reader with interests in archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, plains history, animal science, hunting, or game management. Frison’s shift from ranching into the academic world of archaeology serves as a reminder that you are never too old to change your life.
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