The Big Bend Country Of Texas

Having first visited the Big Bend in 1928, Kenneth B. Ragsdale has been digging around in and writing about the region for decades. In Big Bend Country: Land of the Unexpected, he takes a nostalgic retrospective journey through the times and places of this increasingly popular corner of West Texas to say goodbye to those who made the history, created the myths, and lived the legends.?Building his stories around themes of compassion, conflict, and compromise, he profiles both famous and relatively unknown figures. He tells stories of curanderas (healers), charity workers, a woman who practiced medicine without a license, and another who started a private lending library in her store to encourage rural, poor children to read. In contrast to these stories, he chronicles blood feuds, shootouts, and the violence bred in wild, relatively lawless spaces.?Ragsdale?s stories cover a half-century, roughtly 1900 to 1955, from wagon trains to the filming of an epic movie, a time in which the face of the Big Bend changed: the quicksilver mines closed, a national park was established, isolation and cattle gave way to vacation ranchettes and tourists. ?Big Bend Country is a well-done and useful work and should be welcomed by all lovers of that wonderful country.? ?Dallas Morning News ?If you?ve never been to Big Bend, Ken Ragsdale?s new book will make you want to go there.??Austin American-Statesman.

A Guide to the Rocks, Landscape, Geologic History, and Settlers of the Area of Big Bend National Park.

A long needed account of the human invasion of this rugged Texas desert land.

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.

D. Gentry Steele chronicles the experiences he had while photographing Texas's Big Bend region and black-and-white photographs capture the beauty of the area.

" ... My primary purpose in telling the region's story is to preserve as many of the old-timers' stories as possible, and to corral them between the covers of one book. Some of the best-loved legends and yarns have more than one version and have been told before in one way or another by Alice Jack Shipman, Barry Scobee, Carl Raht, J. Frank Dobie, Cas Edwards, and others. With their permission, I have retold some of the stories and have added many talks which never before have been published ... Most of the cattlemen, prospectors, miners, outlaws, local police officers, and Texas Rangers who made up the Big Bend's population back in the 1880s have gone on to the Big Bend up Yonder ... Most of those stories I tell here, I knew personally and I recorded their accounts as we talked in their homes, sitting in living rooms, at well-filled dining tables, on back steps, or on front porches ..."--The author's preface.