Author: W.C.

We’re grateful to the Texas Historical Foundation for helping us provide scholarships for Real Places attendees! Many folks from around the state attend Real Places to learn the latest best practices in historic preservation, which they then take back to their communities far and wide. Texas Historical Foundation’s support helps us make sure that those who most need to attend the conference actually can! Thank you for helping us help others, Texas Historical Foundation!

#realplaces2024 #texashistoricalfoundation Texas Historical Foundation ... See MoreSee Less

1627 Sealy Ave, Galveston, TX 77550

Check out the Trube Castle in Texas! Built in 1890 by John Clement Trube, originally from Kiel, Denmark, this home combines European charm with Texan resilience. Designed by architect Alfred Muller, it's not just an architectural marvel but a sturdy survivor of many Gulf storms. John married Veronica Durst, heir to early Texan Peter Durst, and together they filled this solid brick structure, finished in Belgian cement, with life and laughter from their nine children. This mansion still stands today! ... See MoreSee Less

Comanches with their teepee in the 1870s. Teepees were marvels of "at hand" engineering: tough, long-lasting, and providing warmth and comfort in winter, shade in the heat of summer, and dryness during heavy rains. ... See MoreSee Less

The legendary Charles Goodnight's bison herd in the Texas Panhandle, 1903. I'm pairing this photo with the text of an article I found in the Galveston News. The article was written 10 years earlier, in 1893:

"Col. Charles Goodnight was in the city recently and entertained a number of friends and others who gathered around the stove in the hotel office, for a long time with stories when the Indians were here when the fastest means of transportation was by a schooner and of Llano Estacado. After talking until he grew almost weary the Colonel stopped to get his breath and Uncle Bill Hiltson asked if he still had his buffalo up there.“Of course I have,” he said, “I have twenty-four head of buffalo and they are increasing slowly. Also, have seventeen elk and I don’t know just how many deer, antelope, and such. The park comprises about 640 acres and has a wire fence of about fifteen wires and ten feet high around it. It’s almost worth a stranger’s life to go inside, but the buffalo and elk know who belongs there and you don’t and only make war on strangers and dogs. The railroad is nearby and the tramp decided one day to call on me, and being rather averse to going around, climbed the fence and came across the park, or rather partly. But an old buffalo bull helped him get out and didn’t do it very gently either. Another time a wagonload of people, mostly women, were driving through. A dog was following along behind; the buffalo thought his dogship was a Wolf and wanted to kill him. They surrounded the wagon and stopped the procession. When the men from the ranch got out to them the buffalo were about to tear the wagon to pieces in trying to get at the dog, which had taken refuge beneath it. I’ve had some of these animals for fifteen years and would not sell them at all. Buffalo Bill would have given me $1000 each for the buffalo, but I didn’t sell them and won’t.”I read this and just marveled at the number of iconic characters Texas history has produced! ... See MoreSee Less