Volume 34

Table of Contents

San Felipe Creek: The Hinge of the San Antonio-El Paso Military Road

Edward J. Michal

Contrary to accepted opinion, the San Antonio-El Paso Military Road (also known as the Lower Military Road) probably crossed San Felipe Creek near Del Rio, Texas, two miles above the main San Felipe Springs. An unheralded spring, regarded by early travelers as the headwaters of the San Felipe Creek and located roughly half a mile above the Military Road, served as a welcome source of pure water. Soldiers and others passing through also used a recently discovered site .15 miles south of the road to shoe horses and mules, repair equipment, and prepare ammunition for the dangerous journey ahead. These two locations bracket the probable route of the Lower Military Road at the San Felipe. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 stimulated demand for an all-season overland route to the Golden State. Government and private wagon trains, sometimes with thousands of cattle and hundreds of men and wagons, traveled the Military Road to reach what became El Paso. Smaller groups, stage drivers, and military patrols faced sudden, deadly attacks by Apache and Comanche warriors. The Lower Military Road made it possible for the US government to extend and ultimately pacify the frontier in western Texas.

An Atlatl from San Esteban Rockshelter in West Texas: The Oldest in North America?

Devin B. Pettigrew and Bryon Schroeder

Continuing collaborative fieldwork at the San Esteban Rockshelter in Presidio County, Texas, between the Center for Big Bend Studies of Sul Ross State University and the University of Kansas-Odyssey Archaeological Research Fund, has recovered a sporadic but rich archaeological record. The focus is to retrieve and research the entire Pleistocene to Holocene occupation of the Texas Big Bend region at a deeply stratified site. Portions of the shelter preserve a robust early Holocene artifact assemblage coeval with the temporal period defined as the Early Archaic in the Texas Big Bend (6500–2500 BCE or 9500–4500 Cal BP). At San Esteban, this early Holocene record includes a robust weaponry assemblage. This paper presents the metrics, absolute age, and morphological comparison of a single atlatl—currently the oldest directly dated specimen in North America. The artifact shares stylistic similarities with other atlatls from the greater Texas Big Bend area which date to as recently as 1800 cal BP, as well as artifacts further afield including Basketmaker atlatls of the Four Corners region. However, a radiocarbon date indicates the atlatl is over 6,000 years old, pushing back the date of this atlatl form into the early Holocene.

Dislodge the Enemy and Explore the Terrain: A Spanish Reconnaissance of the Rio Grande, 1772–1773

Mark Santiago

Between 1764 and 1772 the Spanish crown embarked on a massive retrenchment of imperial power along the northern frontier of New Spain, in what is now the borderland between Mexico and the United States. These efforts centered on the creation of what came to be called the “Line of Presidios.” These Spanish forts or presidios were to be placed across the frontier to repel and attack those native peoples opposed to Spanish power, especially the Apache.

The officer chosen to form the Line was Col. Hugo O’Conor, an Irish exile appointed as the commandant inspector of the Interior Provinces. In late 1772, O’Conor set out to erect the eastern half of the Line of Presidios, along the wild and relatively unknown regions surrounding the Big Bend of the Rio Grande. O’Conor would undertake a six-month-long odyssey into the homelands of the Mescalero and Lipan Apaches. His efforts would shed new light onto a region that the Spaniards claimed but did not control, and which would ultimately become the boundary between Hispanic and Indigenous cultures.

Screwworm Eradication in West Texas: Seen through the Eyes of the Canon Ranch

William V. Scott

In the early 1920s, the Canon Ranch near Sheffield, Texas, was devastated by the outbreak of screwworms that would affect livestock operations throughout the country, but especially the American Southwest. The Canon Ranch’s sheep operations seemed to be one of the hardest hit in the Southwest. The ranch would employ various attempts to eradicate this plague, including policing the pastures, riding the rough range to doctor the infected livestock, and quarantining animals. The remote location of the ranch isolated the care procedures of the animals; in the late twenties, the ranch erected a Sheep Hospital Shed to aid the ranch in attentive care and health of their infected animals. The Canon Ranch would actively fight screwworm infestation in the Trans-Pecos of West Texas through 1955. The Trans-Pecos received minimal aid from organizations like the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Civilian Conservation Corps, but research on the sterile fly after World War II would be the catalyst that finally put the screwworm in check. The Sheep Hospital Shed has since been relocated to the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, where it stands as a reminder of West Texas ranching ingenuity against a devastating parasitic invasion.

Transportation Geography of the Greater Big Bend Region: Notes on Two Binational Freight Corridors

Michael S. Yoder

Transportation infrastructure is fundamental to local, regional, and national economic development. The movement of freight is an essential component of the supply chains of a variety of goods, from agricultural commodities, construction materials, and petroleum, to automobiles and parts. Given the shifting nature of long-distance trade, freight transportation corridors are of growing interest to policymakers and private-sector economic stakeholders. Some regions enjoy favorable proximity to sources of commodities and manufactured goods, while others are more spread out and less well-connected. This article examines two intersecting freight transportation corridors emerging in the Greater Big Bend Region of Texas and northern Mexico. First, the South Orient Rail Line links Fort Worth to Presidio, Texas; Ojinaga, Chihuahua; and the port of Topolobampo. Second, Ports-to-Plains is the planned expansion of Interstate Highway I-27 to link Coahuila, Durango, and Sinaloa in Mexico to Del Rio, Eagle Pass, San Angelo, and Lubbock in Texas, and ultimately the Canadian border. Public-private partnerships are crucial to the anticipated success of the two corridors. Marketing of each corridor on both sides of the border is essential to capturing public and private infrastructure funding as well as interest on the part of shippers, given the competition with already established corridors beyond northern Mexico and West Texas.