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Sometimes, it’s the accidents of history that have the most far-reaching influence. When the fabled French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, landed 200 colonists at Matagorda Bay in early 1685, he was actually seeking the Mississippi River. Three years earlier, La Salle had become the first European to descend the big river to…

Ralph hogged the show at Aquarena Springs

Stories of the quirky former Texas statesman

Aside from the soldiers and supplies that Texas provided to the Confederacy, the state’s most important contribution to the Civil War might have been the salt processed at the Swenson Salines in Lampasas County, near Lometa. While the Confederacy lasted, the place was one of several across the country known as the Confederate Salt Works….

Childhood memories of roadside parks taste good in my mind: potato chips and sandwiches, ice-cold Dr Pepper and Big Red. Four decades later, I can still see the family station wagon pulling into yet another tree-shaded picnic area along a Texas highway. I can feel those concrete picnic tables, cool to the touch. And I…