The Texas Monthly Terquasquicentennial Blog

How can any list of what made Texas what it is not include a stop at or near Gonzales.  With the first shot of the revolution and the Come and Take It flag, to 32 (plus about 12 more) answering the call of the Alamo, to Sam Houston receiving news of the fall of the Alamo from the only survivors, to the runaway scrape started by Sam Houston on the way to San Jacinto, Texas Monthly got lost on its road trip about Texas.

Huntsville Unit, Huntsville | February 8, 1924

Prior to 1924, executions in Texas were carried out—hanging was the usual method—by individual counties. But in 1923 the Legislature authorized the use of the electric chair and ordered that all executions take place at the penitentiary in Huntsville, also known as the Walls Unit for its tall walls of red brick. A brand-new, prisoner-built electric chair (later known as Old Sparky) was installed in an area of the unit located off what is now the infirmary, and on February 8 a man named Charles Reynolds, from Red River County, was the first to be put to death. That same day, Ewell Morris, George Washington, Mack Mathews, and Melvin Johnson would be electrocuted as well. (These first five also represent the most executions carried out by the state in a single day.) Old Sparky was in commission for forty years, until 1964, when Joseph Johnson of Harris County became the last man executed in Texas with the electric chair. Starting with Reynolds, Texas has put a total of 825 individuals to death, hundreds more than any other state. And though the method has changed (lethal injections began in 1982), all of them have drawn their last breaths at the Walls Unit. —DC

1120 N. Northwest Loop 323, Tyler | August 1973

When summer two-a-days started on the practice fields at John Tyler High School—known as the Pit—the only thing that Coach Corky Nelson had in mind was getting to the playoffs. So he pulled aside his best player, two-way starter Earl Campbell, and informed him that Campbell would be playing only offense during his upcoming senior season. The move was counterintuitive; Campbell had been an all-American schoolboy linebacker the previous year. One of the University of Texas at Austin coaches recruiting him, defensive coordinator Mike Campbell (no relation), had called him the best he’d ever seen at the position. And Earl, who’d grown up idolizing Dick Butkus, was disappointed. But the coach knew better. “He couldn’t score points on defense,” Nelson says. Campbell averaged 225 yards per game his senior year, leading John Tyler to the state championship. He would go on to win a Heisman at UT in 1977, taking the Horns to the national championship game, and three NFL rushing titles in 1978, 1979, and 1980, turning the doormat Houston Oilers into Super Bowl contenders. He was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1991. And today the boys at the Pit still dream of running like the Tyler Rose. —JS

831 Laurel, Texarkana / 1878

Ever been to a dinner party where some know-it-all insists that the composer and pianist Scott Joplin was born in Texarkana? Ever wanted to know how to respond? “The consensus is that he was born in 1868,” says Jamie A. Simmons, the curator at the Texarkana Museums System. “But Texarkana didn’t exist until 1873, so we properly say he was born in northeast Texas.” What we do know is that Joplin’s musical genius was recognized while he was a student at the Orr School, on Laurel Street, where his family lived (the building is now a day care facility). But fair warning: Laurel is two blocks east of the state line, which means—gasp!—you’ll technically be visiting Arkansas. —BDS

East bank of Pecan Creek, Gainesville | October 1, 1862

The Civil War revealed the divisions in late-nineteenth-century Texas politics. Many Texans wanted nothing to do with the Confederate cause, but they were shouted down by slaveholders and secessionists. In parts of North Texas, the region closest to the Union lines, the commencement of Confederate conscription in the spring of 1862 prompted a backlash. There was talk of resisting the draft. The commander of the local militia responded by rounding up dozens of the agitators. An ad hoc jury tried and convicted seven, who were quickly hanged in a field by Pecan Creek, between Main and California streets, and the executions inspired a mob to hang fourteen other prisoners. Nineteen more were hanged the following week. The “Great Hanging” was accompanied by extrajudicial killings in nearby communities, which suppressed displays of Union sentiment but did little to remedy the underlying rifts. —HWB

101 South Coit Road, Richardson | 1987

Lance Armstrong was a talented swimmer as a boy and a top-notch triathlete as a teenager, but it was his decision to focus on cycling full-time that turned him into an international superstar. Like a lot of area kids who were interested in riding, Armstrong hung around Jim Hoyt’s Richardson Bike Mart, in Dal-Rich Village. It was here that, arguably, Armstrong first became a cyclist, when Hoyt started paying him $500 a month to ride for his RBM Team at his celebrated Tuesday night criteriums—multi-lap races on a closed track, often on the streets of undeveloped business parks in town. The store closed in 1997 and headed two miles north, to Campbell Road. But Armstrong’s legacy remains. A large sticker on the front door greets visitors: “Lance Is Back on the Bike. Are You?” —BDS

I love it!! As a former Austinite, I still get this in Memphis, Tennessee and a magzine whom I freelance for loves it, too!!

I love the offbeat, lesser-known spots off the tourist brochures.

Another interesting place.. the apartment where the Texas Democrats aka “killer bees” were hiding out in 1979 to avoid a quorum on a vote. And the corner of 29th Street and Shoal Creek in Austin where three US House districts meet to dilute Democrat influence in largely Democratic Austin.

Political games on both sides :) 

And there are extinct volcanoes, specifically St Edward’s University and Pilot Knob near McKinney Falls State Park.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre house which was moved to Kingsland from Round Rock ( local legend says it was burned down  due to all the demonic rites held at the place!). In reality, is now the Junction House Steakhouse.

And I hear two stories about San Antonio and Austin having the first high rise air conditioned buildings in the US!!

Keep up the good work!!

Devin Greaney

Memphis TN 

3120 North Haskell Avenue, Dallas | Early 1940’s

As a teenager, Lawrence Herkimer was too short to play on the football team, so he joined the North Dallas High School cheerleading squad instead. One day, while trying to execute a split jump at practice, he inadvertently created one of the most popular leaps in the history of cheerleading. If you’ve attended a football game in the past six or seven decades, you’ve seen a “Herkie”: Gathering every ounce of oomph, the jumper springs into the air, kicking one leg out straight and bending the other back while one fist punches the heavens and the other fuses to the hip. Executed correctly, it’s charmingly off-kilter; if underperformed, it looks like a half-baked toe-touch. But it wasn’t until Herkimer became the head cheerleader at SMU that his signature move gained national prominence. “Reporters would come out and want to take pictures, so I’d sit four or five girls in a row and then jump over them,” he says. “It was seen so many times, I guess it just caught on.” Though he’s now retired and living in Florida, the 85-year-old still has the vim of a yell leader. So how would he instruct a novice trying to pull off her first Herkie? “You just have to practice,” he says. “But remember: Really use that right arm to get yourself off the ground.” And the best place for you to try out your new move would be a small triangle of grass in front of Herkimer’s old high school, where it all began. —JB

The pergola at Dealey Plaza, Dallas | November 22, 1963

Nearly fifty years after shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository Building (or the grassy knoll or the triple overpass, depending on your version of events), the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains the most important moment in Dallas history. On that tragic day, Abraham Zapruder walked from the Dal-Tex Building, opposite the depository, on Houston Street, with his 8mm camera to claim a spot on top of the far western column in front of the pergola on the grassy knoll. A cinematographer couldn’t have picked a better location—the ground sloped gently toward Elm Street, providing Zapruder with a clear view of the scene. As the president’s car drove past, Zapruder’s Bell and Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414-PD silently captured everything. Though the country had already suffered through three public assassinations of presidents, never before had the public been able to watch it in Kodachrome. The column where Zapruder recorded the country’s most infamous 26.6 seconds of film provides a chilling reminder of how a soft-spoken dressmaker crossed paths with history. —BDS

1627 College Avenue, Fort Worth | September 15, 1917

Like most aspiring authors in their twenties, Katherine Anne Porter was having trouble getting a job. After theDallas Morning News rebuffed her, the Indian Creek native turned to her Fort Worth friends J. Garfield and Kitty Barry Crawford, founders of the Fort Worth Critic newspaper, who not only gave her a job as a society columnist but allowed her to move in with them. It was in the Crawfords’ home that KAP wrote her first column. The future Pulitzer Prize winner was introduced to readers as a person who “likes things which many people consider frivolous and of no consequence—society and the many small factors which go toward making life pleasant and interesting are among her hobbies.” —KV

On the Northwest side of the Paluxy River, Glen Rose | 113 million years ago

Life is relatively bucolic out west of Glen Rose these days; most creatures do not spend their time stalking or being stalked. But this was not the case 113 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the balmy coastline around what is now the Paluxy River. Bipedal carnivores called acrocanthosaurs preyed on quadrupedal herbivores known as paluxysaurs, leaving behind more than a thousand tracks in the calcium-rich mud. Today, if you find yourself approximately one mile north of FM 205 and Park Road 59, in Dinosaur Valley State Park, there’s no need to watch your back—though you should watch your step. —KATY VINE

You for got the most important place of all - Washington on The Brazos - Independence Hall! Where it all began