Texas Highways Magazine November 2019

In 2004, Jac Darsnek was inching along Interstate 35 in Round Rock, pondering what to do with the next chapter of his life after enjoying a windfall from the early 2000s tech boom. He recalled a conversation he’d had on the same stretch of road 25 years prior, when a friend from the northeast commented on all the wide-open spaces on a drive from Temple to Austin. Jac looked out at the chain stores now lining the congested highway and thought, “Somebody should photograph all this vanishing Texas before it’s forever lost.” So he set off to document and preserve pieces of it he feared would soon vanish. In 2013 he started sharing his photos on social media under an account called Traces of Texas. The Traces of Texas Facebook account…

For “Living on the Edge” (Page 30), John Dyer found inspiration in the work of 20th-century photographers Robert Frank and Walter Evans, who captured daily life in America. “Traveling across the country—or state—is a rite of passage for photographers,” Dyer says. “That was in the back of my mind when I set out to do this.” After a 40-plus-year career shooting for magazines like Newsweek and Travel + Leisure, San Antonio-based Dyer wanted to do a project solely for himself. He traveled 5,500 miles around the perimeter of the state and took around 5,000 photographs—a selection of which are featured in this issue. Whether the catalog ends up in a book or gallery, Dyer believes the project will have wide appeal. “There’s something about Texas,” he says. “People all over…

S.C. Gwynne The former bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor for Time wrote about Caddo Lake’s resilience in “Nevertheless, Caddo Lake Persisted” (Page 58). “I have wanted to paddle Caddo Lake for at least two decades, and this article finally gave me the chance,” he says. “It’s not only an ecological jewel but also features some of the state’s most interesting history.” Gwynne is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Empire of the Summer Moon, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Rebel Yell, a finalist for the PEN Literary Award for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bret Anthony Johnston Originally from Corpus Christi, Johnston is the director of The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas-Austin.…

Thank you for putting La Southmost on the map. It’s been a big blessing for us as new customers from throughout the state of Texas—as far away as Odessa, Houston, and Austin, but also the Rio Grande Valley and surrounding areas—continue to pour in to Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que. Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que, Brownsville PALO DURO CANYON I lived in Amarillo for 25 years, and Palo Duro Canyon is a great place to visit. Just don’t wear anything white—it’ll be the color of red clay when you get done. Marsha O’Dell Young, Van CADDO LAKE While we were on a Caddo Lake boat tour, I asked our guide, “Are there about a thousand snakes in these waters?” He said, “No. More like about a million.” Shelley Modisette Ford, San Marcos A Diversity of Opinions Thank you for the September issue highlighting…

Andrew Stuart is the poster boy for the “next best place.” Raised in Austin, Stuart lived on both coasts before falling in love with West Texas. He spent two years as a reporter for the now-defunct Desert-Mountain Times in Alpine and three years as the news director at Marfa Public Radio. In 2009, he moved to Dell City, a Chihuahuan Desert farming community with little but a mercantile, a gas station, and two cafés. It’s a place once described by The New York Times as a “borderline ghost town.” But factor in the Guadalupe Mountains—the area’s primary tourist attraction, rising 20 miles to the east—and the feeling that you’re out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s easy to see Stuart, 44, has found his place. “I knew I wanted…

The drive from Austin to Houston is marked by undulant pastures, vibrant swaths of wildflowers, and if you know where to look, a scattering of public skate parks. Pierce Park in Taylor is a surreal moonscape not unlike a cement-covered golf course. In Rockdale, the skate park features a fiber-glass disc, like a giant blue tea saucer, rumored to have been salvaged from a defunct wave pool in San Marcos. Brenham is home to Fireman’s Park, a set of converted tennis courts anchored by prefabricated ramps and rails. The proliferation of these parks—let alone that they were built with public funds—shows how drastically the Lone Star State’s relationship with skateboarding has changed in the last couple of decades. But the biggest change, and I do mean biggest, is near Spring,…