Texas Highways Magazine July 2022

It’s fitting that former Texas Highways managing editor Wes Ferguson’s return to our pages is for our annual River Issue. Not only has he written two books on Texas rivers—The Blanco River and Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine—but he’s responsible for bringing the magazine’s unofficial river editor, Joe Nick Patoski, into the fold. Now self-employed as a full-time writer and podcaster, Ferguson revisited the San Antonio River for a deep dive into one of the state’s few urban waterways. Here, he discusses his current projects and reflects on his time as an editor. What stands out as a memorable story you edited for TH? Dreaming up stories can be more fun than writing them, and I loved handing off ideas to our talented contributors. My all-time favorite dawned on me…

Texas Highways received numerous accolades during the 2022 magazine awards season. For the second year in a row, the magazine was honored as a finalist at the National Magazine Awards, this time for three stories from the September 2021 Cowboy Issue. Joel Salcido’s July 2021 photo essay, “The Origins of Magic,” received the City and Regional Magazine Award for photography, and texashighways.com won the Excellence Online category. At the International Regional Magazine Association awards, Texas Highways took home 11 gold prizes, including a Writer of the Year nod for Katie Gutierrez and Special Focus Issue for the Cowboy Issue. Featured Contributors Gabino Iglesias Moving to Texas from Puerto Rico was a big shift for Iglesias, who wrote the essay “The Water Asks Me Questions” (Page 12) about finding a slice of home in…

@sharon_bass_wright Back to Boerne I was there in March [“A Creek Runs Through It,” May]. The last time I’d been there was March 1992. To say it’s changed would be an understatement. Susan D. Rayburn, Alpine Way Up North From Texas to Alaska, Nan Cook brings a strong work ethic, energy, excitement for adventure, and love for meeting new people [“My Hometown: Perryton,” June]. Angela Daily Thompson, Anchorage, Alaska Lone Star State of Mind The Hill Country is a geographic area, but it’s also a state of mind [“Pushing the Boundaries,” May]. It’s the spirit of Texas. @travis.sells.property1 On the Border In my youth, my family would go to Laredo a lot [“Always Both and Neither,” June]. I loved staying at La Posada Hotel. We would have Easter there with papiermache-covered shoeboxes for our Easter baskets and cross the street to…

Originally formed by a logjam and now controlled by a dam, Caddo Lake harbors a network of bayous, sloughs, and ponds that spans the Texas-Louisiana border. Dallas-based photographer Sean Fitzgerald has explored the lake numerous times, including a recent summer time trip when he took this picture. Navigating the lake in a jon boat, he stopped to wade through waste-deep water and floating vegetation, holding his camera on a tripod above his head. “There are moments when the cypress trees, the hanging moss, the stillness of the water, and the play of the light swirl together into brief moments of magic that leave me stunned in silence,” Fitzgerald says. For more on Caddo Lake and the reintroduction of native paddlefish, see “On the Nose” (Page 20).…

Located near the junction of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos, Presidio has been a frontier crossroads for centuries. The Spanish encountered Indigenous farmers here in 1590, ushering in a clash of civilizations involving Spain, Mexico, the U.S., and tribes including the Jumano, Apache, and Comanche. Today, Presidio is anchored by local businesses, U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices, and the Presidio Independent School District, which is the town’s largest employer. Arian Velazquez-Ornelas moved with her family from California to Presidio when she was in ninth grade. It was a homecoming for her parents, who were from Ojinaga, Presidio’s sister city on the Mexican side of the border. Now a mother of two grown children, Velazquez-Ornelas volunteers as the head of the Presidio Convention and Visitors Bureau and serves on…

My feet are halfway buried in the sand. I inhale deeply and smell salt—a familiar scent. My eyes are closed. The vibrant red painting the interior of my eyelids tells me the sun is there, shining fiercely. I feel its heat on my arms and embracing my face. The waves’ incessant lapping at the shore is like an old song, a mother’s lullaby. I hear people talking and laughing, like background actors in a movie. A quick shadow makes the red vanish. A bird. I open my eyes to follow its path and realize I’m smiling. This isn’t home, but it feels like it as I stand on McGee Beach in Corpus Christi, inches from the Gulf of Mexico, my new version of the ocean. I was born and raised in…