Texas Insights - January 2012

Volume II, Issue 3
What’s New?
Did you know that March was declared *Texas History Month* by the Texas Legislature in 2003? Since then, K-12 educators have been required to “observe by appropriate celebrations and activities in public schools and other places to promote interest in and knowledge of Texas history.” To keep up to date on state and federally mandated and suggested celebrations, the TeachingTexas.org team have compiled a list, which can be found on the Dates and Observances page on TeachingTexas.org. How do you celebrate Texas History Month? The Texas State Historical Association’s, Texas Quiz Show, is an excellent way to test students’ knowledge of Texas history in the classroom, while having a good time. If you have competitive students, they can enter one of the many Regional Quiz Show competitions. See more about the Texas Quiz Show below in the news section. In a state as big as Texas, history is easy to find. Students might enjoy a visit to a museum, such as the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin or the Star of the Republic Museum in Washington, Texas. Experience Texas history at places such as the Alamo in San Antonio, the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas in La Porte, the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, or visit one of the Texas Historical Commission’s or the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's State Historic Sites. History is all around us, have students participate in a local history or family history project and contribute their findings to the school or community library.
TSHA's 116th Annual Meeting Join the Texas State Historical Association at its 116th Annual Meeting. This year’s meeting will take place at the Houston Omni Hotel, March 1 – 3, 2012. K-12 educators who attend the meeting and conference have the opportunity to earn CPE hours. A special keynote speaker, Dr. Darlene Clark Hine, the Inaugural Director of African American History at Northwestern University, will speak on Civil Rights in Texas in the Sawyer Auditorium in Hannah Hall at Texas Southern University. With a generous grant from Humanities Texas, the Keynote Address is Free and open to the public. As an added bonus, thanks to a gift from a Houston area member of the TSHA Board of Directors, the registration rate for K-12 educators, which is usually $35.00, has been lowered to only $15.00 for the full 2 ½ days of the content-oriented conference. This is an excellent opportunity for educators to brush up on their Texas History Content. Visit TeachingTexas.org for additional information.		Texas History Workshop Humanities Texas and the Texas State Historical Association will hold a one-day workshop on Texas History from 1877 to the Present on February 10, 2012 at the Byrne-Reed House in Austin. Presenters for the workshop include: Alwyn Barr, Texas Tech University; George Green, University of Texas at Arlington; Joseph Pratt, University of Houston; and Chase Untermeyer, former United States Ambassador to Qatar. The workshop is open to all social studies teachers, but priority consideration will be given to early-career, Texas History teachers, in low-performing schools and districts. The workshop is free to teachers and their schools, with substitute reimbursement for all teachers who attend, and approved travel reimbursement for teachers traveling outside of Travis, Hays, or Williamson counties. Participants will also receive CPE hours and may be eligible to receive GT credit depending on district policies. For more information see TeachingTexas.org.
Featured Institution
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Experience Texas History and Buffalo Soldier Heritage Like Never Before By David Boevers, M.A., C.I.G. Program Historian Buffalo Soldier Heritage and Outreach Program Have you ever gone to a museum and wanted to touch the artifacts or costumes? Or for those who are still a kid at heart, wanted to talk with the costumed manikins? On a more serious note, have you ever asked yourself, “What is my connection to this place?” At Texas Parks and Wildlife, all of these experiences are possible. The Buffalo Soldier Heritage and Outreach Program (BSOHP) is an educational outreach program in State Parks that features costumed interpreters, interactive exhibits, and offers participants unique cultural and historical experiences. Primarily focused on the African American military experience in Texas, the BSHOP also features the life and times of Tejanos, Native Americans, and Frontier Women. Targeting ethnic minorities and urban populations, the program’s goal is to create connections for audiences unfamiliar with State Parks and Historic Sites, as well as offer new historical insights. The story of the Buffalo Soldiers, the first African American men to serve in the regular Army in the late 19th Century, is an excellent example of an important part of Texas history seldom elaborated in traditional textbooks. By sharing these stories, TPWD opens doors into communities that once questioned their stake in Parks. The BSHOP has three component programs to accomplish this task. First is the educational outreach program, Texas Buffalo Soldiers. This program brings the museum to the audience and features authentic military camps, uniforms, horses, and even firing demonstrations. This unique vehicle provides BSHOP the opportunity to bring interactive programming to audiences ranging from traditional classrooms to State Parks. The second program component is the Blazing New Trails program. In addition to the lack of being stakeholders, studies have found that urban and some ethnic minorities also shy away due to lack of outdoor experience. Blazing New Trails partners with multiple entities, such as the National Buffalo Soldier Museum, to offer these audiences the opportunity to experience State Parks and Historic sites with a minimal investment of their time or monetary resources. For many participants, this represents the first time they have ever camped, cooked over an open fire, or even played baseball. Finally, for those looking for expert advice about the Buffalo Soldiers and other Texas history components, the program offers research assistance. Exploring Texas Roots is the program’s research component. Tasked originally with identifying African American Heritage sites, this program now also provides support to educators and community groups who desire to share these stories as well. If interested in learning more about the Buffalo Soldiers and all the other voices of Texas history, please feel free to pay a visit to the following events: March 2-3 “Life’s Better Outside: Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo” Houston 23-24 “McKavett Western Heritage Days” Fort McKavett State Historic Site April 27-28 “Life’s Better Outside: Buccaneer Day’s” Corpus Christi May 3-5 “Buffalo Soldier Education Day and Open House” Lake Brownwood State Park 18-19 “Buffalo Soldier and Frontier Education Day” Lake Arrowhead State Park August 11 “Buffalo Soldier and Texas State Parks Heritage Expo” Old Settlers Park, Round Rock
Historian's Corner
The Oil Century and the Transformation of Texas By Jo Ann Stiles Retired Lamar University Associate Professor, now working on a three generation history of the Lutcher and Stark families of Orange, Texas The search for wealth in Texas is an old one. For 300 years, Spaniards searched today's state of Texas for gold or silver to enrich their empire and themselves. In the 1540s survivors of the 1539 Hernando de Soto expedition, found the source of our 20th century wealth and thanked God for it. They used the tar from southeast Texas beaches to caulk their storm damaged boats, most likely saving their lives, but considered the tar that came from a major oil seep in the Gulf of Mexico of no further use. There were many oil seeps and sour springs in Texas, used mainly for medicinal purposes by natives and newcomers alike, but it was not until the mid-19th century that the search for oil began in earnest. The Drake Well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859 set off a surge of exploration, producing strikes in the Midwest and in California. Oil strikes in Europe established Russia as the world's major oil producing nation in the 1890s. However, it was the 1901 discovery on the southeast Texas coast that dangled visions of oil wealth before our eyes. It was oil, the same substance the Spanish found, used, and left, and in huge quantities that set off a search for new uses and for aggressive wildcatting to find more sources. It was the black gold of Spindletop in 1901...the discovery that experts said was impossible. No rock...no oil, they said. John Rockefeller and his Standard Oil agreed and put no money into the search after earlier strikes in Corsicana faded away. Fortunately, there were dreamers and a few experts willing to take a chance on the search on the southeast Texas coast. It is a vast understatement to say that bringing in the Spindletop gusher required creativity, immensely hard work, dedication to their beliefs....and money... lots of it. The primary players were Patillo Higgins, Captain Anthony Lucas, his wife, Caroline, John Galey, and the three Hamill brothers, with the Mellon banking family of Pittsburgh. They brought in a gusher (although this was not the primary descriptive word used at the time) and then could not control it until almost one million barrels of oil lay on the surface of the prairie surrounding the salt dome referred to as Spindletop. This gusher was 30 miles from the sea, compared to 600 miles for the Russians, a huge advantage in marketing. After five more gushers in a row, the storage tanks, pipelines, and refineries were quick to appear. Texas had a major new industry and the possibility of great wealth. The economy before Spindletop was based on cotton and cattle. The Galveston Hurricane in September of 1900 devastated the state's major port and resulted in the loss of six to eight thousand lives. The discovery of new fields brought wealth and new jobs to Texas. Forty years passed before the U.S. Census designated Texas a majority urban and industrial state, as the economy responded to World War II in Europe and later to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Before Spindletop, cotton was King. As the oil business developed and expanded, lives in Texas, the U.S., and the world both benefited and were challenged by this new industry. Here in Texas a search began right after Spindletop for uses for oil other than kerosene or lubricating oil. The first experiments involved converting ships and railroad engines from coal to oil-based fuel. The big market, however, was the newly developing automobile engine, followed by fuel for airplanes. If you ask students to look around the classroom, a huge number of the objects around them have a petroleum base, especially plastics from the chemical industry that developed aggressively during World War II. Products that make our 20th and 21st century lives so much easier owe much to the oil industry, but, as usual, there is another side to the story. Any town that experienced an oil discovery experienced a wealth of social problems emerging in its wake. Transportation, housing, sanitation, environmental concerns, law enforcement, and racial issues challenged the cities and towns. These needs required much rewriting of the structure of local and state law to cope with this new industry. The issues were daunting. Oil drilling and refining were physically dangerous jobs and continue to be today, but the industry offered a way to a more prosperous life. For example, the Hamill brothers who drilled the Spindletop well continued in the oil drilling business to the end of their working days and prospered. Toward the end of wildcatter John Galey's life, after he made and lost several very large fortunes, he borrowed the money to drill his very last well from the Hamill brothers. It was a dry hole. Oil is a non-renewable resource. In the early 1950s when Michel Halbouty, the highly successful petroleum geologist from Houston, was on his honeymoon in New Orleans, he told his new wife that the 20th century was the century of oil, but the 21st century would be the century of nuclear power. He assumed that oil men would use all of the easily attainable oil, and the rest would be too expensive to extract. That was true for a long time. Texans are now experimenting with alternative energy sources and have been importing large quantities of oil for refineries. With the unstable situation in the world and the state of our national economy, oil companies have turned to new ways to extract oil and gas inside our country, such as the highly controversial use of “fracking,” now in use in Texas in the Eagle Rock Shale and elsewhere. With that increased production and the improvement of gas mileage on automobiles, figures released on January 1, 2012, indicated that the single largest export of the U.S. in 2011 was fuel... gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. It has been more than 60 years since the U.S. was a net exporter of these fuels. Fracking is raising many environmental issues, however, and we are not close to the end of this story. Texas remains a major player in the oil industry saga. If you are curious about the men who drilled the first major gusher in United States history and in 10 days replaced the Russians with the Americans (Texans to be precise), as the world's major producer of oil, check Giant Under the Hill by Judith Linsley, Ellen Rienstra, and Jo Ann Stiles. Full disclosure is necessary here. I co-authored this book which was recently reprinted by TSHA.
Featured Lesson
As you plan instruction on the oil industry and the contribution and impact on the Texas economy, consider this issue’s featured lesson, How Did Spindletop Spark a Texas Industry that Impacted the Nation?, from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, and available on TeachingTexas.org. This lesson uses both primary and secondary sources to help students explain the political, economic, and social impact of the oil industry on the industrialization of Texas.
Texas History News
Several opportunities for Texas history educators and students are available or are on the near horizon:
The Texas State Historical Association’s Texas Quiz Show program is excited to announce the expansion of the program to eight regions for 2012. Regional competitions will now take place in Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Brownsville, El Paso, Nacogdoches, and Lubbock. Additionally, the Texas Quiz Show has a new look with the launch of a new web-site, where you can find footage of the 2011 competition. The deadline to register for regional competition is January 16, 2012. For more information, please visit TexasQuizShow.org or TeachingTexas.org		The Region 6 Education Service Center and The Texas State Historical Association are proud to present the 2012 Texas History Conference, held in Huntsville on January 26th- 27th, 2012. This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Richard McCaslin of the University of North Texas, who will be speaking on Texas in the Civil War. Other presenters include: the Portal to Texas History, Holocaust Museum of Houston, TCI, Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Bush Library, LBJ Library, Sam Houston Memorial Museum, DBQ Project, LRE, and First Day Covers. Visit TeachingTexas.org for more information.
Join the fun at George Ranch Historical Park on April 14, 2012, for an exciting re-creation of the Runaway Scrape, the fleeing of the Texians from Santa Anna’s army marching east towards San Jacinto. Try your hand at musket handling while running from cannon fire and advancing soldados. Visit TeachingTexas.org for more information.		Washington on the Brazos State Park presents, Our Flag Still Proudly Waves on January 28, 2012. Meet at the visitor’s center to learn the history and symbolism of the many flags that have flown in Texas, with guest speaker and former TSSAR president, Tom Green. For more information about this event, visit TeachingTexas.org .
Fort Richardson State Historic Site invites you to join them for the 4th Annual World War II Living History Day on February 25, 2011. Living historians will be performing on the parade grounds and will include a battle and a weapons demonstration. For more information about this event, visit TeachingTexas.org.		Join the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and Fort Richardson State Park as they host their first annual Texas Independence Day Celebration, on March 3, 2012 at Fort Richardson. Historians and re-enactors from numerous time periods in Texas History will demonstration their skills throughout the day. Visit TeachingTexas.org for more information.
Fort McKavett State Historic Site invites you to celebrate history at the annual West Texas Heritage Days, March 23-24, 2012. Activities include cavalry, artillery and infantry action drills, Native American living history, Buffalo Soldiers, chuck wagon samples, the Texas Camel Corps and other frontier skills demonstrations. A band playing period music will perform during a barbecue lunch offered by the Friends of Fort McKavett. While there, visit the recently restored ruins of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, also known as San Sabá Presidio, in nearby Menard. Visit TeachingTexas.org for more information.		Live the History! The San Jacinto Museum of History would like to invite you to participate in the annual San Jacinto Day Festival and Battle Reenactment, on April 21, 2012. This year’s event marks the 176th Anniversary of Texas Independence and record attendance is anticipated! Highlights of the Festival include family entertainment, living history demonstrations, a children’s area and vendors reflecting all things Texas. In the late afternoon, the largest battle reenactment in the state celebrates the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto. For more information, visit TeachingTexas.org.
Texas Insights is a publication of the Texas State Historical Association in cooperation with the University of North Texas. Texas State Historical Association 1155 Union Circle #311580 Denton, TX 76203-5017 Stephen Cure - Editor Kim White - Associate Editor JoNeita Kelly - Associate Editor