TX Hidden History

12/07/2025

🎨 Texas holds a 6,000-year visual record in its canyons.

10/24/2025

I-20 Preserve rebrands as Watersong Wild Space in Midland, plans $27M Nature Commons with event center and education, research, community science wings.
Click the link in the comments 👇️

10/20/2025

Texas is seeing a record number of birds flying over The Lone Star State during the migration season. 🔗 👇

10/20/2025

DRY COUNTY NEWS
By Staff Writer, Conchetta Huffman

The Lost San Saba Mine: Texas Gold or Texas Legend?

West of Austin, near the quiet town of Menard, Texas, lies one of the Hill Country’s most enduring mysteries — the legend of the Lost San Saba Mine. For nearly three centuries, stories have circulated of a hidden vein of Spanish gold buried somewhere along the San Saba River.

The tale begins in 1757, when Spanish missionaries and soldiers established Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá and the nearby Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas. Officially, they came to convert the Lipan Apache, but many believed their true purpose was mining. According to early accounts, Spanish workers had discovered traces of gold before tragedy struck.

In 1758, a force of Comanche and Wichita warriors attacked, destroying the mission and killing nearly everyone inside. Survivors fled south, and with them vanished the location of the fabled mine. Some claimed the entrance was sealed before the attack — the treasure entombed beneath the Texas hills.

Over the centuries, explorers, prospectors, and even Jim Bowie himself have searched the rugged landscape for the lost mine. Many reported strange rock carvings, Spanish tools, or lights glowing in the hills — said to be the spirits of miners guarding their gold. Yet despite countless expeditions, no verified treasure has ever been recovered.

Modern archaeologists have confirmed the ruins of the mission and presidio are genuine, but the mine remains undiscovered. Whether a tale of Spanish ambition or a glimmer of truth buried under limestone and legend, the Lost San Saba Mine endures as one of Texas’ great unsolved mysteries — a reminder that sometimes, the real gold lies in the stories themselves.

— Dry County News, “Keeping Texas Legends Alive.”

10/19/2025

Fort Griffin Fandangle: Texas’ Oldest Outdoor Musical Keeps History Alive

Each June, the small town of Albany, Texas, lights up with the sights and sounds of the Fort Griffin Fandangle, the state’s oldest outdoor musical. Performed under the stars at the Prairie Theater, this community-run production brings to life the rich frontier history of Shackelford County and nearby Fort Griffin, once an 1860s Army post that guarded the Texas frontier.

The Fandangle first took shape in 1938, when playwright Robert E. Nail, Jr. and music director Alice Reynolds transformed a local school play into a full-scale outdoor musical celebrating the region’s pioneer past. What began as a small hometown production has grown into a Texas institution, drawing thousands of visitors each year and featuring more than 250 local cast and crew members.

Audiences experience the story of westward expansion through song, dance, live longhorn cattle, covered wagons, and colorful characters who tell the story of early Texas life. Every year, the town turns out in costume for the event, complete with a downtown parade, live music, and good old-fashioned hospitality.

Today, the Fort Griffin Fandangle is more than entertainment—it’s a tradition that keeps the spirit of early Texas alive. This year’s performances run June 20–21 and June 27–28, 2025, with tickets available at FortGriffinFandangle.com.

As locals like to say, “The show belongs to Albany, but the story belongs to Texas.”

— Dry County News

(Sources: FortGriffinFandangle.com; Texas State Historical Association; Texas Historical Commission.)

Don't miss out on this captivating frontier extravaganza!

10/18/2025

Saving the Grand Canyon of Texas: The Ongoing Story of Palo Duro Canyon’s Preservation
By Dry County News Staff | October 2025
Photo by: Scott Huffman

Palo Duro Canyon—often called the “Grand Canyon of Texas”—has long inspired awe. Carved by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River over millions of years, its painted cliffs tell a story as old as Texas itself. Yet its survival depends on generations of Texans determined to protect it.

Human history in the canyon reaches back more than 12,000 years. The Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche once found refuge in its shade and waters. But by 1874, the Red River War ended Indigenous life there. Two years later, legendary rancher Charles Goodnight drove 1,600 cattle into the canyon, founding the JA Ranch—one of Texas’s first great ranching empires.

In 1933, the state purchased part of the upper canyon, creating Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The Civilian Conservation Corps soon followed, carving roads, cabins, and lookouts that still define the park today. Their work opened the canyon to visitors and established a foundation for conservation that endures nearly a century later.

While the park protects the canyon floor, its rim remained largely private and vulnerable to development—until now. In 2025, the Rim Ranch Easement permanently protected 3,048 acres along the canyon’s rim in Armstrong and Randall Counties. Led by the Texas Agricultural Land Trust (TALT) with help from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, the project ensures the Owens family’s land—owned since the 1940s—will remain a working ranch, never subdivided or commercially developed.

The easement preserves native prairie, canyon habitat, and a playa lake, safeguarding wildlife and the scenic vistas that define Texas’s second-largest canyon. It also sparked neighboring landowners to consider similar agreements, potentially protecting tens of thousands of additional acres.

“Some places are worth saving forever,” said TALT representatives. “This easement honors Texas ranching traditions while keeping the land open and wild.”

From ancient tribes to modern stewards, Palo Duro Canyon’s story is one of endurance and vision. As the sun sets across its crimson walls, this Texas treasure stands protected—wild, timeless, and alive.

Sources: Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, Texas Agricultural Land Trust, Houston Chronicle, NewsChannel 10, Texas State Historical Association.o

10/18/2025

10/05/2025

He was shot through the leg and left for dead on the banks of the Pecos River in 1866. Private Amos Gentry had watched his unit slaughtered in an ambush, the West Texas sun beating down on blood-soaked ground. With nothing left but a shattered bayonet and a body broken beyond reason, he began to crawl—three days and nights across cactus flats and rattlesnake dens, drinking muddy water from horse tracks just to keep breathing. By the time he dragged himself to Fort Stockton, the soldiers who saw him swore they were looking at a ghost.

It wasn’t just survival—it was duty that drove him on. Gentry’s hands were shredded, his uniform torn to rags, yet he refused to let the desert finish what the ambush had started. Every mile was a battle of its own, a test of will against the land itself. He didn’t call it courage. He didn’t call it heroics. To Amos, it was simply unfinished business, a soldier’s oath carried on elbows and bleeding knees.

Though his name never made the history books, those who served beside him remembered the man who crawled out of hell. In the whispers of Fort Stockton’s barracks, his story lived on as a lesson in grit—proof that sometimes survival is not about strength of body, but about the sheer refusal to stop. And it leaves us asking: when everything in you is gone, what would make you keep moving?

10/02/2025

The skirmish on October 2, 1835 in Gonzales that started with a cannon blast and a flag emblazoned with the phrase, Come and Take It, was a turning point in the pages of Texas history and the beginning of the Texas Revolution.