The Staked Plains

Download or read book Historic Tales of the Llano Estacado written by Edited by Paul H. Carlson and David J. Murrah and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinctive high mesa straddling West Texas and Eastern New Mexico creates a vista that is equal parts sprawling lore and big blue sky. From Lubbock, the area's informal capital, to the farthest reaches of the staked plains known as the Llano Estacado, the land and its inhabitants trace a tradition of tenacity through numberless cycles of dust storms and drought. In 1887, a bison hunter observed antelope, sand crane and coyote alike crowding together to drink from the same wet-weather lake. A similarly odd assortment of characters shared and shaped the region's heritage, although neighborliness has occasionally been strained by incidents like the 1903 Fence Cutting War. David Murrah and Paul Carlson have collected some three dozen vignettes that stretch across the uncharted terrain of the tableland's past.