The Cast Iron Forest: A Natural and Cultural History of the North American Cross Timbers 9780292756380

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THE CAST IRON FOREST

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Corrie Herring Hooks Series, Number Forty-three

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BY RICHARD V. FRANCAVIGLIA

A NATURAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CROSS TIMBERS

University of Texas Press; Austin

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F R O N T I S P I E C E : "Cross Timbers Vista, Indian Territory," by Richard V. Francaviglia, 1998. Copyright © 2000 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2000 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Francaviglia, Richard V. The cast iron forest: a natural and cultural history of the North American Cross Timbers / Richard V. Francaviglia.—1st ed. p. cm. — (Corrie Herring Hooks series ; no. 43) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-292-72515-9 (cl.: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-292-72516-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Natural history—Cross Timbers (Okla. and Tex.) 2. Human ecology— Cross Timbers (Okla. and Tex.) 3. Cross Timbers (Okla. and Tex.) I. Title. II. Series. CIH104.5.C74 F73

2000

508.7645—dc2i ISBN 978-0-292-75638-0 (e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-78902-9 (individual e-book)

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Dedicated to my parents, Faye Riffin and Vic Riffin, who recognized and encouraged my early interest in natural history.

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

IX

I

CHAPTER I "THE NATURAL CURIOSITIES OF THE COUNTRY" 7 A BRIEF NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CROSS TIMBERS CHAPTER 2

"THROUGH FORESTS OF CAST IRON"

57

THE EUROPEAN AMERICAN ENCOUNTER WITH THE CROSS TIMBERS CHAPTER 3

"THE DESTROYING AXE OF THE PIONEER"

109

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CROSS TIMBERS CHAPTER 4

" N O W W E HAVE T H E M O D E R N C R O S S T I M B E R S "

167

T H E PERSISTENCE OF A PERCEPTUAL REGION SUMMARY A N D C O N C L U S I O N " T H E D E L I G H T F U L S C E N E R Y W E HAVE T R A V E R S E D "

219

NOTES 239 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 INDEX 269

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people enthusiastically helped in the research and writing of this book by generously providing information and encouragement. Folklorist Richard (Dick) Meyer of Salem, Oregon; Towana Spivey of Fort Sill, Oklahoma; historian T. Lindsay Baker of Rio Vista, Texas; artist Jane Starks of Dallas; Lea Ann Layne, city arborist of Arlington, Texas; Phil Huey of Cleburne, Texas; James Steely of the Texas Historical Commission in Austin; David Diamond, University of Missouri; Eric White, Special Collections, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas; Ben Huseman, curator of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, and Ron Tyler of the Texas State Historical Association; Kevin and Cheryl Vogel, Valley House Gallery, Dallas; Wayne Clark, Mike Griswold, and Suzanne Tuttle of the Fort Worth Nature Center; David Jackson and John Crain, Summerlee Foundation of Dallas; David Riskind, Texas Parks and Wildlife; Judge Paul Pressler of Houston, Texas; historian Ty Cashion of Huntsville, Texas; Ben Scott of Arlington, Texas; Larry Schaapreld, Texas Forest Service; Michael Porter, Chuck Coffey, Charlie Griffith, and Russell Stevens of the Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma; Ed Barron, Texas Forest Service, College Station; and Barney Lipscomb, Botanic Research Institute of Texas, Fort Worth; Jim Windier and Tom Blagg of Maguire Thomas Partners, Roanoke, Texas, provided helpful information on the Solana site near South Lake; David W. Stahle, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; Joe Todd, Chester Cowen, and the staff at the Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City; the staff at the University of Oklahoma Library were especially helpful in providing historical photographs. Geographers Douglas A. Hurt, Blake Gumprecht, and Bruce Hoagland of the University of Oklahoma shared their interest in the Cross Timbers after learning of this book at the Southwestern Association of American Geographers meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the University of Texas at Austin, Linda Peterson, of the Center for American History, and Richard Oram and Steve Lawson, of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center were very helpful in providing photographs. At my university—The University of Texas at Arlington—I received special assistance and encouragement from library staff members Ann Kelley, Jane Boley, Betty Wood, Sally Gross, and Katherine "Kit" Goodwin; at the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography, graduate research assistant Jimmy Bryan did an admirable job of

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The Cast Iron Forest

compiling tables of census statistics on the population and economy of Cross Timbers counties; and administrative secretaries Darlene McAllister and Lois Lettini deserve special mention for typing numerous drafts of the manuscript. Joel Quintans, production manager of UTA Publications Office, assisted in drafting several of the maps; philosophy professor Julia Dyson recommended studies of oak trees in classical literature, and history professor Don Kyle provided assistance in translating Homer's references to oak trees. Similarly, geology professors Donald Reaser and Burk Burkhart helped by reviewing the geology and soils sections of the manuscript. Biology professor Robert Neill was especially helpful in recommending articles about the natural history of the Cross Timbers. Several students, including Bill Wilson and Alta Vick, were enthusiastic about the Cross Timbers' role in Texas history and wrote reports on maps of the region in my cartographic history courses. Two esteemed colleagues— Gerald Saxon of University of Texas at Arlington's Special Collections and David Buisseret, the Jenkins and Virginia Garrett Endowed Chair in Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography—helped by reading the manuscript and offering suggestions for its improvement. To these and others not named I express my sincere thanks for help with this book.

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THE CAST IRON FOREST

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... They stood like oaks which lift up their crowns in the mountains, and day upon day resist the wind and rain, perpetually gripping the ground with their mighty roots H O M E R , Thelliad

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INTRODUCTION

In his travels to the western frontier in the early 1830s, American writer Washington Irving characterized the Cross Timbers as "forests of cast iron." Irving used this colorful metaphor to emphasize the toughness of the vegetation that he encountered—a nearly impenetrable forest of stunted oak trees. We now recognize that the unique forest that Irving experienced was actually vast in extent and covered portions of what would later become three states. Seen on a satellite photo, the Cross Timbers run in a generally north-south direction across a large area that includes portions of southern Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, and north central Texas. Although they do not compose a single forest, but a complex mosaic of forests interspersed with prairies, the Cross Timbers constitute an impressive geographical feature. In this book I shall build further on Irvings apt cast iron metaphor, which has meaning far deeper than even he might have imagined. If cast iron owes its character to the ore that is wrested from the earth, forged by heat, and quenched by cold, then the trees of the Cross Timbers themselves may be seen in light of both the geological and climatic forces that shaped them —namely, the ancient iron-rich rocks through which their roots search for water and nutrients, and the extreme climate that molds the shapes of their tortured trunks and limbs. More than a century after Irving wrote of the region, ecologists confirmed that the distinctive trees of the Cross Timbers are well adapted to the scorching, sometimes droughty summers and to the occasional, bitter winter cold snaps that are a fact of life in this part of the south central United States. In their remarkable ability to endure in the face of rapid human settlement in the late twentieth century, the Cross Timbers are almost as durable as Irving's metaphorical cast iron. Even in areas of suburban growth around Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas, remnants of the eastern Cross Timbers have survived as shade and ornamental trees. As a testimony to the endurance of this unique habitat, the name "Cross Timbers" has now become popular for businesses and other enterprises in the area. As I will make evident, the Cross Timbers have a rich history in relation to human exploration and settlement. Existing at both the margins of the western prairies, and the forested woodlands of eastern North America (FIG. I), the Cross Timbers compose a unique ecological zone that, in

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The Cast Iron Forest FIG. i. A generalized map ofthe Cross Timbers region of North America, which stretches about 350 miles in a roughly north-south direction and occupies portions of three states— Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Map by author based in part on Kuchler's map in The National Atlas (1970).

human terms, has provided habitat and sustenance on the one hand and has served as a reminder of the harshness of the environment on the other. Like many before and after him, Washington Irving was ambivalent about the Cross Timbers. He recognized that they could provide fuel and shelter, but he also cursed their resilient, unyielding countenance. Given Irving's early experiences with the bountiful—and more easily traversed—forests of his native New York State, his ambivalence was understandable. In retrospect, Irving's ambivalence was also prophetic, for the Cross Timbers were often spurned in the mid-nineteenth century for the more attractive prairie-and-oak openings. Although the Cross Timbers would help sustain hunters and settlers, most of those who settled in the area actually sought the forests' edges, the oak-savannah ecotones that were a mixture of prairies and trees, and which provided a variety of both "open" and "closed" landscapes. The Cross Timbers in some sense thus repre-

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Introduction

sented the least desirable aspects of forests: they impeded one's travels and, at the same time, offered relatively few rewards. My first exposure to the Cross Timbers occurred in the mid-1950s, while on a transcontinental road trip that took my family across Texas. Even at twelve years old, I marveled at the changing landscapes we traversed. Like Irving, my first experience with forests had been in the lush, mesophytic woodlands of New York State, and so I judged all forests by that standard. As our automobile rushed westward through east Texas, trees seemed to become fewer and smaller in the vicinity of Dallas-Fort Worth. We had reached the magnificent open prairies, those sweeping, open seas of grass punctuated here and there by a tree, or a few trees, that stood out as if islands. In our rush westward into the prairies, however, we also traversed two narrow but distinctive belts of trees that at first seemed little more than scrubby second-growth forests. And yet, a closer look suggested that many of these trees were not young, cutover growth at all, but rather mature trees that had been stunted. Their twisted and gnarled trunks conveyed a sense of age, and their height—perhaps only thirty feet at best— implied the hardship that results from tribulation. They reminded me of the scrub oaks that somehow managed to grow on the poorest, sandiest soils of Long Island, New York, where little other tree growth could be sustained. I would indeed learn years later that two of the common oaks of the Cross Timbers, the post oak and blackjack oak, are native to and found on sandy soils from southern New England and Long Island all the way to the Cross Timbers at the edge of the great American West. Like other westbound travelers through Texas, we soon crossed through these dwarfed forests, which were, in effect, the last flatland forests that we would encounter until reaching the Pacific coast some 1,500 miles farther west. We discovered what ecologists and geographers have known for more than a century: that these wooded areas—the Cross Timbers—represent the last of the forests as one crosses the continent from east to west. The Cross Timbers thus provide a glimpse of the ecological challenge that all vegetation faces at the margins of the great American West and Southwest. West of the Cross Timbers, in fact, forests are found only in the riparian river valleys or in the more well-watered mountains. More than 40 years after first experiencing the Cross Timbers, I moved to this very region of Texas, and I wanted to learn more about it. In fact, my forested backyard in Arlington represents remnants of the Cross Timbers, and I found myself following that wonderful advice given by naturalists: to really understand nature, start in your own backyard and work outward from there. In addition to observing the Cross Timbers hereabouts,

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The Cast Iron Forest

I read widely into the subject. Over the years I had encountered a rich but somewhat scattered literature on the Cross Timbers, of which Edward Everett Dale's The Cross Timbers: Memories of a North Texas Boyhood (1966) remains a personal favorite since I first read it in 1970. Carolyn Foreman's The Cross Timbers (1947), long out of print, provided an excellent guide to the historic literature but did not emphasize the region s ecology. After an extensive search of the literature, I soon found that relatively little had been published on the Cross Timbers' natural history in relation to human settlement. After collecting files of information about the region's history and ecology, I set about writing The Cast Iron Forest in hopes of telling the story of this unique region of North America. I have attempted to include those numerous writers who commented upon the region in published works, some popular, some obscure. It should be noted from the outset that some of the early writers called the region The Cross Timber, which implies singularity, while later writers, myself included, use the term Cross Timbers. This more or less plural usage corresponds to our understanding of the region not as one solid forest, but rather as a series of forested areas that coexist with the prairies. Yet I use the term Cast Iron Forest as a title in recognition of the region's singularity among American regions. Although The Cast Iron Forest is, to my knowledge, the first book to be published about the region's unique natural environment—and that environment's relationship to the human experience of settlement—it builds upon a rich literature. Much of what I write here is based not only on several years' fieldwork, but also on several excellent studies of the area's vegetation, history, folklore, and geography that are cited throughout. It also builds upon a group of unpublished but fascinating studies, many of them master's theses or doctoral dissertations, completed at universities over the years. A word is in order about the term "natural history" in this book's subtitle. By it, I mean a basic treatise on some aspect of nature (especially the "natural development of something," as the dictionary defines it). But I also use another time-honored definition of natural history: "the study of natural objects, especially in the field, from an amateur or popular point of view," as the dictionary also defines the term. Because I have a deep respect for the history of science, wherever possible I have used original descriptions and illustrations to help tell the story of the Cross Timbers. On occasion, those materials do not agree with what we know today; that is what makes them so delightful, for they reflect the limitations in knowledge at any particular time. Overall, however, I have been impressed by how cumulative our knowledge of the region has been, and so I use even

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Introduction

the speculative materials to show that the Cross Timbers are a changing geographical, scientific, and cultural frontier. Because this book is both a natural and a cultural history, by definition it must also treat the changing human perceptions of the region. As a historian and geographer, I have also made use of another type of primary source documentation that has rarely been used in relation to the Cross Timbers —namely the many historic maps that for more than two centuries have depicted the Cross Timbers forest as a distinctive part of the regions geography. In doing so, I build upon Charles Oliver May's ambitious 1962 geography thesis—the first cartographic study of the region. In addition to cartographic materials, many other written records, such as journals, diaries, and historic reports, also help tell the story of the Cross Timbers. We shall see that no two cartographers have agreed on the exact distribution of the Cross Timbers. Even the map used in this introduction—based on biogeographer A. W. Kuchler's approximation of when the forest existed—is controversial. That very divergence of opinion about the Cross Timbers, while frustrating, adds to their mystery. In addition to consulting several hundred maps of the Cross Timbers, I used the landscape itself for clues to determine the character and distribution of the forest. As a geographer, I have also studied the Cross Timbers in the field and from the air, observing first-hand the relationship between its vegetation and the region's geology and settlement. The general lack of existing photographs of the Cross Timbers (likely due to the fact that the area is not especially photogenic—certainly not as much so as the Texas Hill Country, or Palo Duro Canyon, or Oklahoma's mountainous "Kiamichi Backwoods" country) required me to photograph them extensively in all seasons. Capturing it on film made me ever more aware of the region's subtle but neglected beauty. Surprisingly, this book also appears to be the first published work to include extensive photographic coverage of the Cross Timbers. I hope that the results of my efforts —this book entitled The Cast Iron Forestin recognition of Washington Irving's encounter with the region more than a century and a half ago—conveys my sense of wonder about the Cross Timbers. I hope, too, that it convinces the reader that the Cross Timbers are a fascinating and significant part of North America s natural and cultural history.

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CHAPTER I

A BRIEF NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

The Cross Timber of Northern Texas, which may be deemed one ofthe natural curiosities ofthe country, forms a remarkablefeature in its topography. — WILLIAM KENNEDY,

Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects ofthe Republic of Texas, 1841 The Cross Timbers of the south central United States are a forested archipelago largely surrounded by a sea of prairie. Centered roughly between the 97th and 98th meridians, the Cross Timbers vegetation comprises generally north-south trending belts of scrubby oak trees. As suggested by William Kennedy's use of the singular "Cross Timber," the distinctive vegetation is distributed throughout the region in what, to many observers, appeared to be a single line. It was this distribution, as well as the character of the forested areas, that earned the Cross Timbers a reputation as a natural wonder in the nineteenth century. Even today, the Cross Timbers typically appears as dense stands of post oak and blackjack oak trees that rarely exceed about thirty feet in height, but that are visible for a considerable distance across the prairie (FIG. I-I). In many places, the forest is dense and the crowns of the trees not only touch, but intermingle. The relatively even height of these oak trees makes clear the lay of the land beneath them, a land that is often gently rolling. In his classic description of the region, William Kennedy's mention of "topography" in the same sentence as "Cross Timber" would prove prophetic, for geologists half a century later would confirm the intimate relationship between the forests of the Cross Timbers and the region s geology. In the mid-nineteenth century, the term Cross Timber, or more often Cross Timbers, referred to a large area that consisted of a swath of trees stretching north of Waco along the Brazos River of Texas and extending

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FIG. i-1. As seenfrom the adjacentprairie, the Cross Timbersform aforested archipelago in a sea of grass. View near Marietta, Love County, Oklahoma (1997photo by author).

fax north into Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Like other naturalists of this era, Dr. Ferdinand Roemer was concerned not only with the character of the vegetation but also its distribution. His 1849 "Topographisch-geognostische Karte von Texas" (Topographic and Geological Map of Texas) illustrates the Cross Timbers by using stylized symbols for trees (FIG. 1-2). Roemer's map is based on the 1845 "New and Correct Map ofTexas" by T. D. Wilson, and it clearly shows the Cross Timbers occupying a large section of north central Texas and the adjacent Indian Territory across the Red River. In keeping with the Cross Timbers' landmark status at that time, Roemer shows them running through the "Grosse Westliche Prairien" (Great Western Prairie). A careful study of Roemer's map and its predecessors reveals the use of several symbols for trees in the Cross Timbers: in the map's southern portion, Roemer depicts what appear to be oaks almost exclusively, while in the vicinity of the Trinity River and northward into Indian Territory, he also uses stylized pine tree symbols, which likely represent cedars. Roemer's map therefore indicates that the Cross Timbers did not consist entirely of oak trees, but also other types of vegetation intermixed with the oaks.1 In 1872, the well-traveled artist-writer Miner K. Kellogg traversed the prairie-forest region of the Indian Territory and Texas as part of the Texas

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" The Natural Curiosities ofthe Country"

Land and Copper Association expedition. With the eye of an artist, Kellogg observed that the traveler on the prairie beholds almost treeless country as far "as the eye can reach," but that "in the misty distances appears a magnificent river winding through the grandest valley ever beheld." Yet this, according to Kellogg, "is not a river—it is only the effect of the differences of color between the light green of the prairie grass and the darker lines of forests surrounding them."2 Although the Cross Timbers appeared as a belt (or "river") of forested land in some places, it was much less pronounced in many others. As Kellogg himself observed, "If we ever camped on picturesque spots I could exercise the [paint] brush—but all is monotony— Some green plains —& scrub oak parks alternately— [but] nothing to force a tired out man from reposing."3 Kelloggs description suggests that the Cross Timbers were less pronounced in some places than in others, but that the contrast between forest and prairie was nevertheless a visually defining aspect of the countryside. Kellogg was not the first observer to traverse the Cross Timbers: natural historians and others had already been exploring there since the 1820s.

FIG. 1-2. Ferdinand Roemers topographic and geological map of Texas (1849) uses the name aCross Tim[b]ers" as well as stylized tree symbols extendingfrom Texas into the great Western prairie of Indian Territory (Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University ofTexas at Arlington Libraries).

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FIG. 1-3. A cross section of the geology on a traverse along the Texas and Pacific Railroad from east Texas to west-central Texas reveals the Cross Timbers' affinity for sedimentary sandstone rocks of varying geological ages. (Source Robert T. Hill, "The Topography and Geology ofthe Cross Timbers, "1887; courtesy the Frank E. Lozo,Jr., Center for Cretaceous Stratigraphic Studies, The University of Texas at Arlington).

By the time Roemer published his observations on Texas (1849), the Cross Timbers area of the state had become well known to naturalists seeking to explain the unique flora and fauna. With increases in knowledge, a clearer picture of the Cross Timbers' vegetation pattern began to emerge. From naturalists' writings this increasingly refined understanding of the Cross Timbers' size and character becomes apparent. In 1855, the self-trained naturalist Dr. Gideon Lincecum wrote a letter to Dr. W. Spillman of Columbus, Mississippi, characterizing the region north of Marble Falls as [T]he country that was originally called the cross timbers. This is a stripe of timber mostly post oak and cedar, lying nearly N.E. and S. W. and is in width from jo to 40 miles. This has no limey but abounds in Silexy Silecious clay, magnesia, iron, alum, some coal, various other minerals, and wholeforrests [sic] in petrification.4 Lincecum noted that this area of central Texas is part of a topographically elevated area that is rough and broken, adding that its rises "are called mountains; well, they are little mountains, having the appearance of potato hills in the distance."5 Lincecum's comment that this area was "originally called the cross timbers" indicated that he recognized it as something different—similar to, but not truly part of, the actual Cross Timbers, which lay farther north. This landscape described by Lincecum as a "stripe of timber" was associated with sandstone substrate—a condition that characterized the Cross Timbers proper, but could be found in scattered locations elsewhere. The presence of those cedar trees, too, suggested that limestone lay nearby, and this fact was confirmed by Lincecum later in the description. Thus, naturalists determined the close relationship between the vegetation and the geology of this region by the mid-nineteenth century. They were responsible for giving a more careful (that is scientific) definition to the "Cross Timbers"—a term that had been widely used by the public for almost any oak-forested land in the mid-i8oos. It was the geologists, in fact, who would help delineate the Cross Tim-

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GEOLOGIC SECTION ALONG THE LINE OP THE TEXAS AND PACIFIC RAILWAY, PROM ELMO, KAUFMAN COUNTY, TO MILLSAP, PAKKER COUNTY.

1. T e n d ; 2. Dallas; 3. Eagle Ford; 4. Arlington; 5. Handley; 6. Fort Worth; 1. Ben Brook; 8. Weatherford; 9. Millsap. A. Coast Plain—Marine Tertiary. B. Black Waxy Prairie—Riply and Rotten Limestone, of Gulf Series. C. Eagle Ford Shales, and accompanying prairies. D. Lower Cros3 Timbers—Timber Creek Group ("Dakota sandstone?" of Shumard). E. Grand Prairie Region— Comanche (Texas) Division of the Cretaceous, e", e", e3, Washita, or upper, division; e4, e5, e6, Lower, or Fredricksburg (Comanche Peak) division. F and G. Upper Cross Timbers—/'',/",/ 3 , Dinosaur Sands: g, g, Carboniferous Coal-measures. Faunal horizons—e8, Toxaster etegans Fauna j e", Horizon of Gryphsea Pitcheri (var. Dilatata) with Ostrea carinata; e3, Gryphsea Pitcheri, var. Fornicula (Exogyra forniculata; e4, Ammonites vespertinus; eB, Hippurites (Caprina) Limestone; e6, Comanche Peak Fauna, including horizon of Gryphsea Pitcheri with. Ostrea Matheroniana.

bers as a distinctive natural region. More than a century ago, Texas geologist Robert T Hill noted, "The traveler, in crossing this region of Texas from east to west, along the line of the Texas and Pacific railroad, views the Cross Timbers merely as a grateful relief to the monotony of the prairies, and sees little in them worth remembering." However, Hill went on to suggest that, to more careful observers, the Cross Timbers has "numerous points of interest bearing on their topographic and geologic relations." To clarify, Hill drew a longitudinal transect (FIG. 1-3) along the Texas and Pacific railroad line, revealing the surprisingly close correlation among geology, topography, and vegetation.6 It was through detailed studies of the topography that a peculiarity of the Cross Timbers in Texas—the fact that they comprised two separate belts of forest separated by a large prairie—came to be understood. Because the eastern belt was on lower-lying land, it came to be called the Lower Cross Timbers, while the more elevated forest to the west was called the Upper Cross Timbers. In delineating the Texas Cross Timbers in such detail, Hill not only consulted the literature, but relied on extensive fieldwork that would have been difficult to conduct a generation earlier. Of the many scientists drawn to Texas before 1850, most—like the famed Roemer—explored far south of the Cross Timbers. Nevertheless, the Cross Timbers were so well known by that time that Roemer and other naturalists were often obligated to make at least passing reference to them in their overall discussions of the state s natural history. Some reports included lengthy descriptions of the Cross Timbers based on the firsthand accounts of other observers who appeared to be trustworthy sources—but who related considerable hearsay. And yet, some very significant field research occurred in the Cross Timbers as naturalists were drawn there after the mid-nineteenth century. Among these multi-disciplinary scientists was Jacob Boll, the "Swiss naturalist and entomologist, whose collections in all fields of natural history in Texas are of the greatest importance."7 Between i860 and 1880, Boll explored the natural history of portions of north Texas in and adjacent to the Cross Timbers; although Boll's work does not focus on interpreting the

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Cross Timbers per se, his fossil collecting helped scientists better understand the relationship of the Cross Timbers' geology to that of the surrounding country. Indeed, the maxim that a region s geology is essential to understanding its ecology is borne out by the Cross Timbers. It was, in fact, the Cross Timbers' geology that drew special attention from nineteenth-century scientists—perhaps because the entrepreneurs who supported such scrutiny were ever alert to mineral wealth in the form of ores and coal resources. An 1844 letter by Charles Elliot reveals the manner in which the Cross Timbers were eyed more than a century and a half ago not only for their vegetation but also for their potential to yield mineral resources. While traveling widely in the Texas Republic at that time, Elliot left a fairly detailed account of the Cross Timbers in a letter to his associate William Bollaert. Elliot wrote Bollaert that "the Cross Timbers running through the colony in a N.E. direction, is a section or belt of timber land of a loose yellow soil covered with an undergrowth of vines, sumach [sumac], redbud, and indications of productiveness, yet the land is not so lasting as the prairie."8 Elliot then went on to note that "every variety of oak" as well as other trees could be found in the Cross Timbers. He added that "iron appears in the Cross Timbers in inexhaustible quantities" and also noted that deposits of "stone coal" could be found in large quantities near Bird's Fort.9 Observers noted with much interest the relationship between iron-rich sediments and vegetation. In the Cross Timbers region, a dark brown siliceous iron ore was commonly found in the more elevated topography— the "low, wooded, erosion-resistant hills and isolated knobs known as 'ironore knobs.' "10 This feature is part of the Woodbine Formation that lies just west of the Eagle Ford Shale. Deposited about 96 to 92 million years ago, the Woodbine Formation underlies the Eastern Cross Timbers. This forested strip of land lying between the Blackland Prairie to the east and the Grand Prairie to the west promised great mineral riches, notably iron and coal for industry. In retrospect, however, Elliot's and many others' assessment of iron in the Cross Timbers was exaggerated (though significant deposits do exist farther east in Texas). Elliot's assessment of coal was somewhat more accurate, although the deposits are considerably west of Bird's Fort, in the Western Cross Timbers. Despite some inaccuracies, Bollaert's and Elliot's fieldwork helped lay the groundwork for later researchers, and by the late nineteenth century, the Cross Timbers were widely recognized as both a distinctive vegetational and geological region. That recognition resulted in aggressive searches for mineral wealth that

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witnessed groups of scientists and mining engineers scouring the countryside. Typical, perhaps, of the mineral-seeking expeditions was Miner K. Kellogg's 1872 trek in search of copper in west Texas. As noted earlier, this expedition traversed the Indian Territory, then worked its way across the Cross Timbers of the Lone Star State. On the morning of June 24, Kellogg ascended the "magnificent rolling lands with fortress like crests & nearly denuded of bushes & trees," near the headwaters of Big Elm Creek, the northernmost fork of the Trinity River. Recounting the landscape in his journal, Kellogg noted that the expedition soon arrived "at the grand acropolis overlooking the great 'Crosstimbers' and as extensive a view as I ever beheld on the W & N . through this region courses the Red River though [it was] invisible in the midst of the forests." Providing a stock description of the region's vegetation, Kellogg noted that "this celebrated wooded belt of 'Crosstimbers' extends as far as the vision, varying in width from 5 to 30 m, running from NE to SW, consisting principally of scrub oak—bordering on creeks are Elma [.MC] —and pecan, hackberry, bur oak—post oak— Blk Jack—scrub hickory are to be found."11 Having thus described the vegetation, Kellogg soon got down to more serious business. In keeping with his trips purpose of discovering mineral riches, he recounts meeting a farmer "who expressed an anxiety that we should stop & examine a mineral deposit about 4 miles back in the timbers at the base of a bluff I sketched yesterday evening." Sadly, that watercolor sketch was among the many lost in travel, although the expedition did record the landscape in numerous stereo photographs—three of which are reproduced in this chapter. Kellogg, fascinated by the farmer's mineral deposit, described the locality in detail. He observed, "Minerals crop plentifully out of the hills which some call silver and other names but no one seems to know what it is." Kellogg found neither silver, nor the copper he sought, in the Cross Timbers, but his journal does hint at the presence of fossil fuels: "[TJhere is a substance which burns like oil—5000 tons of it may be picked up on the surface. I think it may be asphaltum."12 GEOLOGY OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

As word about the Cross Timbers' intriguing stratigraphy accumulated, researchers became aware of the region's similar subsurface geology. No geologist made a greater impact on the scientific understanding of the Cross Timbers than Robert T. Hill, whose cross section of the region we have already seen. Hill was somewhat unusual in that he was from the region. Moving to the region as a youth, Hill spent his teenage years in 13

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Comanche County, Texas, which was then a wild frontier. He worked hard at odd jobs, but spent his free time collecting fossils and other geological specimens. After becoming a geologist, Hill and his colleagues often worked cooperatively on surveys that could help scientists and resource users better understand the regions geology and resource potential. Working collectively, they pieced together the regions natural history much like one would assemble a jigsaw puzzle —with a lens of sandy conglomerate here, bedded sandstone there. These nineteenth-century geologists were the predecessors of modern ecologists in that they often noted the close relationship between geology and other features, such as climate and vegetation. In the Cross Timbers, this relationship remarkably sustained the growth of a forest in a region characterized primarily by prairie grasses. Using fossils as clues to both the age of rocks and their sources, geologists tell the following story of the Cross Timbers region. More than 250 million years ago, during the Pennsylvanian or late Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic Era, a large sea occupied this portion of what would become the south central United States. To the east of this sea rose mountains that were uplifted by stresses created when large land masses moved together to form the huge land mass called Pangea. From these elevated areas, sediment washed downward and westward into broad deltas. Over time, the Wichita, Ouachita, and Ozark mountain ranges rose, providing even more sediment. Over the eons, erosion wore down the crystalline and layered mountains, the resulting sediment consisting of angular particles that were rounded into pebbles (4-64 mm) and sand (V16-2 mm) by abrasion. Deposited under tropical to subtropical conditions, these coarser sediments formed deltas, with the finer silt and clay being carried to the coastal shelves and deeper sea bottoms farther offshore. As geologists pieced together evidence in the fossil record, they observed that large areas had once been covered by forests quite different from those of today. Consisting of several types of plants—including Lycopods (club mosses such as Lepidodendron, which had trunks two to three feet in diameter and could reach 50 to 75 feet in height); the closely related Sigillaria, with its short, stocky trunk; horsetails {Equisetales)\ and fernlike plants (cycadofilices) — Carboniferous forests excited the imagination of naturalists, who made conjectural sketches for geology texts at about the turn of the century (FIG. 1-4). Plant materials buried in the sediments would later form significant fossil fuel resources, notably coal and oil. Because deposition of sediments continued through the Permian, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, more than 175 million years of geological history is represented in the stratigraphy of the Cross Timbers.

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FIG. 1-4. ^ drawing ofcarboniferous vegetation depicts the nonfloweringplants composing the ancient forests, some ofwhich ultimately became coal deposits (Source An Introduction to Geology by William B. Scott, ipoyj.

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Over millions ofyears, the deposited sediments lithified and were slowly uplifted, periodically exposing a gently rolling, elevated plain to erosion. With the land thus exposed to the elements, rainwater carved rivers into its surface. These sequences of erosion were followed in even more recent times by the rise of mountains far to the west, an event that occurred from the late Cretaceous to the Eocene (that is, during the Laramide orogeny). According to geologists, the supercontinent of Pangea was breaking up about 70 million years ago as the ancestral Rocky Mountains took shape. The landmass that was becoming North America continued its drift northwestward, this movement contributing to the active mountain building that created the modern Rocky Mountains. Deformation proceeded from west to east and culminated during the late Eocene epoch of the Cenozoic Era, about 40 million years ago. This orogeny considerably changed the drainage in the Cross Timbers region. As tall mountains rose to the west, the areas current drainage pattern eventually materialized, with streams and rivers running roughly from northwest to southeast. During times of rapid snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, especially at the end of several ice ages beginning about two million years ago, the rivers carried enormous quantities of water-borne sediments into and through the region. With the prevailing drainage running southeastward, a series of streams and rivers carry the runoff and sediments to the Gulf of Mexico (FIG. 1-5). The major rivers include, from north to south, the Arkansas and its numerous tributaries, including the fabled Cimarron and the Canadian; the Washita; and the Red, all of which reach the Mississippi before entering the Gulf. In Texas, the Trinity and Brazos Rivers flow directly into the Gulf. The headwaters of these rivers, excepting the Trinity, lie either farther west in the Great Plains or, in the case of the Arkansas River, in the Rocky Mountains. They cut across the grain of the regions underlying geology, forming gorges in some places and broad valleys in others. By the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, the area's present topographic outlines had been clearly etched into the landscape. Under the entire region lies a pronounced ridge of sandstone strata deposited millions of years ago. The ridge appears on maps as a large, roughly crescent shaped feature that gently trends from southwest to northeast; these rocks, which are now elevated about 1,000 feet above sea level, generally dip southeastward, meaning that the younger, more recent strata are in the east, the older in the west. By the late nineteenth century, geologists like Hill noted a direct correlation between the Cross Timbers and one type of strata in particular, "a series of coarse, friable, arenaceous sandstones alter16

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MO.

RVF - '99

FIG. 1-5. A generalized map ofthe Cross Timbers depicts a distribution based on Kuchlers map in the National Atlas (ipyoj. Note that the Cross Timbers are crossed by the regions major rivers and bordered by major cities (Map by author).

nating with clays," whose "western projecting margin is constantly wearing away."13 In vividly describing his transect along the Texas and Pacific railroad line, Hill began with the Eastern Cross Timbers. Cretaceous in age (that is, about 100 million years old), these rocks often form pronounced topography, such as ridges, indicating that they are fairly resistant to weathering.

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The limestone strata west of the Eastern Cross Timbers are also distinctive and, although their topography is usually gently rolling, may also form elevated features that are fairly resistant to weathering: the appropriately named Chalk Mountain is an example. Atop this limestone, prairies extend both east and west of the Eastern Cross Timbers in Texas and well into Oklahoma. Because the western edge of these tilting or dipping limestone beds is higher in elevation than those in the east, a view westward from the rolling Grand Prairie ofTexas reveals another belt of oak trees— the Western Cross Timbers—which rest on yet another, older strata of sandstone. Thus, the Grand Prairie ofTexas lies between the Eastern and the Western Cross Timbers. Like the Cross Timbers, it is one of the state's major geographic landmarks. In 1887, Hill somewhat poetically described the characteristic view from the edge of the Grand Prairie, looking westward, where "the Cross Timbers look like the waters of a long and narrow lake viewed from an adjacent highland, and in some cases the opposite shore, as in Comanche county, may be recognized."14 The Upper Cross Timbers are found on what Hill determined to be older, Carboniferousage sandstone that also dips eastward. Hill noted that "the pure white sands of this [geological] series can be traced along the eastern border of the [Upper] Cross Timbers for over a hundred miles."15 (FIG. 1-6) The oak forests that clothe the sandstone of the Cross Timbers region are much more recent than their Carboniferous ancestors; they consist of flowering plants that evolved over the last several million years and are perfectly suited to the regions rocky habitats. The correlation between Cross Timbers vegetation and the underlying sandstone of various ages was so pronounced that geologists soon used the term Cross Timbers to delineate sandstones of this type whether or not these sandstones actually supported Cross Timbers-type forests (which they most often did). In one of the first scientific explanations of the geological factors sustaining the Cross Timbers forest, Hill noted that sandstone affords "a suitable matrix for the penetration of the roots of trees, and a constant reservoir for moisture, thus furnishing two of the greatest essentials to forest growth."16 The oaks of the Cross Timbers often grow on fairly thin soils, their tenacious roots working their way down into the sandstone, which may lie just a few inches below the surface (FIG. 1-7).This process caused myriad cracks to develop, allowing the sandstone to act as a reservoir, holding quantities of water in its fractured, somewhat porous beds. The Cross Timbers of Texas lie on the Trinity Aquifer, and in Oklahoma they are similarly situated on sandstone aquifers that are part of the Trinity system.17

18

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5ALIENT To POGRAP HIC FCATU RES —

—OFTHE — STATE OFTEXAS.

I

!

j ; orTranaSPecorJteffions.—JJifZwHeeZ, JirupUvc, J'aleozoic Cntcoceov*. ( Gulf, Com&nc/te a ~ JVor&itce-ster-st'.

FIG. 1-6. R. T. Hills geologicalmap ofnorth Texas reveals two belts offorestedland, called the Upper (or Western) and Lower (or Eastern) Cross Timbers. (From R. T. Hill "The Topography and Geology ofthe Cross Timbers,n I88J; courtesy the Frank E. Lozo,Jr., Center for Cretaceous Stratigraphic Studies, The University ofTexas at Arlington).

Soils of the Cross Timbers Geologist Hill recognized that soils were important in Cross Timbers growth, further speculating that "the difference in fertility between the sandy loams of the Lower Cross Timbers and the dirty sands of the Upper, accounts for the varietal differences of their respective floras."18 This factor—soils — helped geologists to explain the relatively more lush vegetation of the Eastern (or Lower) Cross Timbers and the scrubbier growth of the Upper (or Western) Cross Timbers. Ecologists like E. J. Dyksterhuis later confirmed the early geologists' observations that tree height in the Cross Timbers decreases to the west, a result in part, he concluded, of the clay soils encountered there. The tenacious oaks of the region can gain a surprisingly

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FIG. i-y. In many places in the Cross Timbers, sandstone lies at the surface. The roots of tenacious oak trees grow into the strata, as observed in this i8j2 photograph taken during the Texas Land and Copper Association Expedition in the vicinity of Squaw Mountain, Texas (Courtesy Lawrence T. Jones III, Austin, Texas).

strong foothold on the rockiest of sites, but they also abound on deep, sandy loam soils, where they reach their tallest stature. These sandy to loamy soils would later be recognized as productive for agriculture. Certainly the soils are one of the regions diagnostic traits. The Cross Timbers are often found on sandy soils with what soil scientists once called a podzolic character. These soils are somewhat acidic and ashy in nature, a result of their development under the oak forests that help sustain, and are sustained by, them. In Texas, the pH factor (i.e., whether the soils are acidic or basic) has been shown to vary slightly from the Eastern to the Western Cross Timbers: the Eastern or Lower Cross Timbers have a more

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acidic mean pH of 6.575, while the Western Cross Timbers pH level is significantly higher, approaching more neutral levels at 6.992. Soils in the Eastern Cross Timbers have a higher mean percent of sand, while the Western Cross Timbers have a significantly higher percent of colloids and of both fine and coarse clay.19 The percent of sand in soils in both the Eastern and Western Cross Timbers of Texas decreases from south to north, with the southern portion of the Western Cross Timbers actually having the highest percentage of sandy soils. As classified by soil scientists who established increasingly detailed taxonomies in the 1940s and 1950s, the Eastern Cross Timbers developed on what was then called the Norfolk-Ruston soils association of Red and Yellow Podzolic soils, while the Western Cross Timbers developed on a Windthorst-Nimrod soil association of Zonal Red and Yellow Podzolic soils.20 Similarly, the Cross Timbers region of Oklahoma was character-

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ized by Red-Yellow Podzolic Lithosols of the Darnell-Stephenville, Windthorst-Chigley, and Dougherty-Teller-Yahola formations. Using a morphologically based soil classification proposed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, these Podzolic soils are now included in the Alfisol Order.21 These soils developed mostly under forest cover in subhumid climates and have a leached upper gray-brown layer, clay accumulations in the middle (B) horizons, and a red-brown lower layer with aluminum and iron silicates.22 Soils in parts of the Cross Timbers are complex, having developed under oak-hickory forests with numerous prairie openings (savanna).23 The soils of the adjacent prairies, traditionally called Chernozems, are now classified as Mollisols. These soils are often black and organicrich near the surface, with a high concentration of lime.24

Regional Variation in the Cross Timbers If by the 1880s the intimate connection between Cross Timbers vegetation and geology was understood, at least regarding Texas, knowledge of the entire region was by no means complete. Geologists like Hill recognized that both the southern and northern ends of the Cross Timbers ended abruptly on contemporary maps for two reasons: In the south (i.e., in Texas), the answer was geological (either an absence of the strata or the covering of it by other materials not conducive to Cross Timbers growth). However, to the north, the main factor was ignorance (Hill himself commented on "the absence of topographical knowledge concerning its [the strata's] extent in Indian Territory"). Geologists knew that the Cross Timbers extended into Indian Territory; however, that country's marginal location, territorial status and reputation as a haven for displaced Native Americans, many of whom had been driven from Texas, conspired to ensure that scientific knowledge there lagged. As geologists mapped the Cross Timbers' underlying bedrock geology during the late nineteenth century, they determined that considerable variation existed in the huge region's geology and vegetation and that the Red River formed a dividing line of sorts, with the Cross Timbers having a somewhat different distribution on either side of it. North of the line, geologists soon observed that instead of two separate belts of forest, as in Texas, the outline of the Indian Territory's Cross Timbers was more rectangular—and somewhat more complex—than that in Texas. In comparing the two outlines in the 1940s, ecologist E. J. Dyksterhuis noted that "the boundary of the area frequently called 'Cross Timbers' in Oklahoma [formerly Indian Territory] is very irregular and the main area is much interrupted by bodies of open grassland."25 Nevertheless, the Oklahoma

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Cross Timbers were also closely correlated with sandstone rocks and sandy/ clayey soils that unify the entire region. A look at a geological and soils map of Oklahoma (1959) reveals a connection between the findings of geologists and soil scientists, who observed that the Cross Timbers developed on the Central Redbed Plains and, especially, the Eastern Sandstone Cuesta Plains. The vegetation there is similar to that in Texas, with dense areas of forest—the Oklahoma Cross Timbers—juxtaposed with extensive, oak-studded prairies. Although well developed as true Cross Timbers forest in many places, the area is commonly called the Osage Savanna by ecologists. There, as in parts ofTexas, the Cross Timbers have developed on topography that is "broken by westdipping cuestas, occasional mesa-like promontories, and many north-south trending hilly ridges."26 This similarity is striking because it confirms the underlying sandstone strata as a major prerequisite for the typical Cross Timbers growth of post oak and blackjack oak in both states. This vegetational similarity exists despite the generally lower temperatures, especially in winter, north of the Red River. How far north do the Cross Timbers extend? The answer again relates to geology, for the small area of southeastern Kansas that possesses Cross Timbers-type vegetation also lies on sandstone. Here at the northern edge of the Cross Timbers in Kansas' Chautauqua, Montgomery, and Wilson Counties, both the underlying sandstone (along with the soils they help to create) and the Cross Timbers vegetation peter out in a series of patches; this area is the northern edge of the spectacular archipelago of the Cross Timbers. Northeast of the Cross Timbers in Kansas spreads a forest that is part of a larger oak-hickory complex lying in the central and eastern United States. In places, this forested zone is interspersed with prairies. In Oklahoma, the Cross Timbers are bordered on the east by the Cherokee Prairies and the Ouachita Highlands. Here in these elevated areas, at their easternmost edge, the Cross Timbers are connected to the eastern hardwood forest; thus, the Cross Timbers are not an island completely surrounded by prairie, but more like a ragged peninsula—or, again, a forested archipelago. Although patches of Cross Timbers-type topography and vegetation exist in Missouri and Arkansas, they are normally not considered part of the region; yet they are part of the central United States' larger, more contiguous oak-hickory forest, which is often called the Central Hardwoods Region by geographers. To the east of the Cross Timbers in Texas lies the Blackland Prairie, which forms a highly visible boundary to the forest. This distinctly different surrounding vegetation reveals an important fact about the Cross Timbers: they are considered a separate region largely 23

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KANSAS MO. OKLAHOMA

Miles

RVF - '99

Kilometers

\

FIG. 1-8. The Cross Timbers region generally coincides with sandstone rocks ofPennsylvanian (A), Permian (B)y Lower Cretaceous (C)y and Upper Cretaceous (D)Age. Note: the more recent alluvium in the river valleys is eliminated from this map (By author, based onT. P. Harrison [1974], as adapted from R. Hill [1901] and Branson and Johnson [1972]).

because they are mostly surrounded by prairie, and would otherwise not be so noticeable. Throughout the Cross Timbers, then, the distinctive oak forests are framed by prairie and developed on sandstone that varies in age from Pennsylvanian, Permian, and Cretaceous (FIG. I-8). Although the alluvial deposits along the rivers that cut across the region are much 24

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younger—that is, Quaternary in age—they are also derived from sandstone and support Cross Timbers vegetation in many places. This is especially true along both the Red and Canadian Rivers, which often flow with a characteristically "chocolate-red colour," as a naturalist described it in 1821.27 THE WEATHER AND CLIMATE OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

The climate of the Cross Timbers is characterized by two simple patterns that were well understood during the mid- to late nineteenth century: average annual temperature decreases from south to north, and precipitation decreases from east to west. In other words, the climate tends to be warmer to the south and drier to the west (FIG. 1-9). The Cross Timbers is generally situated in an area that is subtropical to temperate and subhumid to semiarid. Viewed in a broader geographical context, the Cross Timbers lies at the transition between climates that are cold or hot, or wet or dry. In broad regional climatological terms, the Cross Timbers occupy the dryer end of the humid temperate hot summer classification (Cfa) and are therefore located just to the east of the midlatitude Steppe climate zone (BS) of the Great Plains.28 Because the Cross Timbers reach about 400 miles in a north-south direction, the growing season varies from only 190 days in southern Kansas to about 250 days in north central Texas (FIG. I-IO). The weather is rather unpredictable in the region, for storms may sweep in from the west and north bringing winter cold fronts that drop temperatures to about o degrees Fahrenheit or even 10 below on rare occasions. However, because the region is situated far enough south, near the Gulf of Mexico, it may warm rapidly even in winter, when temperatures occasionally rise to 75 degrees well into northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Natives of the area know that this flirtation with spring, even though it may last several delightful days, is short-lived. Given the areas proximity to two different air masses—polar continental to the north and humid maritime subtropical to the south—weather can change quickly, especially in winter. Occasional midwinter northers may bring either light snow (which usually lasts but a short time, especially in north Texas) or dreaded freezing rainstorms that can coat branches and other surfaces with an inch or more of heavy, glistening ice. Typically, such northers (sometimes called blue northers, presumably because of either the sullen bluish storm clouds that precede or the cobalt-blue skies that follow them) bring in their wake clear skies and cold temperatures. 25

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KANSAS MO.

ARK.

h• LA.

Miles RVF - '99

Kilometers

\ \

FIG. 1-9. In the Cross Timbers region, annual precipitation decreasesfrom about 40 inches in the east to about 25 inches in the west (Adapted by author from T. P. Harrison, 1974, based on datafrom U.S. Weather Bureau statistics andThe National Atlas, 1970).

However, this condition is also temporary. In the Cross Timbers, winds may shift rapidly as fronts approach, so even in midwinter, southern winds may raise the temperature back into the 60s and 70s. Such changes are sometimes marked by high, gauzy cirrus clouds that signal yet another change in the weather, usually another cold front. In spring, the region may experience its most dreaded type of storm— 26

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KANSAS MO.

230

RVF - '99

250

FIG. I-IO. Growing season in the Cross Timbers region varies from about ipo days in the north (Kansas) to about 250 days in the south (Texas) (Adapted by author from X P. Harrison, 19J4, based on datafrom U.S. Weather Bureau statistics and The National Adas, 1970).

tornadoes—which often move from the southwest to northeast and mark the boundary between the jet stream and the warmer, moister Gulf air. Maps invariably depict the Cross Timbers region as part of Tornado Alley, which reaches through the continent s midsection east of the Rocky Mountains. Tornadoes, or "cyclones" as they were more commonly called in the nineteenth century, usually strike the area in springtime, but can occur

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whenever conditions are ideal.29 While on a military expedition to the region, W. B. Parker left a vivid account of a tornado that tore through portions of the Texas and Indian Territory Cross Timbers on May 28,1854. Parker observed that "the storm arose, and passing over the country in a vein a mile wide, left marks of its ravages, which were as indelible as they were destructive." The motion of the tornado, according to Parker, "was undulatory, evidenced by the manner in which everything it came in contact was treated." The evidence included "trees in its course [that] were broken off in a manner clearly so to indicate" what Parker called the "rising and falling" of the tornado through the Cross Timbers. Among the grisly remnants of the storm was "a horse [which] was blown into a tree, where it happened to catch by its fore-leg and shoulder; these were torn from the body and were still hanging there, the balance of the carcase [sic] lying in a field a full a-quarter mile off."30 In addition to occasional tornadoes, intense thunderstorm activity often occurs during spring. Hailstones the size of baseballs or even grapefruit may accompany the most severe spring thunderstorms. These pound the vegetation and wreak havoc on buildings in the region. Generally, summers in the Cross Timbers are fairly hot. Days in the mid- to high 90s, with lows in the mid~7os, are typical as the flow of air from the Gulf raises the humidity to moderate levels even though rain may not fall for weeks on end. Daytime high temperatures in the summer tend to be slightly lower in north Texas than in Oklahoma, perhaps because the northward movement of moderating air masses from the Gulf of Mexico is frequent then. Although the general flow of air is westerly because of the Cross Timbers7 midlatitude location, winds vary seasonally. During any particular year in the Cross Timbers, winds are either cold (and from the north) or warm (and from the south); with the passage of storms, the wind shifts like the swing of a compass blade. This shift forms the constant meteorological drama that natural scientist Gideon Lincecum called, in his journal entry of February 26, 1835, "a continual sesaw [sic] between the north and south winds." Lincecum added that he had "not observed the wind to blow from any other direction than from the north or south, and what is most singular is, that you seldom experience a calm."31 Also writing in 1835, John P. Coles observed that We Experience vary [sic] sudden changes, in the weather from Extreme heat, tofreezing-Cold takes place, frequently in 12 hours, the Wind blowing strong from the south and that season ofthe year is varyfrequently suddenly checked by a Current of wind from the North, which is seeminglyfilled with Ice.32 28

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Despite this vivid characterization ofTexas'wintertime weather extremes, Coles quickly added, "I must however observe, that those sudden cha[n]ges does not have [sic] any effect upon the health of the Inhabitants."33 Regarding precipitation, Coles perceptively noted, "During the spring, there is a great deal of rain, in this part of the country, up to the Last of may or first ofJune, when the rains, subsides almoast intirely [sic].99 Coles was also aware that "during the Dry Season in Texas we have a Constant Breeze blowing from the south which Tempers the great heat of the sun and renders the climate vary comfortable."34 Climatic records for numerous weather stations in the region confirm that summers are usually relatively dry, but that precipitation can occur at any time. Records also reveal that precipitation may vary widely from one year to the next. Although the Cross Timbers region experiences average annual rainfall of ioo centimeters (about 40 inches) in the east and 62 centimeters (about 25 inches) in the west, some weather stations in the region have recorded as little as 8 inches per year and as much as 29 inches in one day! According to meteorologist George Bomar, the most rain officially recorded in Texas during a 24-hour period occurred in Albany, at the western edge of the Upper Cross Timbers, when 29.05 inches fell on August 4,1978.35 As farmers in the Cross Timbers are well aware, rainfall may be well below normal in any year, and the specter of long-term drought always hangs over the region. Geographers David W. Stahle and Malcolm K. Cleaveland observed that the region is prone to especially severe drought on occasion. Using post oak tree ring data to reconstruct climatic fluctuations over a period of about 300 years, they have confirmed that "drought years are usually better estimated than wet years, because moisture deficits become more growth-limiting, while a host of nonclimatic growthlimiting factors such as inadequate nutrient supply, crowding, or disease may prevent maximized growth response to favorable moisture conditions."36 Using June drought indexes to reconstruct a history of climate in Texas from 1698, they have concluded that "the most severe uninterrupted sequence ofJune droughts since 1698 in Texas appears to have occurred in the 1950s, but the driest decades . . . are estimated to have occurred from 1855-64, followed by the decades of 1950-59 and 1772-81."37 They further observed that "most prolonged drought episodes were . . . preceded and/or followed by extended wet periods."38 This was certainly the case in the 1990s, as the decade began with several years of aboveaverage rainfall, only to witness droughts in I995~i999- Subsequent tree ring chronology research by Stahle and Cleaveland in a large area that 29

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includes the Cross Timbers confirms that "wide tree rings tend to form in this region during the spring and summer following a warm event, and narrow growth rings tend to form after a cold episode."39 Their research suggests that "the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is correlated with climate and tree growth over northern Mexico and the southern Great Plains of the USA," where "warm events favor moist-cool conditions from October through March . . . and subsequent tree growth . . . in the region tends to be above average."40 This research strengthens historical accounts depicting the Cross Timbers' climate as variable. Characterized by periodic, perhaps cyclical swings in temperature and precipitation, the region alternates between multiyear droughts and wet periods. Significantly, the Cross Timbers forest weathers these changes: the oaks can subsist for long periods without significant precipitation, their growth slowing as they rely on deeper groundwater while their leathery leaves lose less moisture through transpiration. These oaks can, in effect, outlast the most punishing droughts, although they grow more rapidly during wet periods.41 If tree rings and historic records tell the long-term story of climate, the skies tell the shorter story of the Cross Timbers' day-to-day weather patterns. Observers have long commented on the variable skies in the Cross Timbers, especially the cloud patterns. As artist-writer Miner K. Kellogg observed on July 2,1872, "The skies in Texas 8clnd.[ian] Ter.[ritory] have been a constant study and delight to me—Yest.[erday] a thin, gauzy screen of cloud passed rapidly from N. and above it great flakes of denser forms swept as rapidly from S. [in] a wonderful display of opposite currents of air."42 Kellogg was probably referring to both the high cirrus clouds and the somewhat lower altocumulus clouds that provide such stark contrasts on days of unsettled weather in the Cross Timbers. When they do occur in the summer, thundershowers are often spectacular. Kellogg described the summer weather as alternating between heavy rainstorms followed by "magnificent rainbows." A week after recording the above description, he experienced a breezy hot morning with "Shooting cumuli clouds from all points of horizon intensely white against a tender blue firmament." The next day, Kellogg recorded, "Splendid as usual—hot & breezy from S.—magnificent display of snowy bright cumuli around the entire horizon."43 Even the night skies are awesome. Kellogg noted on July 13, "Nothing could exceed the poetry of the scene—with a half moon now and then eclipsed by dark clouds passing over the clear starry vault of bluish grey—whilst in the south were pictured three grand & graceful cumuli in close company charged with electricity and frequently emitting lambent flames defining their exquisite forms overlaying each other as do scenes in a theatre."44 30

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Inches

D FIG. I - I I . Climatic data for a representative weather station in the Cross Timbers— Pawhuska, Oklahoma—reveal pronounced winter and summer seasons in terms of temperatures; late spring and early fall tend to be the wettest seasons (Adapted by author, cf.Bell, Prehistory of Oklahoma, 1984).

Despite these weather fluctuations, it is possible to tally a wide range of extremes into averages by month and year—that is, to translate weather into climate. The cumulative climatic conditions for an 80-year period (1898-1978) at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, (FIG. I-II) were cited by Albert and Wyckoff (1984) as typical of the Osage Savanna,45 as the Cross Timbers are called in that part of the region. The data reveal wide variations from year to year, but do exhibit patterns. The temperature data confirm July to be the hottest month, on average, in what is typically a hot summer: both July and August average over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. January, the coldest month, averages above freezing. Precipitation shows two peaks—late spring 31

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and early fall—with midwinter and midsummer being the driest times of the year. The cumulative annual precipitation figures reveal considerable fluctuation; although precipitation averages about 29 inches (72.5 cm) per year, only about half of those years are close to average. The Pawhuska station has received as much as 59 inches and as little as 19 inches in some years. Although Pawhuska lies somewhat north of the geographical center of the Cross Timbers region, its general seasonal characteristics hold for the entire region. Texas locations record a higher mean temperature, but still reflect the same seasonal pattern of temperature—and the similar seasonal and annual variations in precipitation—as those in Oklahoma. However, numerous weather stations in Texas have recorded heavier precipitation in early fall than Pawhuska. In the northern Cross Timbers, occasional mild cold fronts move through even in summer, bringing a refreshing change from otherwise hot, sometimes sultry weather. These breaks in summer weather are, however, rare south of the Red River. Although it has no appreciable effect on weather patterns, the Red River seems to serve as a demarcator: a closer look at synoptic weather maps reveals that the jet stream lies mostly along or slightly north of the Red River. Thus, in, say, September, Fort Worth and other Texas Cross Timbers communities can swelter in 90-degree-plus temperatures while communities in the Oklahoma Cross Timbers have cooled off to the 70s. Similarly, in winter, automobiles from Oklahoma occasionally drive south into Texas covered with snow, while the Texas Cross Timbers received only rain. The snowfall of the Cross Timbers thus varies from an average of about 1 inch a year near Waco, Texas, to about 12 inches a year in Chautauqua County, Kansas. The oak trees of the Cross Timbers are well suited to the regions typical temperature fluctuations and rainfall variations. Like the fabled oaks of the Mediterranean that so enchanted the ancients, the oaks of the Cross Timbers survive a harsh climate and fairly poor soils derived from the underlying rock. Like most oaks, their well-developed, strong roots work down into bedrock. They serve both to anchor the tree and to reach the meteoric water that percolates through crevices and is stored as groundwater in the regions sandy aquifers. The regions two characteristic oak species—post oaks and blackjack oaks—have proven remarkably tenacious as they are consecutively buffeted by the regions strong winds, shrouded in the heavy ice of winter storms, pummeled by hailstorms, and subjected to the powerful summer sun—all of which they endure with seeming impunity. That the climate affects the actual height of trees is suggested by plant ecologist McCluskey, who concluded that the trees of the Eastern 32

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Cross Timbers are taller because of that areas greater precipitation, which in turn may also increase nitrogen levels in the soil. That rainfall factor may also help explain the higher density, and richer or deeper green leaf color, of the post oaks in the Eastern Cross Timbers.46 The tendency of the post oaks in the Western Cross Timbers to grow in clumps, too, has been attributed to the greater aridity in that area.47 So significant is the precipitation gradient that ecologist Dyksterhuis concluded that "extensive travel and study of the Cross Timbers of both Oklahoma and Texas indicate that many of the findings in either state are applicable to both within the same rainfall belt." 48 Yet, the Cross Timbers forest also varies somewhat from north to south, likely a result of temperature gradients. SEASONAL CHANGE: A YEAR IN THE CROSS TIMBERS

Given the large fluctuations of temperature, with pronounced winter and summer seasons, it is not surprising that the Cross Timbers are deciduous in character. Although a few live oak trees grow in the southern Cross Timbers and into extreme southern Oklahoma, the regional plant life responds to the seasons much like its more eastern/northeastern counterparts. In other words, most of the vegetation drops its leaves and regenerates new growth annually. The Cross Timbers, like the eastern forests to which they are connected, is a landscape of four seasons. As travelers and residents have long noted, the character of the Cross Timbers forest changes with the time of year. In keeping with the Cross Timbers' location in the midlatitudes, a year there is marvelous to behold as the moods of the landscape change with the passing seasons (see the color plates section). Typically, the buds of the oak trees begin to swell by early spring (mid- to late March in Texas, mid-April in Oklahoma, and slightly later in Kansas). For a brief period, the trees stand leafless as the understory foliage and blossoms erupt, the woody vines and other plants taking advantage of the increasing sunlight reaching the forest floor. On the oaks' bare limbs, buds soon swell and change from brownish green to a yellowish or pinkish green. The trees' yellow catkins soon open and briefly turn the landscape chartreuse as myriad insects move about pollinating the flowers. Within a few weeks, usually after the threat of severe frost passes, leaves appear on the trees, and soon the landscape begins to fill out with the varied hues of new spring growth. Interestingly, the individual oak trees tend to bud unevenly, with new growth appearing at the tops somewhat earlier than on the lower portions.49 The light yellowish green to bright pink blush of new leaves lingers for a few weeks. By late spring, 33

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the landscape turns the more solidly green color of maturing leaves. By midsummer, with its intense sunshine and hot days, the Cross Timbers turn green, with their shade largely dependent on the kind of oaks present; post oak leaves tend to be somewhat smaller and darker green than the bigger, more yellowish green leaves of the blackjack oaks. For weeks at a time, the oaks withstand the blistering heat typical of summers in the south central United States. Because the Cross Timbers stretch about 400 miles in latitude, fall advances from north to south as day length shortens and temperature declines. By early October, autumn has come to the Kansas Cross Timbers, but only by late October does it reach into Texas. As days shorten and temperatures drop, the oak leaves begin to change color. In the Texas Cross Timbers, because of the fairly long growing season, the oak trees are in leaf from March well into late October or early November, when they turn a dull rusty color heralding the cooler nights and shorter days of late fall. The Cross Timbers' fall color is usually subdued, some observers simply say disappointing, compared to the leaves of the more northern deciduous forests. In the Cross Timbers, the leaves often appear to simply dry up rather than turn bright colors. Yet in some years (for example, 1991 and 1997), the fall colors are stunning, with a rusty and coppery red and sometimes slight orange hue tinting the entire landscape. The brightest or showiest falls appear to coincide with above-average summer rainfall and slightly below-average autumn rainfall. In the most colorful years, the young blackjack oaks turn a bright wine or copper red, while post oaks may turn deep rusts, reds, or yellows. Although the fall in most years is unspectacular, many residents' failure to notice it is somewhat regrettable, for what the Cross Timbers lack in bright patches of showy trees—like the maples that illuminate deciduous forests elsewhere—they make up for with the vines' occasional splashes of red and the elms' and willows' bright yellow. For those who look more closely, the Cross Timbers oaks yield subtler rewards. The chromatic complexity of individual leaves, or clusters of leaves, on any particular tree is often surprising; viewed closely, the leaves of an oak may be a variegated rust, red, or yellow—which appears more intense because of the lingering strong green of much of the foliage. This polychromatic effect enhances the rich texture of Cross Timbers oaks in fall, which present a panoply of colors—deep dark green intermixed with browns, yellows, and reds. Chemical changes such as the accumulation of carotenoid pigments, tannins, and sugars transform the leaves before they wither in anticipation of winter. By December, most of the leaves remaining on the trees have turned 34

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the color of cocoa powder, and many of these do not fall to the ground at this time; being relatives of the beech family, these oaks often hold their dead leaves through much of the winter before finally dropping them in late January or February. For a short period in late winter, the Cross Timbers appear rather austere as brownish and grayish limbs stand bare. Yet this time of year has its own beauty, as the bare limbs of the forest reveal the grand architecture of the cast iron forest. One writer noted that "each winter in North Texas the landscape is dominated by solid-looking stubby branched oaks" that "to me always seem the same size, the same shape. These are the slow-growing post oaks."50 These oaks are quite distinctive in the winter landscape of the entire Cross Timbers and lend a forlorn look to the region for a couple of months. By this time, however, days are beginning to lengthen noticeably and are becoming warmer. This event, coupled with milder nighttime temperatures, encourages the growth of buds which again open with the coming of spring. McCluskey observed that the budding of the trees is induced by the early, warming breezes from the Gulf,51 which bring with them a sense of regeneration. THE OAKS OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

Although the Cross Timbers make up a distinctive vegetation type based largely on the presence or association of post oaks (FIG. 1-12) and blackjack oaks (FIG. 1-13), these trees' appearance does not necessarily indicate that a landscape is part of the Cross Timbers. In Texas, for example, the post oak has a much broader distribution than just the Cross Timbers, being found on sandy soils throughout the eastern part of the state. Separate from the Cross Timbers, these "islands" of post and blackjack oaks are common not only in portions of Texas (e.g., between Fairfield and Centerville) but are also found in portions of eastern Oklahoma. Post and blackjack oaks are especially common on the Carrizo Sands, which form a broad belt from south Texas in the vicinity of Zavala County to Bowie County in northeast Texas,52 but these clusters of trees lie east of what is normally considered the Cross Timbers. As noted earlier, post oaks grow far to the northeast of the Cross Timbers, ranging all the way into southern New England. So, too, does the blackjack oak, which almost always grows in association with the post oak. The blackjack oak, too, has an affinity for sandy soils. In her popular work Texas Flowers in Natural Colors, Eula Whitehouse actually considered "post oaks" to constitute a rather large natural area of eastern and northeastern Texas that evidently transcended the actual Cross 35

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FIG. i-12. Post oaks (Quercus stellata) have a distinctive shape, with branches often gnarled and twisted, as seen in this specimen near Onion Creek, Texas,photographed in i8j2 on the Texas Land and Copper Association expedition (Courtesy Lawrence T. Jones III, Austin, Texas).

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FIG. i-13. Blackjack oaks (Quercus marilandica) are characterized by their distinctive shape and dark bark, and often grow in close association with post oak, as seen near Ardmore, Oklahoma (1997photo by author).

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Timbers. Whitehouse thus relegated the Eastern and Western Cross Timbers to this larger natural post oak area. Without ever mentioning the Cross Timbers by name, she noted that u [t]he chief trees in the post oak strip are post oak and blackjack oak."53 Geographer Terry Jordan, while recognizing the validity of the Cross Timbers as one of Texas' important natural regions, nevertheless confirms that they share much with the broad belt of post oak and blackjack oak in eastern Texas, which also developed on sandy soils. Jordan, in fact, includes both the Eastern Cross Timbers and Post Oak Belt in a map depicting the oak-forested lands of east Texas.54 Although the Cross Timbers of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas are treated as one region in this book, not all geographers recognize that classification. For example, the physiographer Erwin Raisz delimited only the Eastern and Western Cross Timbers of Texas in his influential map, using no such designation in Oklahoma.55 Furthermore, although biogeographer A. W. Kuchler described the Cross Timbers in several of his publications, Rand McNally did not identify it on an elaborate map of natural vegetation based on Kuchler s pioneering work. The company instead identified two vegetation zones: North of the Red River, the Cross Timbers are depicted simply as part of the broad "oak-hickory" forest that extends well into the riparian valleys of western Oklahoma from its heart in the central part of the state. South of the Red River, the Texas Cross Timbers appear as belts of"oak-hickory-bluestem," as do the post oak forests of east Texas.56 Thus, although Kuchler s map in the 1970 National Atlas identifies a large area of the south central United States as possessing "Cross Timbers" vegetation, many atlases do not identify the forest by that name. Cross Timbers is, however, a proper term for areas where post oak and blackjack oak trees grow in close association over a large area, often with other species, and so close together that their crowns intermingle. The term is especially applicable where sandstone forms the underlying geology. Well entrenched in the historical literature, this distinctive type of vegetation community is found in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, with Kuchler s map even depicting a small portion of extreme western Arkansas as Cross Timbers. This area has earned the title Cross Timbers region due to the general similarity of environment (climate, geology, and soils) and vegetation. In other words, both the underlying geology and the type of vegetation serve as identifying characteristics of the landscape over a large area. However, as will become clear, the Cross Timbers are not homogenous: they vary in composition and character longitudinally (that is, from east to west) and latitudinally (from north to south). Throughout this book, I speak of the Cross Timbers area as both a 37

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natural and cultural region because people have tended to perceive it as one, as they have most other large areas that contain distinctive characteristics with some spatial contiguity/continuity; and after all, perceptions not only help shape reality, but can never be separated from it. The Cross Timbers constitute a region despite their geographic variation because of our innate tendency to generalize. Moreover, once given the name Cross Timbers, a certain area gains that identity while other areas possessing similar vegetation are excluded. There are indeed Cross Timbers-like landscapes elsewhere—for example, in parts of the Ozarks—but only in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas have they become part of regional history, and even mythology. The Post Oak Because the Cross Timbers region is largely defined by two species of oak that grow in close association, it is appropriate to present both carefully and to detail their distinguishing characteristics. Although they seem similar, the post and blackjack oaks actually belong to separate groups: the post oak is a member of the white oak group, the blackjack a member of the red oak. White oaks, such as the post oak, are distinguished by leaves that have rounded lobes devoid of bristles as well as sweet acorns that mature in six months. By contrast, red oaks, such as the blackjack, bear tiny bristles or points at the tip of each leaf and/or ends of the lobes. Their bitter acorns, which have woolly hairs lining the cup, require two years to mature. The post oak, whose scientific name is Quercus stellata, is widely distributed throughout the eastern United States. Most authorities note that it grows especially well on dry, gravelly or sandy uplands as far west as the Texas Cross Timbers.57 It has a distinctive shape; its branches are often gnarled and grow at nearly right angles to the trunk, creating a starlike burst of growth that appears unruly compared to trees with the more common uplifted branches. The leaves of the post oak (FIG. 1-14) are distinctively shaped: five lobed, oblong-obovate, and broad at the apex while gradually narrowing to the base. One naturalist has appropriately concluded that the post oak is "a small tree with often leathery leaves usually lobed so as to resemble a cross "5S Interestingly, the post oak is sometimes also called a cross oak.59 This name may derive from the roughly cruciform shape of its leaves, the form of its trunk and branches, or perhaps, simply because of its association with the Cross Timbers. The leaves of the post oak are smooth and dark green on top, but their undersides are hairy and grayish or brownish. The twigs are grayish, and the bark of the trunk is a brown-gray and broken by long, shallow cracks 38

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FIG. I-14. Leaves of the post oak (Quercus stellata) are deeply lobedand, to some observers, appear cross-shaped, perhaps explaining the name "cross oak" (Drawing by the author, based on a specimenfrom Marietta, Oklahoma).

that often divide into rectangular blocks.60 So distinctive is the bark that some sources claim the Texas place-name "Palo Pinto" (loosely translated as "painted stick or tree" in Spanish) derives from oak trees that looked spotted after their leaves have fallen; others, however, have attributed the name to trees that the Comanche Indians painted red and blue on the North Fork of Palo Pinto Creek and at other locations nearby.61 The wood of the post oak is very hard, close grained, durable in contact with the soil, and a light to dark brown.62 A pioneering study of the growth rings of the post oak by geographers David W. Stahle and John G. Hehr revealed it to be a hardy tree that can survive the regions frequent droughts.63 In a recent study, Stahle confirmed that some post oaks live to a venerable age—approximately 400, and in some cases 500, years. He observes that ancient post oaks tend to grow not in well-watered riparian locations, but rather on rugged uplands—a case of what Edmund Schulman called "longevity under adversity." Stahle located one post oak near Keystone Lake, Oklahoma, that began to grow as early as 1610. He observes that such ancient trees tend to have "a pronounced longitudinal twist to the stem, which is also evident as spiral grain in the wood." Stahle further notes that indicators of antiquity in trees "include crown dieback (also referred to as a spike top, stagtop, or dead top); a reduced canopy often restricted to a few heavy, craggy limbs; branch stubs and other barkcovered knobs on the stem; hollow voids or heart rot; partial exposure of 39

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massive roots and root collar; leaning stems; heavy lichen and moss growth on stems; thin and patchy bark; strip bark in conifers; fire or lightning scars; and size—not absolute size, but size relative to other trees of the same species growing on similar sites."64 Typically, the Cross Timbers include various types of trees of different ages, but post oaks are likely to be among the oldest in the forest. In keeping with Stahle's observations, some of the oldest appear confined to nutrient-limited, rocky locations of the type illustrated in the frontispiece. As a rancher in Oklahoma recently put it, "[T]hem old post oaks on the ridges are tough as nails." According to Charles S. Sargent, "Quercus stellata is one of the most variable of the North American Oaks in habit, in the nature of the bark, and in the presence or absence of pubescence," but the shape of its fruit and the character of the cup scales show little variation.65 A post oak acorn, or nut, is normally chestnut brown, about one half to one inch in length, and broader at the base than long, while the cap covers about a third to a half of it. The acorns are a valuable food plant for wild game, including prairie chickens, quail, wild turkeys, bluejays, woodpeckers, raccoons, squirrels, and deer, the latter of which also eat the twigs and leaves of young trees.66 Among the most common varieties are the sand post oak {Quercus stellatavar margaretta), sometimes called the runner oak, which is a small tree or suckering shrub having thin leaves rounded on the lobe tips and often growing in sandy soils.67 It, too, has acorns and foliage that can serve as food and forage to the regions birds and mammals. The Blackjack Oak The second distinctive tree of the Cross Timbers is the blackjack oak {Quercus marilandica), or blackjack oak, as it is sometimes written. The blackjack oak is sometimes also called the jack or scrub oak. Interestingly, although blackjack and post oaks are separate species and no record exists of their ever having hybridized, some trees actually have the characteristics of both species.68 Thus, although the student of natural history can usually tell them apart, care should be taken in doing so. What, then, are some of the more diagnostic traits that distinguish the blackjack oak from the post oak? Like the post oak, the presence of blackjack oak usually indicates poorer, sandy and gravelly sites. It, too, grows in the eastern United States as far west as the Cross Timbers, in fact, as far west as Dewey and Kiowa Counties in western Oklahoma.69 However, blackjack oaks differ in shape, having contorted branches and an irregularly rounded crown. Blackjack oaks also have much darker bark—almost black (a possible origin of the name)—that is deeply divided into nearly square plates or blocks 40

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FIG.

1-15.

Leaves of the blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica) are broadly ovate and expand abruptly into three lobes (Drawing by author, based on a specimenfrom Marietta, Oklahoma).

about one to three inches long. The name blackjack probably derives from its similarity in appearance to either of two items historically called blackjacks—a cylindrical drinking vessel covered with tar-coated leather, or a leather-coated night stick or club. The wood of the blackjack oak is heavy, hard, and darker brown than post oak wood, and the resilience and strength of its saplings' trunks would certainly allow them to make good blackjack stick handles . The leaves of the blackjack oak (FIG. 1-15) provide yet another clue to distinguishing the two trees: they are broadly ovate, expand abruptly into three lobes, and are large (up to seven inches long), causing them to tremble or flap somewhat more readily in breezes than do post oak leaves. The blackjack leaves are a distinctive lustrous dark yellow-green on top, and yellowish orange or brown underneath. The fruit of the blackjack oak sometimes grows in pairs, the cup of each acorn being somewhat hairy and shaped like a shallow goblet.70 Blackjack oaks often bear heavy crops of acorns that are eaten by small mammals and a wide variety of birds. OTHER TREES OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

I have focused on the Cross Timbers' two most common trees because the earliest recorded references to the region have associated them with it—so much so that most ecologists now recognize that their presence is required for a location to be called the Cross Timbers. Throughout much of the

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classic Cross Timbers vegetation area, these two oaks have formed about 75 percent of the tree species and 90 percent of the forest canopy. That does not mean, however, that they are the only trees: in fact, the Cross Timbers region has so much in common with portions of the eastern hardwood forests that early botanists simply thought the Cross Timbers only a part of that larger forest. Ecologists recognize the Cross Timbers as a western outlier of the central United States' oak-hickory forest.71 In his pioneering 1931 study of the vegetation of Oklahoma, W. E. Bruner described the true forest communities of the eastern part of the state, where blackjack and post oak dominate only in dry sites. Bruner also described a classic savanna woodland location formed on "a rather sterile, reddish sand" derived from an outcropping of Permian sandstone; predictably, the site "was covered principally with blackjack (Quercus marilandica) and post oak {Q. stellata)?12 Bruner noted that "the post oak, when intermixed with Q. marilandica [blackjack oak], has much the same habit of growth," yet he also stated, "The two oaks are not quite ecological equivalents" for "the blackjack {Quercus marilandica) is the more abundant on dry, exposed hillsides or in unfavorable habitats, while the post oak makes up an increasingly greater portion of the timber when habitat conditions are more favorable."73 In his 1951 study The Oaks ofTexas, Cornelius H. Muller noted that post oaks tend to grade into other oak species, such as Quercus margaretta and Quercus drummondii —a condition that presented the greatest "taxonomic nomenclatorial puzzles." Muller further observed that Quercus margaretta was confined to deep sand, while the post oak was common on rocky or sandy soils containing clay. According to Muller, post oak was found "in pure form or nearly so," in locations "about the edges of the sand belt and on adjacent clay and gravel beds." Muller concluded that "in the Western Cross Timbers Q. Drummondii is replaced by typical Q. Margaretta and Q. stellata"74 Thus, Quercus margaretta, which is popularly called the "sand post oak" or "runner oak," is another oak common to parts of the Cross Timbers, although it is not always easy to distinguish from true post oak. Typically, the sand post oak is a small, scrubby tree or suckering shrub having thin leaves that are rounded on the lobe tips.75 Early naturalists often mentioned hickory trees as common in the Cross Timbers, and were likely referring to the black hickory {Carya texand) that is often found on "dry-sandy uplands and rocky hillsides... often associated with Blackjack and Post Oak."76 Like the blackjack and post oak, the westernmost edge of the black hickory's range is in the Cross Timbers, and they are more common in the eastern portion of the region rather than in the west. Like blackjack oaks, black hickories often have crooked 42

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branches and narrow to spreading crowns. However, their greater height and alternate compound leaves make hickories easy to differentiate from the common Cross Timbers oaks. Hickory nuts are a source of food for squirrels and hogs. Their wood was recognized early as excellent fuel, for it "has a nice flame, is virtually sparkless, burns a long time, and leaves a clean ash."77 In his study of Oklahoma vegetation, Bruner also confirmed that "the post oak grades almost imperceptibly into a number of shrubby varieties,"78 concluding that "hickory (Hicoria buckleyi) is quite commonly scattered among the oaks, especially in the more favorable habitats."79 Hickories, elm {Ulmus alata), and hackberry {Celtis) tend to be less abundant than oaks, but are quite important throughout much of the Cross Timbers. The BoisDArc, or Osage Orange (Madura pomifera), also grows in the Cross Timbers, although its original range may have been farther east. Sumac (Rhusglabra) is especially common in the sun-drenched margins of the Cross Timbers forest. As suggested above, the Cross Timbers are a deciduous forest that is punctuated by occasional patches of green in winter. Mistletoe is common in the region and is usually present high up on branches, especially on trees growing in riparian areas. This evergreen parasite often indicates weakened or dying trees. Also seen high in tree branches, smilax and other briarlike vines often maintain a greenish or yellowish look throughout the winter, especially in the southern part of the Cross Timbers. Several evergreen trees also grow here. The tree commonly called live oak—but more properly the Vasey oak (Quercus pungens variety vaseyand) or plateau live oak (Quercusfusiformis) —grows farther north and inland than the true live oak (Quercus virginiana). The live oaks of the Cross Timbers avoid the wettest and driest sites and are common on hillsides as far north as southern Oklahoma. The cedar trees mentioned by naturalists are likely either the common eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) or mountain cedar (Juniperus ashei, or Ashe juniper). Once confined to canyons and cedar brakes of central and west Texas, the mountain cedar appears to have spread with overgrazing and the elimination of natural fires.80 It, however, has a strong affinity for limestone soils and is common only in the western portions of the Cross Timbers. By contrast, the eastern red cedar is common throughout the Cross Timbers region where it grows on dry hillsides. Judging from early descriptions, it too may have spread with grazing. However, some specimens of eastern red cedar, such as those found near Mineral Wells, Texas, and Osage County, Oklahoma, are quite old, suggesting that they have lived in the Cross Timbers for hundreds of years. Although not classified as shade 43

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tolerant, cedars often grow in the forest's understory; they commonly grow close to oaks, for the birds and mammals that frequent or inhabit oaks eat cedar fruit,81 whose seeds are likely to germinate in animal feces. RIPARIAN VEGETATION IN THE CROSS TIMBERS

As in other forested regions, the vegetation of the Cross Timbers varies depending on topography and drainage. Throughout the region, the typically dense post and blackjack oak forest tends to be interrupted by fairly distinct belts of vegetation where dependable streams flow. Here, in these riparian environments, thrive other types of trees more dependent on (or better suited to) wet conditions: willow {Salix nigra), cottonwood (Populus deltoides), and hackberry are common along the streams and river courses of the Cross Timbers region. Similar in appearance to (and a relative of) the hickory, pecan trees (Garya illinoensis) also commonly live in the bottom lands of the Cross Timbers. Although declared the State Tree ofTexas, the pecan grows throughout the region and is common in Oklahoma. In fall, its yellow leaves provide a note of color, especially in the stream and river valleys such as those along the Trinity, Red, and Washita rivers. Along with the white oak, which is also common in the river bottoms, the pecan is one of the taller deciduous trees in the region, reaching ioo feet in some cases. Thus, the distinctive post and blackjack oaks are only two of the vegetation types in the Cross Timbers, which maintain substantial vegetation variation based on site characteristics. In other words, like other forests, the Cross Timbers varies considerably, the variation between the drier upland sites (with their dense stands of oak and hickory) and the riparian areas (with their water-tolerant trees, such as cottonwoods and willows) being the most obvious. Ecologist Thieron Pike Harrison concluded that "the variation in vegetation of the Cross Timbers is not due to any change in dominant species, but rather to the distribution of the associated species which occur in the two prominent community types, the upland and riparian forests."82 It is the combination of dominant trees and the associated vegetation that helps give the region its unifying character. T H E UNDERSTORY: VINES AND BRAMBLES

The Cross Timbers forest often has a rich understory of varied vegetation. Early naturalists studying the Cross Timbers reported a proliferation of shrubs and vines in portions of the forest; these species include persim44

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FIG. 1-16. Parts ofthe Cross Timbers contain a veritable tangle ofvines ofvarious types that clutter the understory and climb high into the trees. Love County\ Oklahoma (199Jphoto by author).

mon {Diespyros virginiana), sassafras {Sassafras sassafras), and a grapelike vine {Ampelopsis cordata), sometimes called the wild grape, that commonly climbs shrubs and trees. The Virginia Creeper vine or liana {Parthenocisus quinquefolia) is common and frequently reaches high into the trees. Other vines, such as the common smilax {Smilax bona-nox) and the resilient catbrier {Smilax rotundifolia), also live in the Cross Timbers (FIG. 1-16). Various species of Vitis are common in many places and form a tangle of vines, 45

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as do the low-climbing Clitoria mariana and Galactia volubilis vines. Rather than being parklike or open under the trees, then, substantial areas of the Cross Timbers have a cluttered understory rich in shrubs, vines, and brambles. These form a complex and rich habitat for wildlife, but have long deterred human travel through parts of the Cross Timbers. THE CROSS TIMBERS AS TRANSITION ZONE

The naturalist in the Cross Timbers observes many features that suggest the regions transitional status between humid and semiarid climates, including varieties of lichen that emblazon the sandstone outcrops with splashes of orange, ocher, and pale green; lichen also splotch the oak tree trunks and festoon their gnarled branches. Struck by the forests' character, early naturalists painted a vivid picture of the Cross Timbers in relation to the nearby prairies and forested areas farther east. They reported an abundance of insect and arthropod life that even now abounds in the Cross Timbers. Although mosquitoes are common only in areas with standing water, travelers have long reported black flies. Residents are also well aware of the tick populations that tend to keep the area off limits in summer. However, of the pests encountered there, few are as irritating as those parasitic mites, the chiggers. In traveling through the Cross Timbers in 1872, M. K. Kellogg labeled the region part of "the jigger district," reflecting a confusion about whether to spell the word chigger or jigger. Kellogg observed, "I wish I knew what was the real word," adding that "our boys pronounce it the latter." Regardless of the spelling, Kellogg noted that a chigger "is so small as to be almost invisible but soon builds a large bloody house about him which itches extremely and if scratched is inflamed into a large, running sore. Many cannot resist bringing them to this."83 Kellogg's observation that his group moved beyondthe "jigger district" while traveling west beyond the Cross Timbers in search of copper mines is significant. The Cross Timbers are not only the westward margin of the eastern hardwood forests; they also serve as the western margin of habitation for certain invertebrates, including insects, such as the familiar lightning bug or firefly. Early summer evenings deep in the Cross Timbers are punctuated by the distinctively cold yellowish-greenish light of these insects, which do not live west of this region. The firefly's presence is yet another indicator of the Cross Timbers' association with the eastern forests. Ecologists have long recognized that the Cross Timbers have an intimate relationship to the adjoining prairie or grassland. Because it is interdigitated with the prairies at its margins, or sometimes surrounds prairie 46

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openings well within it, one must always consider the Cross Timbers in relation to the grasslands (FIG. 1-17). According to some ecologists, the Cross Timbers are actually a manifestation of the oak savanna, for the vegetation is not stable but apparently fluctuates with the advance or retreat of grass and tree growth over time. So significant is this prairie-forest relationship that Dyksterhuis recognized two separate areas of the Western Cross Timbers, the main belt (principally sandy soils of gentle relief developed on Cretaceous strata) and the fringe (principally developed on immature reddish prairie soils of Pennsylvanian age). Both had an overstory of post and blackjack oak, but the understory varied, with grasses common in the soils capable of sustaining prairie. In the complex mosaic of forest and prairie, animal life abounds. In the widely read Report on the Exploration of the Headwaters of the Red River; natural historians and observers in 1852 recorded a litany of mammals inhabiting the region. These included "black bear, raccoon, Texan skunk, otter, civet cat, wild cat, panther, fox squirrel, striped squirrel, flying squirrel, beaver, rabbits, jackass rabbit, small prairie rabbit, prairie dog, opossum, deer, elk, antelope, and buffalo."84 This list perfectly captures the variety found at the margins of forest and grassland, with animals such as the panther, opossum, and bear more common in the former, while prairie dog and buffalo, or bison, were denizens of the latter. Situated among the prairies, the Cross Timbers occupy a large portion of the south central United States. From early naturalists one may conclude something of its general extent in reference to the adjacent prairie. But just how large are the Cross Timbers? According to Dyksterhuis, the main belt in Texas was approximately twice as large as the fringe, 2,436,000 acres versus 1,680,000 acres. To his estimate of the Western Cross Timbers at 4,116,000 acres we may add the smaller Eastern Cross Timbers at approximately 888,533 acres. According to ecologist Larry Eugene Marcy,85 the Oklahoma and Kansas Cross Timbers total about 3 million acres. Thieron Pike Harrison suggested that the Cross Timbers occupy an even larger area. Based on fieldwork and the previous studies of Kuchler (1964), Gray and Galloway (1959), and Gould (1969), Harrison concluded that the Cross Timbers of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas covered a total of 11,206,000 acres (4,535,068 hectares), as indicated by the map (FIG. 1-18).86 This map can serve to delineate the Cross Timbers and agrees with the early study by Alice Marriott (1943) as well as those by more recent researchers. However, as biographer A. W. Kuchler's studies in the 1960s indicate, the area of potential Cross Timbers vegetation is even larger than these conservative estimates suggest. Interpreting the work of Kuchler and 47

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FIG. 1-17. The Cross Timbers must always be considered in relation to the adjacent prairie, which is often intermixed with theforest. Here, in the Cross Timbers near Gunter Mountain, Texas, post oak groves stand amidstprairies. Stereo pair of photos from the 1872 Texas hand and Copper Association expedition (Courtesy Lawrence T.Jones III, Austin, Texas).

others, several geographers have suggested that in presettlement times the Cross Timbers comprised nearly twice as much land, 19,536,640 acres (7,909,700 hectares), or 30,526 square miles.87 Ecologists and historians disagree about the Cross Timbers' distribution, and as mapped historically, the region is normally somewhat smaller than the latter definition suggests. The figures used here correspond closely with the historical (especially late nineteenth-century) literature. However, Cross Timbers-like vegetation does occupy a large area including the post oak belt of east Texas, large portions of similar oak-hickory forests in 48

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Arkansas, and even a small portion of southwestern Missouri; these, however, lie outside the Cross Timbers region-a construct that is as much based on cultural or human as natural history. The work of earlier researchers and my fieldwork in 1996-1998 suggest that although historically the Cross Timbers, at a conservative estimate, totaled at least 17,200 square miles or about 11 million acres, perhaps twice that much area includes Cross Timbers-like vegetation. Even by conservative estimates, the region constitutes a huge area-larger than some of the eastern states, such as New Hampshire, Vermont, or Massachusetts. Of course, not all of the Cross Timbers is densely forested, for large areas of prairie are often intermixed with the oaks and other trees. And as noted above, Cross Timberstype forested areas exist outside of the historic Cross Timbers proper. My map of the general Cross Timbers region includes portions of 58 counties in three states, covering a broad range of conditions from prairie to dense 49

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KANSAS MO. OKLAHOMA

"1

RVF - '99 F I G . 1-18. Map of the Cross Timbers in relation to current county boundaries is based in part onfieldwork by ecologist Thieron Pike Harrison (19J4) and the earlier studies by Kuchler (1964), Gray and Galloway (1959)> and Gould (1969), as well as the authors fieldwork. Although depicting a fairly conservative distribution compared to some earlier descriptions, it serves as a working definition of the region (Map by author after Harrison, 1974).

forest, as is typical of the region. However, the map does not indicate a Cross Timbers-like extension into eastern Oklahoma (and a small part of western Arkansas) to show the full extent of the region according to scholars such as Kuchler and Stahle—that is shown on the regional base map (refer again to FIG. 1-5). 5°

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"The Natural Curiosities ofthe Country" THE OMNIPRESENT PRAIRIES

An interpretation of the Cross Timbers must mention the magnificent prairie openings that existed within, and the vast oceans of prairie grasses that generally surrounded, the forest in prehistoric and early historic times. Big bluestem {Adropogon gerardi), little bluestem {A. scoparius), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), and switch grass (Panicum virgatum) lived in the prairie margins of the Cross Timbers where deep soils existed. In addition, shorter grasses such as side oats grama {Bouteloua curtipendula), buffalo grass {Buchloe dactyhides), and silver bluestem {Andropogon saccharoides) commonly grew in shallow soils typical of the Cross Timbers.88 The prickly pear cactus {Opuntia species) is common in the unshaded margins of the Cross Timbers where sunlight reaches the ground for much of the day. The bright yellow or orange flowers of the cactus plants enliven the late spring landscape at the edges of the Cross Timbers. Yucca plants also live in the more open areas at the margins of the forest. These, too, suggest that the Cross Timbers are transitional between the humid East and the semiarid West. Nurtured by either limestone or marl soils, the adjacent prairies were likely also sustained by fires that were either started by lightning or set by Native American hunters. Setting fires to stampede bison and other hapless animals into obstacles such as stream beds, where they would fall and make easy prey, facilitated the Indians' hunting on the prairie. Prairie fires, it is generally conceded, raced along and even into the edges of the Cross Timbers, but were usually extinguished for lack of fuel in many areas. This observation is noteworthy, because many early European American observers and settlers assumed that the blackened bark of the blackjack oaks was the direct result of burning. Students of the Cross Timbers region have long speculated about other factors, in addition to soils and bedrock, that might explain why forests existed in one locale and grass/prairie in another when both places had otherwise essentially identical climates. Noting that the Cross Timbers ofTexas lie between two generally northsouth paths of bison migration, geographer Charles Oliver May posed an interesting question in 1962: "Was it just a mere coincidence that the Cross Timbers grew in a northerly direction or did the buffalo migration prevent an expansion in any other direction?"89 In answering this question, May speculated that overzealous buffalo would rub the bark off the oak trees, hence killing them, and that they feasted mightily upon acorns, which reduced the young trees' chances of germinating. May added that "only grass could perpetuate year after year on the prairies under such condi-

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tions" and that "the outer edges of the Cross Timbers could have been forced to maintain their shape" by the migrating herds of buffalo.90 Geographer May was not the first to speculate about what caused the Cross Timbers' distribution as an outlier in an ocean of grass. Judging from the literature of the early to mid-nineteenth century, observers of the Cross Timbers have long speculated about both the causes of its vegetation and the actual shape or extent of this unique forest. With many factors affecting it, both natural and cultural, the Cross Timbers seemed enigmatic. In addition to the natural agents of change were people, who wielded one of humankind's earliest, and most miraculously effective, tools—fire. In the hands of early people, fire could be a potent force in shaping vegetation patterns. Set either deliberately or accidentally, it has transformed large areas by controlling woody growth and encouraging the growth of grasses. Natural historians and others have long noted that the Cross Timbers tend to have an open, grassy understory where fires have burned into the forest. Conversely, when and where those fires are suppressed, the undergrowth tends to be thickest. If humans have wielded fire in this region for several thousand years, then it is likely that people themselves have also played a role in shaping both the prairies and the Cross Timbers. CROSS TIMBERS PREHISTORY

Early European American scientists considered evidence of the area's first inhabitants—the Native Americans—among the region's natural curiosities: arrowheads, spear points, potsherds, and other remains often piqued the scientists' curiosity. They recognized that Native Americans occupied the Cross Timbers and were a part of its ecology, but those early naturalists had no way of determining how long people had been present in the region. As the field of archaeology developed after the 1880s, the complicated story of people's occupation of the Cross Timbers began coming together. One thing is certain: humanity has long been present in the Cross Timbers. Somewhat coincidentally, perhaps, the Cross Timbers vegetation pattern—which is in large measure a response to both the underlying geology and the subhumid climatic conditions—appears to have become established about the time people began settling the area, that is, about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. Their arrival may have coincided with a general drying of the climate about 8,000 B.P. According to the pollen record, before then, in late-Pleistocene glacial times, open spruce forests extended much farther south than today; in fact, spruce, oak, and pine forests existed as far 52

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for the Use of Schools shows little topographic and no vegetation detail for Texas and the Indian Territory, although it does identify several Indian nations.100 This is ironic, for in that same year, Morse had copublished Josiah Gregg's "Map of the Indian Territory, northern Texas and New Mexico," which, as noted earlier, constituted a cartographic revelation about the Texas Cross Timbers. In the 1851 edition of his System of Geography, Morse delineated the "American Desert" of the western Great Plains, but still made no reference to the Cross Timbers that had captured the imagination of would-be settlers and those passing through Texas and the Indian Territory on their way to mine gold in California.101 Tellingly, however, his geography book does beautifully present the towns, such as Bonham, Sherman, McKinney and Dallas, that were sprouting up around the Eastern Cross Timbers. And therein lies a significant aspect of Cross Timbers history: the area began to lose its importance as a landmark because settlement began to transform much of it from forest to farmland. By 1853, in fact, the prolific travel writer and historian Henry Howe simply noted the presence of the Cross Timbers in passing when he remarked, rather laconically, that the second division of Texas is "the undulating prairie region, which extends over two hundred miles farther inland, its wide grassy tracts alternating with others that are thickly timbered."102 Those "thickly timbered" tracts were, of course, the Cross Timbers, but Howe did not name them. This omission is understandable: the name Cross Timbers had, not coincidentally, begun to lose its magic and terror at just the time pioneers marched into the region as an advance guard of Anglo-American "civilization." 106

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Even so, by the mid-i85os, the Cross Timbers had become a geographical fact. Few descriptions better summarize its changing countenance than that penned by W. B. Parker in his popular 1856 book based on Marcy's expedition: These Cross Timbers are a very singular growth. The one we had now entered is called the Lower Cross Timbers, and is about six miles wide; then eighteen milesfrom the outer edge ofthis one, we should enter the Upper and larger. They extend almost due North and South, from the Canadian to the Brazos. The timber is short, stunted oak, not growing in a continuousforest, but interspersed with open glades, plateaus, and vistas of prairie scenery, which give a very picturesque andpleasing variety.103 Parker s writing attempts to provide a sense of discovery and adventure, but the information about the Cross Timbers had been repeated so often that it was losing its novelty and originality. The region was rapidly shedding its wilderness image, and its depiction became more bucolic as evidenced by the adjectives "pleasing" and "picturesque."This new, tamer Cross Timbers resulted from the long-predicted arrival of civilization, and the axes of pioneers bent on wresting the land from nature.

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CHAPTER 3

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

The lines of civilisation are rapidly extending towards ity and soon the scrutiny of science will be for ever checked by the destroying axe of the pioneer. — WILLIAM KENNEDY,

Texas: Its Geography, Natural History and Topography, 1844 In writing these words about the Cross Timbers during the period of the Texas Republic, William Kennedy was aware of the changes that were beginning to sweep the region. In fact, just three years earlier, Kennedy s Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects ofthe Republic of Texas noted somewhat prosaically, "Post oak and jack [sic] oak are useful for fencing and fuel."1 In both of his popular books, Kennedy s words proved prophetic: within a generation, the Cross Timbers would be transformed by the technology that accompanied European American civilization. Kennedy was not alone in realizing that settlers represented a threat to the forests. Even at this early date, some observers began to express caution about deforestation. In 1823, j u s t a s t n e westward-moving AngloAmericans first made contact with the Cross Timbers, Peter Guillet wrote the Timber Merchants Guide. Lamenting the destruction of the eastern forests, Guillet sounded an early conservation call, prophetically stating that when we consider the progressive devastations committed upon the vast forests ofthis country—that, if the present destructive course be pursued, they must in time entirely disappear— the necessity oftakingprohibitory measures for their preservation, must be obvious to every man of intelligence... when the increased population ofanother century, proportionate to that lastpast, shall swarm where we now see nothing but solitary deserts, and when the remain-

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ing trees ofour forests shall have been wantonly destroyed... then posterity justly censure the want of foresight and supineness ofthe present age.2 Guillet called for forestry laws, but was several generations ahead of his time. He also foresaw the westward move of settlement into the far West. To a westward-moving nation fueled by an insatiable desire to settle land, however, such calls for conservation seemed like so much folly. To those at the advance guard of exploration, the Cross Timbers seemed inexhaustible and their protection incomprehensible. THE SETTLERS ARRIVE

To reach the Cross Timbers, most of these axe-wielding pioneers arrived either on foot, on horseback, or in wagons. However, some of the first arrivals reached the region, especially in the vicinity of the Red River and Canadian River, by traveling onboard a relatively new conveyance: steamboats. Whereas Maj. Stephen Harrison Long had been advocating steamboats for exploration as early as 1817,3 they became commonplace within a generation, carrying pioneer settlers deep into the frontier by the 1830s. The presence of steamboats prompted one imaginative observer to declare that "their course is marked by volumes of smoke and fire, which the civilized man observes with admiration, and the savage with astonishment."4 Of course, the use of these boats had environmental consequences. In 1841, William Kennedy speculated that "the quantities of wood required for steam-boat fuel will impart a high value to the timbered lands bordering the navigable rivers." He further observed that oak was among the best of woods for steamboat fuel, while hickory was "useless for steam-boats" despite its being "the best domestic fuel."5 Although the lower reaches of rivers in the region tended to be best suited for steamboat travel, some vessels steamed far upriver by the late 1830s and 1840s.6 An illustration from somewhat later in the nineteenth century depicts a steamboat traversing the narrow reaches of the Red River in what appears to be the Cross Timbers (FIG. 3-1). LURING EARLY SETTLERS

Record keepers in the early colonies founded by enterprising Texas empresarios enumerated settlers and items such as cabins, rifles, and shotguns, thus indicating the condition of settlements. For example, from 1841 to 1848, five areas in the Peters Colony were settled, two being in the "Cross

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FIG. 3-1. A steamboattraverses the Red River, possibly in a Cross Timbers locale. Note the tepee and carts along riverbank—signs of Native American and European American presence (Source lithographfrom the German publication Amerika in Wort und Bild n.d.).

Timbers" of Fannin County. Of the 305 cabins enumerated in the entire colony, 85 were observed to be located in the Cross Timbers near the headwaters of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River.7 This figure indicates that the settlers were already moving into the Cross Timbers during Texas' later years as a republic and its early years as a state. These settlers were the pioneers whose axes first felled the Cross Timbers. Their plows were also the first to penetrate both the soils of the adjacent Blackland Prairie and, later, the sandy soils of the Cross Timbers region. Together, the two ecotones formed the complex, interdigitated Eastern Cross Timbers, whose remarkable and inviting prairie glades/openings drew many comments by early travelers. As eyes focused on the Texas Cross Timbers from as far away as the eastern United States, the popular press monitored the progress of settlers. Evidently, however, not all of these pioneers were up to the task of settlement, for in spring 1843, the Daily Cincinnati Enquirer published an interesting story obtained from a Texas frontier newspaper:

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COLONY OF CROSS TIMBERS, TEXAS. A great many emigrantsfrom the United States, started some months ago. The most recent information with regard to the region, is given by the Standard, published at Clarxville [sic], Texas. During our stay in Fannin, week before last, we ascertained the condition of this Colony, from whose establishment we had anticipated great benefit to this section ofcountry. It seems, that notwithstanding the large number of emigrants who havefrom time to time been to it, with the declared intention ofsettlement, it is now nearly depopulated. Great numbers of those who came out, were entirely unfitted for the settlement ofa wild country, and the occupations and management necessary to the advantageous pros-execution [sic] ofsuch an adventure, and finding out in a short time, their unfitness, they returned. Others came out to take a look, without any determinate intention ofsettlement. The original contractors themselves, being men of no capital, and giving little attention to the settlement, have rather retarded than advanced the scheme. There are now but four or five families, and fifteen or twenty single persons in the settlement. Within six or eight weeks, three men have been killed by the Indians.8 This entry is reproduced in its entirety here because it so well reflects the public's impression of the Texas Cross Timbers as a region of challenges and tribulations. Despite such tragic and sensational stories, settlers still entered the region. That the Cross Timbers were becoming less remote—as settlement encompassed them and pushed the frontier farther west—is evident in a July 8,1846, article in Houston's Democratic Telegraph and Texas Register. Titled "TRADE WITH THE CROSS TIMBERS," the unsigned article noted: We stated several years ago that if the roads should be improved between this city and the upper settlements on the Trinity, the trade ofthe western portions ofthe Red River counties near the Cross Timbers, would be ultimately directed to Houston. Our predictions are already in a measure verified;for but afew days since, a large quantity of goods were purchased herefor the settlers residing near Dallas, and are now on the way to the region ofthe Cross Timbers.9 The article confirms that the Cross Timbers' identity was well established at that time as a large area of north central Texas, and perhaps the adjacent area of Indian Territory just north of the Red River. The article concluded

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that the "trade that has thus been commenced between this city [Houston] and the settlements in the Cross Timbers, will rapidly extend" following the improvement of roads. MAPPING THE CHANGES

With such infrastructural improvements during the mid-nineteenth century, the Cross Timbers were quickly transformed as European American settlement rapidly pushed westward into the region. This settlement was spurred on in part by military protection and the ambitious promise that the railroad would soon reach the region. The desire to open these lands was so great that, in some places, settlement took place almost simultaneously with exploration. As maps and literature about Texas and the Indian Territory were distributed widely in the United States and abroad, many prospective migrants learned of the Cross Timbers. As noted earlier, maps such as those by Austin, Arrowsmith, Emory, Gregg, Wilson, Roemer, and others depicted selected aspects of Texas' vegetation and helped make the Cross Timbers a recognized feature of both the Republic/State ofTexas and the Indian Territory north of the Red River. A German map ofTexas from the early 1850s, likely derived from Arrowsmith s maps, shows the Cross Timbers as one belt of trees labeled Bauholz Walder ("woods forest" in German), presumably to avoid confusion over the enigmatic adjective cross in reference to vegetation. Still other maps of the era continued to use stylized symbols for trees. These, too, show the Cross Timbers extending well into the Indian Territory and forming, as it were, a clear demarcation between civilization and the wilderness beyond. A map of the "Boundary Between Texas and New Mexico"—published in the New York Observer in reference to Clay's Compromise of 1850—shows the Cross Timbers running generally north-south10, beginning at the upper reaches of the Brazos in Texas and extending to the Canadian River in Indian Territory. Significantly, the word "Cross" appears in Texas, while "Timbers" appears in the Indian Territory. This cartographic labeling became typical in the 1850s and 1860s as the full extent of the region was delineated. By the mid-i85os, the Cross Timbers seemed less exotic and more utilitarian, as seen in the words of Lt. Edward F. Beale s survey of a wagon road designed to help open a route from Fort Smith to the gold fields of California. Along the Canadian River, in the fall of 1858, he wrote, "[W]e are encamped on the northern and western verge [sic] of the Cross Timbers and find the blackjack decidedly the best firewood I ever used."Then, 113

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in words hinting at an awareness of the regions economic potential, Beale added that the blackjack oak "seems inexhaustible in quantity."11 This description implies that civilization was not simply traversing the Cross Timbers, but also exploiting the resources within them. A DEER HUNT IN THE CROSS TIMBERS

As a supplement to subsistence farming, hunting sustained a growing population of farmers in the Cross Timbers ofTexas. The farms that developed from about 1855 to 1875 were small and mostly self-sufficient. Agricultural historian Kenneth Grubbs confirms that "the Cross Timbers was nothing more than an isolated frontier region as late as the Census of 1870," and that "the settlers, what few there had been, were engaged in agricultural production mainly for supplying their own needs."12 In contrast, images in national publications hinted at the Cross Timbers' former wildness. In this regard, Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier's beautiful lithograph "A Deer Drive in the Texas Cross-Timber" (FIG. 3-2) is revealing. Although illustrations of Cross Timbers landscape scenes are surprisingly rare, this one is both enchanting in atmosphere and rich in detail. As it appeared in the February 28,1874, issue of the widely circulated Harper's Weekly, the lithograph shows at least a dozen hunters and their dogs chasing deer through a clearing. Looking beyond the action of the hunt itself, the reader's view is drawn through the prairie opening into the mysterious recesses of the Cross Timbers forest, where huge oaks cling to outcroppings of sandstone. The huge size of several of the trees is noteworthy, as is the artists' depiction of the vines and dense underbrush. Although this illustration presents a slightly romanticized view of the Cross Timbers, it was based on first-hand experience by two highly competent artists. Well known for their skills as landscape illustrators, these Frenchmen traveled to the West after Harpers commissioned them to record scenes there in 1873-1874. Even though the Rocky Mountains and the country of the far West was their primary goal, they managed to take a side trip into Indian Territory and Texas, where they experienced the landscapes of the Cross Timbers and prairies. The illustration that they produced was viewed by a public eager for information about the West. By the 1870s, photographic technology was advancing rapidly, but photographs could not yet be produced in books and newspapers. This Harpers illustration is thus noteworthy in that it appears to be the first widely viewed noncartographic image of the Cross Timbers. This illustration accompanied a firsthand account titled "A Deer Drive," 114

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FIG. 3-2. The Cross Timbers was popularized through stories andgraphics, such as the beautiful lithograph "A Deer Drive in the Texas 'Cross-Timber'" by Frenzeny and Tavernier, which appeared in the February 28,1874, issue o/'Harpers Weekly (Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University ofTexas at Arlington Libraries).

which introduced readers to the region by observing that "the great belt of forest, bordered on each side by prairie lands, which extends through Texas from San Antonio up to the Indian Territory is called the 'Cross Timber/ " The article described the region's "rich and luxuriant vegetation and abundance of game," adding that "in the Cross Timber itself there are but few settlements, but the bordering lands, especially on the eastern side, are well settled, and flourishing crops of cotton, tobacco, corn, etc., are obtained from the rich soil."The article went on to describe that "large herds of cattle range through it," and commented on the "immense droves of hogs" that "fatten in its recesses." Noting that an "old fashioned deer drive" was the favorite sport of local farmers and stock raisers, the article went on to describe in detail a typical hunt in the Cross Timbers. After sounding the "morning call" for a "big drive," the hunters—25 to 35 in number—headed out in the dim morning light. The hunters, who are "well acquainted with the runs of the game,

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and all the ins and outs of the forest, plunge at once into its recesses," as their dogs catch the scent of their quarry. A "wild ride" ensues, with the hunters chasing the deer "now through dense thickets, now through beautiful green openings . . . now down a dry bed of a stream, and now up the side of a steep ravine," where they finally sight their stag. Such pursuits, the article noted, may last eight or ten miles until "the crack of the unerring rifle speaks the victim's doom." After an interval of rest, the hunt for other game resumes, "and the sport is kept up until darkness puts an end to it." After making a camp with "a very picturesque appearance," the men then lie down to sleep, "and silence reigns in the great forest."13 As an interesting side note, this article states that the Cross Timbers extend from San Antonio in the south "up to the Indian Territory" in the north. Most observers claimed that the Cross Timbers began as far south as Waco, but the region did once occupy a larger space on the settlers' collective mental maps. Also, other accounts from the time describe the Cross Timbers as stretching well into the Indian Territory across the Red River, while this author's phrasing suggests otherwise. Also significantly, the illustrated Harper's Weekly story mentioned the area's already proliferating farms, but made no mention of the threat of Indian attacks, which had ended by the time of the magazine article's publication. ROOTS

Who were these European American settlers transforming the Texas Cross Timbers from wilderness to farmland from about 1850 to 1870? According to geographer Terry Jordan, the bulk of these settlers came from the Upland South as opposed to Lower (or Gulf coast) South. These Upland southerners migrated from Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas in the years before the Civil War. As in their ancestral homes farther east, they ranched and farmed the Cross Timbers. As Upland southerners, Jordan notes, they were originally more prone to grow corn, wheat, and oats rather than cotton. Census figures confirm this characterization. Cross Timbers counties in Texas (the only Cross Timbers counties reporting at this early date) produced more than 190,000 bushels of corn, 5,100 bushels ofwheat, and no cotton. By i860, production had jumped to 976,800 bushels of corn, 480,600 bushels of wheat, and 82,600 bales of cotton. As opposed to immigrants from the Deep South, who typically settled parts of eastern Texas, Cross Timbers settlers were also more likely to raise mules, less likely to own slaves, and less likely to support secession of the South from the Union. 116

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A YEAR IN THE CROSS T I M B E R S - SPRING

Spring arrives as the understory leafs out and buds swell in the post oak trees ofthe Eastern Cross Timbers, Arlington, Texas, March, ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE BY THE AUTHOR.

Post oak bursts into early leaf, amidst brightyellow catkins, Arlington, Texas, March 1998.

Post oak forest on rocky upland, Western Cross Timbers, Lake Mineral Wells State Park, Texas, early Aprilipp8.

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Magenta and chartreuse early leaves of post oak saplings, Arlington, Texas, March 1998.

Floweringprickly pear cactus at the edge ofthe Eastern Cross Timbers, Arlington, Texas, May 1992.

Lichen-encrusted sandstone outcropping, above, and sandstone layers exposed in cliff face, Lake Mineral Wells State Park, Texas.

Post oak tree clinging to sandstone escarpment in Western Cross Timbers, Lake Mineral Wells State Park, Texas.

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Under a scorching summer sun, the Cross Timbersprovide shade andrefage, July.

Post oaks andpasturesfroma savanna-like landscape in the Western Cross Timbe nearAlvord, Texas, July iyyj.

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A huge, venerable post oak tree, draped with vines, is apart ofthe Cross Timbers preserved at Fort Worth Nature Center, Tarrant County, Texas.

Smilax and other wirelike vines often form impenetrable growth in the Cross Timbers, Arlington, Texas, July 7997.

I;€:MMMA A Classic Cross Timbers landscape—a wall of post oak and blackjack oak trees seenfrom the adjacentprairie, Fort Worth Nature Center, Tarrant County, Texas, September 1997.

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TIMBERS-FALL

Especially vivid fall colors, as seen here, rarely occur in the Cross Timbers, early December.

Lichen is commonlyfound growing on post oaks in the Cross Timbers, Arlington, Texas, early November.

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Blackjack oak leaves show variegation of colorfromgreen to red near Marietta, Oklahoma, November iyjj.

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At sunset'; riparian vegetation lines the banks of Walnut Bayou, West of Marietta, Oklahoma, November 1997.

Post oak tree in pasture stands at edge of Eastern Cross Timbers, Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, late November.

Blackjack oak sapling in fall color, near Marietta, Oklahoma, November iyyj.

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Riparian vegetation, including pecan trees and vines, put on a show ofbright yellow fall colors along Trinity River, Arlington, Texas, December 199j .

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In winter, brown leaves cling to many ofthe oaks in the Cross Timbers, late December.

The architecture ofthe Cast Iron Forest is revealed in late winter as the post oak trees shed their leaves, Western Cross Timbers, Montague County, Texas, January 1998.

In early winter, post oak trees retain their In early winter, the oak leaves cling leaves as they crown a sandstone rock cut tenaciously to their branches, Arlington, Texas, December 199J. in Arlington, Texas, December 199j.

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Cross Timbersforest arches over a dry stream bed in the Eastern Cross Timbers; Arlington, Texas, December 1997. A glorious sunset in the Eastern Cross Timbers presages the arrival ofa weather front in December.

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In mid-winter, smilax vines adorn a weather-beatenfence post, Tarrant County, Texas, January 1998.

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Others who migrated to the region included Ohio Valley families looking for opportunities in the western lands. Several of them settled at the Peters Colony before the Civil War. According to historian Ty Cashion, who confirms geographer Terry Jordan's findings, these settlers from the Middle Atlantic and Upland South areas "outnumbered those from the Old South."14 Included in this immigration were a number of African American families, who farmed and raised livestock. Hogs were common on early Cross Timbers farms as they were in the post oak belt generally, although farmers might not have agreed with an enthusiastic observer who noted that "the grunters here grow enormously fat on the free offerings of the post-oaks, and need scarcely any corn except to gentle them and 'harden their fat' at killing time."15 Settlers also brought a ranching tradition to the region and helped establish a respectable cattle and horse population there. However, these new ranchers in the Western Cross Timbers region were at the margins of the Texas frontier, and the "dense thickets of the Cross Timbers and the vast empty spaces of Northwest Texas and the Rolling Plains provided any number of places to hide purloined cattle and horses,"16 a situation that later led to the creation of the Northwest Texas Cattle Raisers' Association.17 The ranchers also brought a tradition of working hilly marginal lands like those in the sandy Cross Timbers. This familiarity ensured that the Cross Timbers would both become fenced ranching land and yield to the plow. A TEXAN APPALACHIA

Viewed in terms of broader cultural patterns, the Cross Timbers of Texas are actually part of a larger area that Jordan called the "Texan Appalachia,"18 which extends down into the Texas Hill Country west of Austin. Although the latter area has a somewhat different physical character— consisting mainly of limestone hills and maintaining a different pattern of vegetation, including widely scattered live oaks—the entire Texas Appalachia nevertheless possesses a similar cultural character and marginal agricultural economy. Contemporary observers described it as somewhat backward. The largely Anglo-American population, especially in the northern (Cross Timbers) part ofTexan Appalachia, is directly traceable to Ozarkia (the Ozark-Ouachita area), Appalachia, and ultimately, Pennsylvania and the Middle Atlantic culture hearth. Although they first settled the prairies close to the forests, these Upland southerners were the ones who would ultimately take axe to the region's post and blackjack oaks. As the Texas Cross Timbers' first subsistence farmers, their impact was rather minimal, 117

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with a clearing here and a cluster of log buildings there. That status soon changed, however, as crop prices increased rapidly—an economic factor that brought more farmers westward to take advantage of the rapidly developing market. In addition to feeding the growing cities, Cross Timbers farmers helped meet the needs of the regions many military forts. CROSS TIMBERS GEOPOLITICS

Most new settlers arrived by arduous travel over primitive roads, although some did take steamboats to points high up the Red River into the Cross Timbers. Viewed geopolitically, this rapid settlement was largely enabled by Texas' statehood; the earlier republic had been too impoverished, and too chaotically governed, to allow for much development. Within a few years of statehood, U.S. military authorities confronted alleged and actual Indian threats to settlement by building a series of military outposts, such as Fort Belknap, Fort Worth, and Fort Richardson. Ideally, these forts would form a system of fortified points protecting settlers from raids by the Wichita and the Comanche Indians. However, the system of forts developed over a fairly long period, from the 1840s to the 1870s, and was never a monolithic system of frontier defense. Rather, the pattern of forts evolved over several decades, with forts of different time periods serving different purposes; for example, Fort Belknap was founded in June of 1851 as the northern anchor of Texas forts but was abandoned in 1867, shortly after the founding of Fort Griffin.19 Thus, a fort built for one purpose at one time would no longer be of value in frontier defense as settlers continued to move into areas and the Native Americans would also move about the region. In the decade before the Civil War, Texans' frustrations with efforts to subdue the Comanche and other tribes led to the establishment of two small Indian reservations along the western edge of the Upper Cross Timbers in 1854. The westernmost reservation was for Comanches exclusively, while the eastern reservation was for an agglomeration of eastern tribes such as the Caddos, Delawares, and Tonkawas. Created under the orders of Col. Randolph B. Marcy, these reservations were called, respectively, the Comanche and the Brazos. Located a relatively short distance from each other in what are today adjacent Throckmorton and Young Counties, they symbolized the Cross Timbers' two major Indian cultures—the nomadic Plains Indians and the somewhat more sedentary eastern tribes. Despite stated intentions, the reservations were considered a failure as the Indians living on them were accused of continuing their depredations. 118

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Mounting public pressure and vigilante hostility against the Indians resulted in the reservations' closure in 1859. As a consequence, many of the displaced Indians wound up in the Cross Timbers of the Indian Territory. Possibly in recognition of their Plains heritage, the Comanche were sent to western Indian Territory, where short-grass prairie dominated the landscape. The political apportioning of land in the nineteenth century thus led to a primary spatial difference in the way the Cross Timbers were settled: land north of the Red River was set aside as Indian Territory, so agrarian yeoman settlement developed more quickly in the Texas Cross Timbers than in its northern counterpart. Thus, a full generation passed before the area now known as Oklahoma witnessed its own aggressive agricultural settlement. The Cross Timbers of Texas and Indian Territory also came into the public consciousness at midcentury through events far to the West. The discovery of gold in California inspired a new wave of travelers to pass through the Cross Timbers. For a brief period in the late 1850s, the Southern Overland Mail stagecoaches rolled through portions of the Cross Timbers, in both Texas and the Indian Territory, on the fabled Butterfield Trail. Traveling night and day on a breakneck schedule, the stagecoaches traveled diagonally through the Indian lands of present-day southeastern Oklahoma, where they skirted the main body of the Cross Timbers. After crossing the Red River and reaching Gainesville, Texas, however, the trail began heading in a more westerly direction. On this part of its route, the trail crossed directly through the distinctive Texas Cross Timbers. Among the best accounts of traveling the Butterfield stage line in 1858 was that of writer Waterman Lilly Ormsby, Jr., who noted that soon after leaving Gainesville "we strike the Lower Cross Timbers," where "the trees grow wide apart, and are mainly of post oak."20 Ormsby further noted that "the open spaces, absence of underbrush, and clean looking grass gave the entire wood the appearance of a vast orchard." This account emphasizes that the term "Cross Timbers" referred both to a forest with a dense, nearly impenetrable understory as well as to a more open, savanna-type forest with fairly widely spaced oak trees. Historian A. C. Greene observed that travelers along this route had found the dense growth of the Eastern Cross Timbers an obstacle to travel, but had located "holes" through it. He further characterized the Western Cross Timbers as an area of drier, thinner soils with "mainly smallish oak growth (called 'scrub oak') and post oak," adding that "the Western Cross Timbers helps create a more interesting, more soothing, landscape than 119

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what the traveler encounters farther west."21 It was in these "verdant but empty spaces," like the densely forested Western Cross Timbers west of Decatur, that travelers would have their last look at forests before reaching the prairie and desert lands beyond. During the 1850s, the area north of the Red River remained Indian Territory. As recently recounted by Oklahoma historian Stan Hoig in Beyond the Frontier: Exploring the Indian Country, the area was originally crisscrossed by Indian trails, but a network of military and trade roads had recently been developed. This Texas Road, as it was called in Indian Territory, extended from Denison, Texas, northward through Fort Washita, Boggy Depot, North Fork Town, and Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, while the road to Santa Fe and California split at North Fork Town, Indian Territory, and ran westward. Throughout the territory, the U.S. military kept the peace in an uneasy alliance with the native peoples. During the 1850s, the Indian nations had formed their own system of alliances, which bore some relationship to the natural environment—with the settled, agricultural Five Civilized Tribes to the east of the Cross Timbers and the mobile, nomadic Comanche and Kiowa to the west. These divisions were in part preserved by the presence of U.S. troops. However, as numerous U.S. troops at Forts Wichita and Arbuckle left for Utah to help put down the Mormon rebellion in 1858, the unprotected areas predictably came under attack by the Comanche who, although plains dwellers, raided into the Cross Timbers. In response, an expedition of "Woods Indians" was organized by Chickasaw Indian agent Douglas Cooper to raid the prairie tribes.22 While in pursuit, the group led by Cooper moved through the Cross Timbers in southern Indian Territory, where a group of Mormon immigrants had temporarily settled in 1846. Cooper accused the Mormons of attempting to incite the Comanches, Kiowas, and Wichitas to attack U.S. military supply trains heading for Utah to help suppress the rebellion. Thus, although this part of the Cross Timbers was nominally Indian Territory, some Anglo-Americans had begun making their homes there before the Civil War.23 During the Civil War (1861-1865), the development of the Cross Timbers region was constantly threatened by both Indian raids and the acrimony between Unionists and Confederates. With men away fighting major battles farther east or defending the Texas coast against Union invasion, the defense against Indians became a major issue. In 1863, Native Americans killed four settlers in Montague County, Texas, and killed a farmer and captured several other settlers in nearby Parker County. Gen. Henry McCulloch faced the herculean task of stabilizing a Cross Timbers

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frontier where loyalties were divided between North and South.24 Moreover, gangs of "deserters, skulkers and bad men generally" could hide in the wild, forested area bounded by Bonham, Dallas, and Gainesville. To supplement frontier defenses there, the Brush Battalion was created to ferret out both deserters and entrenched Union sympathizers who had taken to the woods. The battalion also contended with Comanches who continued their raids against settlers.25 Similarly, in Indian Territory, several battles were fought with the Comanche during the Civil War. There the Confederacy formed an alliance with the Cherokee (some of whom actually held African American slaves) following the pullout of Union troops sent to fight in the battles raging in the East and South. The Cherokee found themselves divided in loyalties; full-blooded and mostly nonslaveholding Cherokees against rival mixed-blood regiments. This confrontation left the Cherokees7 newfound homeland in Indian Territory badly war-scarred and severely neglected.26 Recent research by Whit Edwards, director of education for the Oklahoma Historical Society, suggests that warfare between Union and Confederate troops there was far more common than most historians have recognized. Edwards notes that Union and Confederate troops engaged each other on 105 occasions in 1863 and 1864. In one particularly intense encounter in October 1864, Confederate forces attacked a Kansasbased Union supply and refugee train. As reported by a startled Union private, "The guerrillas charged out of the brush and timber with yells and shrieks, setting the prairie on fire, enveloping the train with a dense volume of smoke, thus screening the strength of their number."27 This vivid description confirms that warfare should be added to the list of mans environmental impacts on the Cross Timbers region. The Civil War momentarily slowed settlement in the Texas Cross Timbers region. It also reaffirmed the regions geopolitical position, for Union support was strongest in Kansas while the Confederate support was strongest in Texas. Flanked by these two areas, war-torn Oklahoma suffered even more due to its ambiguous status as neither northern nor southern. After the war, however, many soldiers returned home to the region to renew their cultivation of farms. In Indian Territory, would-be settlers pointed to the Cherokees' support of the Confederacy to sustain claims against their lands. The legacy of the war continued with Reconstruction efforts in Texas into the 1870s. Before, during, and after the Civil War, the threat of Indian attacks persisted in the Cross Timbers—especially to the west, where the Plains Indians gained a reputation for hitting hard. Understandably, westward-

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moving travelers looked back, literally and metaphorically, at the Cross Timbers as the protective fringe of civilization. Yet even here there were dangers. In August 1866, a group of Kiowa Indians, led by the legendary leader Satanta, headed northward from central Texas into the Cross Timbers region after an unsuccessful battle with a wagon train of would-be settlers. After reaching the rolling country dotted by farms in the vicinity of Elm Creek, near Gainesville, Satanta s group encountered a hapless white farmer driving his family home after visiting neighbors. In an act that horrified Texas settlers, the Indians killed and scalped James Box, slew his 10-year-old son, and carried off Box's wife and four daughters. The terrified captives were taken to Indian Territory, where Satanta ransomed them for a large sum at Fort Dodge, Kansas. The wily Satanta was so pleased with the high ransom that he reportedly observed, a[S]tealing white women was more lucrative than stealing horses."28 However, raids on white settlers were to prove more costly to the Kiowa and all native peoples, for the attacks only strengthened the resolve of whites, who recited a litany of native depredations—some of them fabricated—as justification for eradicating the native population through military campaigns and vigilantism. The chief aim of the U.S. government's Indian policy was to subdue Native Americans, either by eliminating them militarily or by forcing them onto reservations. However, because the Cross Timbers were a huge geographical area stretching across state and territorial jurisdictions, official responses toward Native Americans there varied from place to place. This inconsistency was exacerbated by geopolitical realities lingering from the Civil War. Historian Charles Robinson III speculates that "the federal government did not find the Box [family] incident very disagreeable," because "Texas was, after all, an occupied former confederate state and a recent enemy, and as such did not possess the political influence of Kansas."29 Texas, then undergoing the painful process of Reconstruction in 1870, continued to suffer from Indian raids. At Fort Sill, in Indian Territory—the peace-seeking Kiowa leader Kicking Bird's assertions notwithstanding—Indian Agent Laurie Tatum observed that "the Indians do not intend to commit depredations here this summer, but from their actions and sayings they intend to continue their atrocities in Texas." Incensed at the Kiowas' and Comanches' recalcitrance, and at the federal government's inability to halt raids, General William Tecumseh Sherman himself suggested that "when there is proof of murder and robbery, the actual perpetrators [should] be surrendered to the Governor ofTexas for trial and punishment." Sherman glibly concluded, "A few examples will have a salutary effect."30 Texans, too, recognized their own greater peril from Indian at122

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tacks than their neighbors to the north. Their desperation may explain why they turned to force over diplomacy. Even so, the forceful dispossession of Native Americans had been a fact of life in Texas since its days as a republic, when president Mirabeau Lamar had given Indians three clear choices: acquiesce to settlers' demands, move out, or be killed. In the end, Shermans boast proved prophetic, for the Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree were taken to Jacksboro, Texas, where they were convicted of murder and initially sentenced to life in prison. By the 1870s, intense Indian-white conflict had shifted northwestward onto the Great Plains, though the Cross Timbers were not immune to violence. The Indians at Fort Sill, at the western edge of the Cross Timbers in Indian Territory, were reported to be completely out of control. Most Kiowa and Comanche raids took place beyond the Cross Timbers, but some reached well into it, as when Comanche chief White Horse led a foray into Montague County, Texas, in 1870, killing a settler named Gottlieb Koozier and forcing his wife and young son into captivity. On the same raid, the Comanche also kidnapped a boy named Martin Kilgore. As expected, the Texas press blamed not only the Comanche, sarcastically calling them "proteges of civilization," but also the federal government and the "Quaker pets," who were active in ensuring fair treatment to the Indians on reservations.31 As a postscript to this bloody frontier episode, the Comanche did surrender both the remaining members of Koozier's family and Martin Kilgore during negotiations with U.S. troops. Nevertheless, the popular sentiment in Texas remained not only anti-Indian, but also deeply distrustful of federal authorities. Evidence shows that timbered areas provided places of ambush by Indians. One such locale was a dense thicket of oaks at the base of a sandstone hill near Cox Mountain, Texas. Under the command of Big Tree, Comanche raiders ambushed a wagon train hauling corn to Fort Griffin. As they swept out onto the prairie to attack, the Comanches likely used both the hill for strategic advantage and the forest for cover. Although the Indians ravaged the wagons, some of the harried teamsters managed to fight their way to the protective timber and escape what soon became known as the Warren Wagon Train Massacre. The event prompted Maj. Gen. Sherman to declare, "I do think that the people ofTexas have a right to complain." Sherman added that their complaints should be directed not against the seemingly ineffective troops, but rather toward the Department of the Interior's Indian Bureau, which "harbors these Indians when their hands are yet red with blood."32 If, as historian Ty Cashion has observed, the Western Cross Timbers 123

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FIG. 3-3. / . / / . Cottons Map ofTexas ( J 5 6 ^ reveals the complex network of roads and county boundaries that marked the transition from pioneer times to settlement. The Cross Timbers are barely distinguishable amidst all the other information, and are located too far west (Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University ofTexas at Arlington Libraries).

was possibly the bloodiest of America's frontiers, that distinction may be explained, at least in part, by its unique geographical position at the interface of several cultures. The Cross Timbers marked a zone of interaction between the Spanish/Mexican and Indian/French cultures in the early nineteenth century, and between Native American and Anglo-American culture in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, with a profound sectional split developing in the United States by the mid nineteenth century, the Cross Timbers had a nebulous identity as the frontier edge of both the West and the South. Thus, it reaped both the characteristically violent European Indian conflicts typical of western frontier settlement, and the insidious African American-European American violence that characterized the worst chapters in southern U.S. history. At the western edge of the Cross Timbers, forts were few and civilization remote, as is depicted on J. H. Coltons 1869 map of Texas, which appeared in the popular Coltons Condensed Octavo Atlas (FIG. 3-3). This map reveals, by the depiction of counties west of the Cross Timbers, that settlement was occurring then. Significantly, the Cross Timbers on this 124

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map are incorrectly positioned too far west. In this area, at the western edge of settlement, Indian resistance continued well into the 1870s. In 1872, Miner K. Kellogg described frontier farm life in the Texas Cross Timbers as under constant threat of Indian attack. He observed that farmer Charley Marlett "always goes armed and never leaves his house without a man left to guard it," adding that "in ploughing he fastens his gun on the plough." According to Kellogg, the farmers cabin was partially stockaded.33 After crossing rough stone roads through several poor grass prairies and parks of scrub oak, Kellogg met a farmer named Pleasant Cooley, who had killed an Indian the previous fall.34 At yet another location, Kellogg describes a farmer who, at the edge of the Cross Timbers, "has here opened up a little farm on a little prairie and in six months has a field of fine healthy corn growing and fenced in with brush." Aware of the farmer's isolation, however, Kellogg then ominously concluded that the "Indians can easily gobble him."35 F A R M I N G ' S I M P A C T ON T H E CROSS T I M B E R S

To the farmers who initially transformed the landscape of the Cross Timbers, the region must have seemed daunting at first. In addition to facing angry Native Americans determined to hold their native lands, farmers could not settle much of the region without much hard work with the axe. Although the plow would continue churning the native soil of the Cross Timbers with the westward migration, settlers clearly preferred the adjoining grasslands, whose soils were easier to till. As a result, the forested areas in the Cross Timbers were settled relatively late. As geographer Terry Jordan noted, "[T]he early Anglo-Texans, rather than being repelled by grasslands, were quite favorably inclined toward them and actually sought out prairies as places to settle, so long as timber was available in the vicinity."36 Jordan concluded that "consequently, it was the late-comers who settled either the closed forests, where no prairies were present, or the open grasslands devoid of timber."37 Having little desire to clear large tracts of land, the new settlers tended to prefer the prairie, provided that a supply of wood was nearby. Most agreed with William Kennedy that "to hew out a farm from the heart of the primeval forest is a ponderous and lifeconsuming task, even for the American back-woodsman, accustomed to wield the axe from boyhood."38 An 1852 manuscript map of the Peters Colony filed in the Texas State Land Office reveals the process by which the land was divided following the surveyor's transit. That the Cross Timbers served as a landmark at that 125

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time is seen in the map's delineation of what the surveyor called the "East Line of Cross Timbers" and the "West Line of Cross Timbers" in the area east of the fledgling Fort Worth. The word "Line" here meant the eastern and western boundaries of the Lower Cross Timbers; the fact that much of the area between these two lines was both forested and unsurveyed suggests the forested lands were the least desirable. They were certainly settled later than the more attractive, open lands. The settlement of the Cross Timbers was complicated by the intricate pattern of interspersed forest and prairie vegetation, but Jordan's argument holds. Studies of county histories confirm that most early settlers selected the prairie margins or oak savanna areas, where a mixture of grassland and trees abounded. The settlement of Comanche County, Texas, maybe taken as typical of the Western Cross Timbers, and that ofTarrant County typical of the Eastern Cross Timbers. In both counties, the earliest lasting settlements were established at the margins of the prairie and the Cross Timbers forest. This pattern suggests that the edge effect that sustains larger animal populations also encourages and nurtures human settlement. However, of equal importance in the choice of lands were many other factors, such as access to roads and streams with dependable water. As historians Gutmann and Sample recently noted in their interpretation of Texas settlement, "[W]e found that water was important, but that mans other means of manipulating the environment—especially the transportation network—probably contributed as much or more to the extent to which people lived in rural Texas."39 Indeed, the transportation pattern of the Cross Timbers did consist of several major routes, some running east-west and some running north-south. In many cases, these roads followed the routes of early Indian trails, but in other cases, they followed routes traveled by military expeditions and surveys. Thus, by the mid-i85os, a regional road pattern began to appear. Because the character of an area's settlement is determined by several factors, including the source area of migrants and the time of settlement, a closer look at the Western Cross Timbers is instructive. The Anglo presence in the region superseded the old north-south axis of Spanish/Mexican military routes. In its place the Anglo-Americans brought a decidedly east-west focus to travel and settlement. By the mid-i85os, two military roads reached toward the west Texas frontier: the first extended from Fort Graham on the Brazos River northwestward into the area that would become Johnson, Parker, Palo Pinto and Young Counties toward Fort Belknap; the second reached from Fort Worth westward across the Grand Prairie 126

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into what is now Palo Pinto County. According to historian Rupert Richardson, these roads also "afforded long stretches where pioneers might locate their homes and still have some contact with the world outside."40 An enthusiastic settler in 1856 noted that by "following the beaten track from Fort Graham to Fort Belknap, you will after a tedious journey through the Cross Timbers reach a range of rugged but open hills with the Brazos like a silver thread meandering through the valley."41 This passage confirms that the open lands, rather than the Cross Timbers, represented the settlers' destination. It is likely that these more open, and hence attractive, lands were developed on limestone soils. According to Richardson, although "the prevailing timber was blackjack and its sturdier cousin, post oak . . . the region is not a compact body of sandy and gravelly land, covered by forests of oak b u t . . . it is streaked by wide stretches of prairie soils of limestone and conglomerate origin." Richardson added that "there are areas as large as half a county where the heavier soils prevail, and the post oak and blackjack appear as relatively small segments."42 To many new arrivals, the Texas Cross Timbers did not appear very promising. Jonathan Hamilton Baker, a Virginian who moved to Palo Pinto County in 1858, kept a diary outlining his impressions of the area. First traveling through the lush prairies along the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, Baker noted on May 21, "There are some fine lands in this section." The next day, with a discerning eye on the landscape, Baker recorded that his party "travelled through the grapevine prairie and the lower Cross Timbers a distance of about 18 miles," adding that "the lower part of the prairie is poor land but the western part is fine farming land." However, Baker was succinct in his assessment of the Cross Timbers' potential for farming, stating unequivocally that "the land in the Cross Timbers is of an inferior quality."The next several days found Baker commenting on both rich and poor prairie sites, but his assessment of the Cross Timbers did not waver. On May 27, he observed, "The most of the country is poor and thinly settled," and added that the countryside was "timber land the most of the way, though the timber is very little and scrubby." Observing the prairie enclaves, however, Baker concluded, "The grass beyond Rock Creek for 8 miles is the finest I ever saw."43 From the outset, then, the region's basic pattern of vegetation helped dictate the shape of settlement. Although settlers avoided the dense Cross Timbers forests, the regions oaks were very important. Surveyors used them to determine the boundaries of surveyed lands, following the metes and bounds system—that is, using natural features rather than geographic coordinates as survey points. Landmarks used by surveyors often included 127

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trees, which were mentioned by type and size. One such surveyor was Charles William Pressler, a former captain of engineers in the Confederate Army. Pressler found his way to the frontier forts, which were being reactivated after the Civil War as bases to protect settlers. After taking his "oath of amnesty," Pressler helped survey several new forts, including Fort Richardson in the Western Cross Timbers. His detailed survey notes reveal that he used features such as "a pile of stones, from which a Post oak 9 in dia[meter]" was located. Pressler used similar features across the site, until the property was completely surveyed.44 His field notes reveal how readily Pressler was able to differentiate both types of oaks common to the Cross Timbers, for he specifically mentions post oak and blackjack oak on numerous occasions. These Cross Timbers oaks were becoming more important as settlement pressed into the region. They supplied wood for house construction and wooden rails for a highly important agricultural feature—fencing. Given their short length and relative strength, the post oaks were said to be well suited for fence posts. In fact, the name "post oak" strongly suggests this particular use. One authority has noted that post oaks are "durable in contact with the soil,"45 while others have simply noted that it is "extensively used" for fence posts without explaining why.46 The early farmers in the region used smaller oaks for fencing, but preferred larger timber for buildings. However, these ubiquitous trees had other uses. In addition to serving as lumber and firewood, the oaks of the Cross Timbers were employed in household crafts. In the ethnically diverse Indian Territory, and perhaps elsewhere in the Cross Timbers, oak was used to dye cloth for clothing, blankets, and other uses. Blackjack, post oak, and red oak produced black, brown, red, and purple dyes.47 In Texas, "most women looked to the woods for their colorings, collecting plants (root, leaf, and flower), bark, and nut hulls," and "most natural dyes gave muted natural shades—browns, olive greens, tans, yellow tans—in contrast to the coveted vibrance of skeins dyed with commercial madder and indigo."48 This passage suggests that the native plants of the Cross Timbers, as elsewhere, sufficed only until the more attractive commercial dyes became available with the coming of the railroad and prosperity. CROSS TIMBERS PIONEER ARCHITECTURE

The typical pioneer farm near, or later in, the Texas Cross Timbers region relied on the forest's relatively short and sometimes crooked oak trees for building materials. Historian Richardson speculated that "the prevailing 128

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post oak of the Cross Timbers supplied an abundance of building material," adding somewhat sarcastically, "such as it was."49 Despite the claim that 14-foot logs were reportedly needed for constructing log homes at the time,50 the logs in Richardson's boyhood home in Stephens County ran measurably less. Other researchers have also suggested that log homes in the Cross Timbers were somewhat smaller than their counterparts farther east due to the shorter lengths of log available. Jordan and others confirm that post oak, rather than blackjack oak, was used in the construction of cabins because blackjack is inferior, tending to rot from the center. In a series of recollections recorded long after the fact, pioneer farmer W. S. Ikard described how the Ikard brothers had created a home out of the Cross Timbers of Palo Pinto County in the 1850s. First, "the trees were chopped down with an axe, hewn with a broad axe, laid in place, and daubed with mud." Their efforts yielded "a log cabin with no windows [in order] to protect them from marauding Indians."51 Their fears were not based on idle speculation, as the historical record confirms some positively brutal Comanche raids on settlers of the Western Cross Timbers—in part a result of the bitterness over the indignities the Comanche had suffered at their west Texas Indian reservation. A fear of these raids—which historian Ty Cashion says were conducted in "calculated retribution to repay the treachery and broken promises that had uprooted tribes"52—probably inspired the fortified, sometimes windowless, architecture of the Cross Timbers region. The Ikard family originally hailed from the Palatinate area of the upper Rhine River of Germany, but likely learned log construction techniques from other pioneers who were adjusting to the social and environmental conditions of the frontier. The basic Cross Timbers log house of the 1860s or 1870s was either a simple single-pen dwelling or "the two-room cabin, built generally in packsaddle fashion," which "might serve as the next step in size."53 Descriptions of the time, and sketches drawn from recollections, reveal that the log houses were often two rooms, and featured chimneys made out of sandstone, a common building material in the Cross Timbers. The Isaac Parker home, built in the Eastern Cross Timbers community of Birdville in 1848, provides a good example (FIG. 3-4). To build the Sabers family home in Comanche County, the "father cut oak trees, some burr oaks, and built us a large room and a side room. He stood the adze, made puncheons and floored it."54 Other types of buildings in the region were also made from the local oaks; in Palo Pinto County, Texas, for example, "the school house and benches were also built of logs, the latter split in half."55 In 1872, Miner K. Kellogg described Jacksboro as a "straggling village of 129

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FIG. 3-4. The Isaac Parker home, originally built in 1848 at Birdville, Tarrant County, Texas, typifies the early log dogtrot style homes in the Texas Cross Timbers (Fort Worth Log Cabin Village, 1998photo by author).

frame and log houses, dreadfully dilapidated and propped up." Kellogg did note, however, that "a two story stone house is the courthouse of this county seat of Jack Co[unty]."56 This courthouse, constructed of red sandstone just the year before,57 already resonated with Cross Timbers lore. Kellogg noted that it had recently gained notoriety as the location in which the two "Comanche chiefs" —Satanta and Big Tree—were tried. Actually, the defendants were Kiowa, but Kellogg likely considered them one and the same—marauding Plains Indians. Continuing his travels, Kellogg was unimpressed with the Anglo-American settlements. He described Montague, Texas, as "a miserable hamlet," adding that it had "a jail... of squared logs," about twenty feet on a side, with only one small barred window.58 Like Kellogg, most other travelers to the region before the arrival of the railroad mentioned the crude, rough-hewn log construction that typified the forested frontier. Cross Timbers architecture did change with the availability of finished lumber from other areas. Typical county histories in the Texas Cross Timbers note that "the early settlers lived in log houses to begin with, but later built frame dwellings."59 Writer John Graves described a double-log house near the Western Cross Timbers by the Brazos River. The building s form suggested "a log-cabin people abruptly presented with lumber." Graves noted that few log houses were built once boards and other lumber arrived 130

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from the east Texas mills on the railroad, which began serving the area in the late 1870s and early 1880s. With the arrival of finished lumber and the construction of balloon-framed lumber houses, he noted, "the old arts of the froe and the maul and the adze and the broadaxe died." Graves concluded that "by then the good post oaks had just about been cut down, anyhow," and "existing cabins were often planked over and their dog runs enclosed."60 Despite the widespread disappearance of log buildings from the Cross Timbers, some were saved for posterity. Moved to Fort Worths Log Cabin Village during the 1960s from the Texas Cross Timbers, the buildings are fairly diverse, even including a large two-story log dwelling typical of more prosperous farms farther east. Built of logs from larger pecan and other trees in the riparian areas, the Harry A. Foster home represents what could be done with large trees. Most of the homes from the Cross Timbers, however, are small, crude cabins that exemplify the compromises and toughness of life on the margins of the southwestern frontier.61 Geographer Terry Jordan and others familiar with the regions historic architecture note that some log homes remain in the Cross Timbers, hidden beneath later exterior sheathing, such as clapboard and even aluminum siding. Others have been re-erected on new sites for historical interest. The Fuller Millsap cabin, now located at Millsap, Texas, is one example. In Albany, Texas, the Ledbetter Picket house (built between 1874 and 1877 in the Western Cross Timbers) represents an example of vertical log construction that was "commonly used by both the military and civilian builders in the area, probably because it lent itself to the use of smaller oak timber that was readily available."62 (FIG. 3-5)

FIG. 3-5. An example ofverticallypositioned log construction, the Ledbetter Picket House in Albany, Texas, was originally built sometime between 1874 andiSjy near Fort Griffin at the western edge ofthe Western Cross Timbers, reportedly of post oak logs (Drawing by author). 131

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FIG. 3-6. A. R. Roesslers Latest Map of the State ofTexas (1874) shows two belts of Cross Timbers and a wealth of European American settlements connected by railroad lines, many of which were still in the planning stages (Courtesy Center for American History, The University ofTexas at Austin).

These homes fit into a pattern of advancing European American settlement. By 1874, A. R. Roesslers "Latest Map of the State of Texas" (FIG. 3-6), which depicts the Cross Timbers as two distinct belts of forest, shows the increasing level ofwhite settlement through the proliferation of AngloAmerican place-names and communities, such as Weatherford and Decatur, and the numerous railroad lines, many of them still in the proposal stage. 132

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Significantly, on this map, the Cross Timbers ends abruptly at the Red River, where the name "Chicasaw Nation" is prominent. North of the Red River—an area that an 1867 "Travelers Map of the State of Texas" labeled as "Arable lands with an Abundance of good timber and water"—log farmsteads began to proliferate after the Civil War. They were built by a diverse group of new settlers, including Native Americans, African Americans, and some European Americans (the latter often squatting illegally on the unassigned lands). These folk, who had begun settling the Indian Territory Cross Timbers somewhat later than the Texas Cross Timbers had been settled, marked the advance guard of agricultural settlement that would truly flourish with the opening of lands there after 1889 (FIG. yj). Generally, the only log cabins in western Oklahoma are in the Cross Timbers and along streams, where timber was available. Both the Cross Timbers and the oak savanna of central and eastern Oklahoma provided a source of logs; however, two architectural historians there speculate that "the blackjack and post oak trees of the Cross Timbers were usually small and difficult to use because of their varying sizes."63 As in Texas, log building in the Cross Timbers of Indian Territory involved challenges,

FIG. $-j. Photographedin 1890, this log dwelling on the Sac and Fox reservation ofthe Indian Territory typifies dwellings constructed in portions ofthe Cross Timbers. Note what appears to be a blackjack oak sapling in the left foreground, and the impact of hunting activity as evidenced by bobcat and otherpelts tacked to the building (Cunningham PhotoNo. 322, Courtesy Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library).

133

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FIG. 3-8. This 1892 photograph of the FinleyBowen family farm in Lincoln County, east of the Unassigned Lands of the Indian Territory, shows a typical single-pen log home, a number of log outbuildings, and the scrubby oaks characteristic of the Cross Timbers, some of the latter apparently damaged by a "cyclone" (Photo no. 15175, Courtesy Archives and Manuscripts Division, Oklahoma Historical Society).

and settlers made do with what was available. The scrubby oaks of the Cross Timbers may not have been the best of trees, but they were commonly used to construct shelter for both man and beast. In the 1930s, a search of photographic records and oral history tapes revealed that log houses were common in Indian Territory. Oak was among the materials commonly used, and descriptions confirm that log houses in the Indian Territory were similar to those in Texas. According to one source, they "contained only a limited number of small doors and windows, as cutting such openings weakened the structure."64 In Indian Territory, as in Texas, mud was used to "chink" or fill the spaces between the logs, creating a familiar pattern of dark-colored logs alternating with buff to yellowish red daubing. However, one informant revealed the inadequate sealing in some log dwellings: "I slept in a room where the cracks between the logs were wide enough for a cat to crawl through."65 As in Texas, many of these log homes were single-pen cabins (FIG. 3-8), but some used the common floor plan "of a double log cabin consisting of two log rooms (or pens'), with an open-air passageway (or 'dogtrot') between, all under one roof." A few even contained second stories or lofts.66 Some chimneys—called cat chimneys—were made of logs, sticks, and mud, but brick and stone were also used. A study of Oklahoma's log-building

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FIG. 3-9. In this 1890s photography the Robert Ransonfamily pose in front oftheir house, which is constructed ofverticallypositioned logs. Note what appears to be apost oak at the left (Photo no. 7923, Courtesy ofthe Archives and Manuscripts Division, Oklahoma Historical Society).

tradition suggests, interestingly, that the earlier log buildings (those built between 1850 and 1884) were actually better constructed than the later buildings thrown up during the homesteading period of 1885-1899. In addition to the traditional horizontally laid logs, one could also occasionally find logs positioned vertically, as in the picket houses of Texas. Homes constructed using this technique were variously called "stockade," "picket," or "pole" houses, and most appear to have been constructed from about 1885 to 1899 (FIG. 3-9). In a Works Progress Administration interview from the 1930s, F. E. Fanning— who had moved from Texas to Oklahoma in 1887—recalled that "the logs were split and we stood them up instead of laying them lengthwise." Fanning added that "then we would take another split log to cover the cracks."67 Besides being a way to take advantage of the short logs available, "stockade houses may have been easier for one man, working alone, to construct."68 Although the technique of picket or palisade construction is often associated with the French in the Mississippi Valley, no correlation between this construction and ethnicity existed in the Cross Timbers of Oklahoma. Rather, it seems possible that the technique was developed out of the practical concerns of Texas Cross Timbers life, including a limited number of workers and relatively short logs. Interestingly, vertical construction using

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additional logs to cover the cracks, also characterizes the board-andbatten (or locally, "box-and-strip") construction typical of some Caddo Indian huts69 as well as many small sharecroppers' houses. The latter, however, used finished lumber (usually milled pine) rather than unfinished stock. The vernacular architecture of the Oklahoma Cross Timbers reflects both the relative poverty and rich ethnicity of the region in the late nineteenth century. One study suggests that Native Americans, most of whom had been moved by force to the area from homelands farther east and south, had likely introduced the log home into the region; however, many of these Native Americans learned the idea from whites encountered while journeying west to the Indian Territory. Here, as in other locales, certain aspects of a dwelling—such as the size of the building and the treatment of the logs (for example, hewn vs. unhewn), and the presence or absence of a masonry or mud chimney—indicated the owner's social status.70 As in Texas, with increasing prosperity and access to markets, houses often began to lose their frontier appearance as they were sided with finished boards, including shiplap and novelty siding. THE BIRTH OF AN AGRICULTURAL REGION

The Texas Cross Timbers took about a decade to recover from the Civil War and the painful process of Reconstruction. This slump is seen in both population and agricultural production statistics. In i860, for example, the Cross Timbers counties ofTexas had produced 82,600 bales of cotton (19.1 percent of the state total) but that figure declined to 22,800 bales (only 6.5 percent of the state total) by 1870. Similarly, wheat production dropped from 480,600 bushels in i860 to 224,200 by 1870. Population actually declined in several counties during the period, though it was rising again by the 1870s. This growth was fueled by several factors. Textile prices rose after the Civil War, and by about 1870 the region's agricultural economy began to become more dependent on cotton.71 By 1880, the Texas Cross Timbers population increased as did cotton production, which jumped to 143,000 bales. Wheat figures expanded to 2,558,000 bushels as farms proliferated. The movement of farmers into the region thus occurred as a consequence of technological and economic change. Farmers benefited from improved steel plows, more efficient cotton ginning methods, and a burgeoning market. It was at this time, the late nineteenth century, that the Cross Timbers began to take on a clear identity as an agricultural but otherwise marginally settled part of Texas. In fact, the term "Cross Tim136

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ber" or "Cross Timbers" was used for a lifestyle that was at once frontierlike and pragmatic, but also peculiar and enigmatic. For example, a story titled "Cross Timber Justice," which appeared in the March 29,1875, Austin Intelligencer Echo, described a situation in Cooke County in which a settler had been accused of stealing a cow. Despite the man's claim of innocence, the absence of proof that he had committed the crime, and the judge's belief in the mans innocence, the accused was nevertheless bound over for appearance and placed under a $600 bond. Why? The judge felt compelled to take this action simply because many cows had been stolen and no one had been punished yet!72 In another peculiar example of Cross Timbers logic, a school superintendent reportedly granted a certificate (the equivalent of a diploma that might ultimately enable one to become a teacher) to a student solely because the applicant could correctly spell the word surcingle, meaning a "bolt or band," such as that tied around a horse to secure a saddle.73 These frontier eccentricities gained attention and contributed to the regions reputation as a backward area at the fringes of civilization. THEY CALLED IT "PROGRESS"

By about 1880, the population of the Western Cross Timbers had begun to grow rapidly, although the Dallas Herald'noted haughtily, and inaccurately, that "for a distance of 600 miles west of Dallas scarcely anyone lives." The paper was quick to add that the construction of the Texas and Pacific Railroad would change that situation because "the lands are rich and the climate as salubrious as our own."74 That area west of Dallas did indeed grow, in part as a response to what one historian called "the favorable natural condition [sic] such as the prevalence of abundant sources of water, wood, and loose fertile soil, capable of producing a wide variety of farm staples."75 But it was, above all, the coming of the railroads and the later building of roads that enabled farmers to transport goods to market and thus permitted such rapid growth. The large land grants awarded to the railroads in Texas fueled speculation and resulted in ambitious schemes to lure settlers. One such speculative venture involved the Franco-Texan Land Company, which was created to sell the lands bordering the railroad. In 1873, it offered more than half a million acres of land that had been selected "along the future line of the [Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific] railroad, along the river fronts, in the fertile plains, in timber lands."76 The company produced promotional information (FIG. 3-10) luring prospective buyers/settlers to the land, which

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The Finest Lands'in the f r i t 5O0.00O ACRE! That splendid body of lands recently owned by the

Extending through Porker, Palo Pinto, Stevens, Nolan, Shackelford, Taylor and Jones counties and comprehending

•

1500,000 ACRES! j | !

Has been bought by the undersigned and are now offered for salo on easy terms. Those lands were specially selected out of

'•MAM MILLIONS OF ACEES

I reserved to tho Texas and Pacific Railway and comprehend tho very finest lands to bo found in Texas.

C0TT0EG0RN.OATS Wheat, Fruits and Vegetables

Aro grown to perfection. To parties wishing homes in a

HealthyCoumtry and upon fertile lands we offer special inducements. Address

JAMES B. SIMPSON, ftwHent Interstate Baihrey Company,

FIG. 3-10. Advertisement for the Franco-Texan Land Company promoted more than 500,000 acres, much of it forest and prairie land typical of the Western Cross Timbers of Texas (Source Fort Worth Gazette, September 30,1890; Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries). 138

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was "healthy country" that would grow crops of "cotton, corn, oats, wheat, fruits and vegetables—to perfection." To calm concerns about rampant squatting on, and exploitation of, this land, company president H. E. Alexander noted that "the law will be vigorously enforced against anyone found cutting timber or trespassing in any manner on the lands, which are now offered for sale, on time in tracts of forty acres and upwards."77 That a portion of the land was forested and suitable for cultivation is evident from the company's suggested list of tools—including "one ax and handle, [and] two grubbing hoes"—for a tract in Parker County.78 Typical of the promotional literature prepared in concert with the railroads, the South Western Immigration Company's Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities (1881) billed the Cross Timbers and the "belts of post-oak" as areas where "our traveller finds the soils usually less rich in color, and more arenaceous, yet they are still productive."This guide further observed that "such tracts as these in the post-oaks are admirable seats for a farmer's residence, particularly if he be fond of raising hogs as well as cultivating the soil."79 The guide was typical of the many publications prepared by, or in conjunction with, the railroads, which served as a major force in stimulating immigration to Texas in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. During the 1870s and 1880s, the rapid industrial development in the distant cities had led to rising prices for agricultural products; this rise in turn led to increased demands for arable land. In southern Indian Territory, in what is today Carter County, Oklahoma, farm families "moved into the area in defiance of Chickasaw [Indian] ownership. These intruders cut trees and grubbed out stumps in order to plow and plant crops of cotton and corn which were then brought to market in Ardmore."80 This was yet another example of the Native Americans being mistreated, this time on land that had been supposedly reserved for them. In Texas, things were even worse for the Indians, who had been almost completely driven out of the area by the early 1870s. The Comanches and Kiowas were finally beaten in intense fighting with federal troops and Texas rangers in 1874; the location of their last stand was Palo Duro Canyon, in the Texas Panhandle. As the cultural geography ofTexas took shape from the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth, the Texas Cross Timbers became part of what geographer Terry Jordan calls "the Anglo-Texan Homeland."81 That the Cross Timbers were then considered agricultural land is evident in an 1880 agricultural map of Texas by special agent R. H. Loughridge (FIG. 3-11). This map shows two belts of Cross Timbers—the Upper and Lower—in Texas. Interestingly, the Cross Timbers land north of the Red River is 139

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FIG. 3 -11. Detail of an 1880 Agricultural Map ofTexas by special agent R. H. Loughridge depicts two distinctly named Cross Timbers belts—the Upper and Lower— in Texas, but only refers to prairies and timbered lands north of the Red River in Indian Territory. From Eugene Hilgard, Report on Cotton Production in the United States, 1884 (Authors collection).

simply labeled the "Timbered Red Loam Region." This labeling anticipates a trend that would become more apparent in subsequent years, namely that Texas would retain its Cross Timbers identity more strongly than would Oklahoma. This trend resulted partly from population characteristics and demographic dynamics. The lag of settlement in Oklahoma/Indian Territory is revealed in population density figures. If an area is considered settled—or no longer frontier—once it reaches two people per square mile, then the Eastern Cross Timbers had been settled by i860, and the Western Cross Timbers and the Kansas Cross Timbers by 1870-1880. Conversely, only a small portion of Indian Territory had been effectively settled by the mid140

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1880s. The remainder of Indian Territory, including much forested Cross Timbers land, was still classifiable as frontier in 1890,82 but that would soon change. Population and farm census figures further illustrate the push ofAngloAmericans and African Americans into the Texas Cross Timbers. Only 1,100 farms existed in the Western Cross Timbers in 1870, but that figure jumped spectacularly to 11,020 by 1880, and 17,026 by 1890.83 These figures confirm the population statistics: by 1890, nearly 100,000 farmers lived in the area, and the population of the region's towns and cities (including Fort Worth) nearly equaled that number. Blacks accounted for about 15% of the Texas Cross Timbers population in 1870—a historical high. With population growth came general prosperity, and the towns—some of which had small sawmills where local wood was cut and milled—soon took on a more finished look. That the wood of the Cross Timbers was even then considered relatively poor for construction is evidenced by a recollection of an informant in the 1930s, who recalled that the houses in the fledgling community of Comanche in the 1870s "were mostly of logs and stone. Pine lumber was very inaccessible, the little used having been hauled from Houston, some 300 miles away."84 The historical records confirm that finished lumber was occasionally hauled in from substantial distances: for example, the first house in Jacksboro, Texas, in the Western Cross Timbers, is said to have been built of pine lumber hauled from the forests of east Texas near Tyler. These "finished," or more refined, homes often contrasted with the log dwellings built earlier in the surrounding rural area from local oak trees. Later, with the development of local sawmills, the Cross Timbers oaks were cut into finished wood, which was much smoother than the roughhewn logs of earlier settlements. Geographer Terry Jordan noted that Forestburg, a small community in southeastern Montague County, Texas, at the eastern edge of the Western Cross Timbers, had half a dozen sawmills by 1895.85 Originally called Forest Hill in recognition of a local grove of live oak trees, Forestburg had a population of about 300 at this time,86 a number of whom no doubt worked at the sawmills producing lumber for structural purposes and furniture. CROSS TIMBERS VIOLENCE

The post oak and other trees of the Cross Timbers also served other, sometimes nefarious uses. As described in a Jacksboro, Texas, newspaper, a man by the name of Williams had been arrested for stealing horses by the citi141

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zens of McLennan, a community at the southern edge of the Cross Timbers near Waco, "and was led out to a post oak and left in the limbs, inspecting the mast." Of this frontier justice, the writer simply observed that "the citizens of McLennan will be substantially benefited by his hanging, we doubt not."87 The use of oak trees as makeshift gallows during lynchings haunts the Texas Cross Timbers, for the region was the scene of violent vigilantism during the 1880s. In a racially motivated lynching by whites against blacks in Comanche County, a young black man who had confessed to murdering a white woman was denied a trial and hanged by several men. They threw a rope over a tree limb and "pulled so hard that the limb broke," whereupon one of the mob "climbed the tree and placed the rope over the stub of the limb and Tom (McNeel) was hanged until he choked to death."88 Unchecked by authorities, the more vociferous and vicious of the county's whites orchestrated the expulsion of blacks from the county. The tragic events of the late 1800s set the tone for parts of the Cross Timbers to become almost entirely Anglo-Saxon, obscuring the fact that the regions population had been previously far more racially diverse. Comanche County, Texas, is today among the more racially homogenous (white) of all the Cross Timbers counties, and has been for nearly a century. However, census records show that the county had a black population of about 8 percent before the wave of antiblack sentiment swept the area in 1886. Ironically, the first settler killed by Comanche Indians in the county was a black man. The overwhelmingly white character of Comanche County's population was later reinforced by a trainload of white cotton farmers from Mississippi, who arrived in December of 1896 in what has been called the Great Mississippi Invasion.89 The census figures confirm the effectiveness of this terror campaign and the arrival of additional white settlers: in 1880, Comanche County was home to 79 blacks, a figure that dropped to 8 by 1890, and to o by 1900. Well into the 1920s, a local newspaper even lauded the county as "pure white." Thus, the history of certain portions of the Cross Timbers has been marked by the especially virulent racism found at the periphery of the rural South. THE RUSH TO INDIAN TERRITORY

It was, in retrospect, a series of aggressive policy shifts that led to settlement in the Cross Timbers of Oklahoma/Indian Territory. Although some areas were Indian lands in title, other areas remained as yet unassigned. The latter came under increasing pressure by settlers. A historical geogra142

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pher observed that the opening for settlement of the unassigned lands of the "Oklahoma District, which was filled by a stampede of homesteaders on April 22,1889,"90 led to the creation of farms and towns in parts of the Cross Timbers and a vast area of the adjacent prairie lands west of them. In 1890, the land west of the area occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes was redefined as Oklahoma Territory and divided into counties: some of this land was forested, including that region called the Cross Timbers by early travelers. The land of the Five Civilized Tribes "was largely allotted during the first decade of the 20th century."91 Thus, the Oklahoma Cross Timbers yielded to the settlers' plow later than their Texas and Kansas counterparts. The opening of Oklahoma would soon transform the Cross Timbers ecology. Historical geographer Douglas A. Hurt has observed that the opening of the unassigned lands in 1889 resulted from public pressure that had been mounting since the federal government began to survey these lands using the township-and-range system in 1866.92 Census figures confirm that, within a short time, the population of the Oklahoma Territory boomed as whites and blacks moved into the area. Many of these new settlers became cotton farmers. Like their counterparts in Texas, they benefited from rapidly developing urban markets and improvements in agricultural techniques. Most farmers in Oklahoma owned 160-acre farmsteads, with blacks making up approximately 10 percent of the population in Cross Timbers counties. (In 1900 in Lincoln County, whites totaled 24,513, blacks 2,258.) Native Americans constituted fully 23 percent of the Oklahoma Cross Timbers counties population in 1890. By contrast, the Native American population in the Texas Cross Timbers was less than .01 percent from 1870 to 1900.93 North of Oklahoma, the Kansas Cross Timbers became, and remains, mostly white. In the late 1800s, blacks there accounted for only about 3 percent of the population and Native Americans only .01 percent. KING COTTON

During this period of varied population and agriculture, the Cross Timbers became connected to the rest of the country by an increasingly elaborate transportation network. The region's typical pattern of subsistence farming and hog raising at the forest edges changed with the arrival of the railroads in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Railroad construction was a major factor in agriculture as it lowered shipping costs for farmers and resulted in increasing land cultivation aimed at producing cash

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crops. In the space of one decade, 1890-1900, the number of acres devoted to cotton skyrocketed. With that crop came the rapid transformation of the Cross Timbers as farmers felled trees and planted increasingly large acreages—a practice that exposed the regions sandy soil to erosion. By 1900, the number of farms in the Texas Cross Timbers had jumped to 24,982, and by 1910 the number reached 27,8i5-94 Well into the early twentieth century, cotton farming dominated the Cross Timbers' rural economy, despite the arrival of the boll weevil in the 1910s. A small beetle that had spread from central Mexico into Texas by the late 1890s and into Oklahoma by the 1910s and 1920s, the boll weevil had a particularly insidious effect on agriculture. Rather than destroying all crops outright, it greatly reduced yields, prompting farmers to cultivate the land even more intensively. In the Cross Timbers, the boll weevil slowly wore out cotton crops and farmers alike. This intensive and persistent cultivation ravaged the soil of the Cross Timbers. Yields decreased yearly until the soil was ultimately exhausted. Statistics show that cotton in the region reached its peak production about 1920. Having become a major crop in the Cross Timbers of the Indian Territory, cotton helped link places like Lincoln County, Oklahoma, to the widening agricultural region called the cotton belt. The Cross Timbers region lies toward the westernmost range of nonirrigated cotton growing in the cotton belt, and the periodic droughts there added to farmers'woes. Although from about 1900 to 1930, that cotton belt symbolized poverty and loss, cotton farms were long the mainstay of the regions economy. Meanwhile, many farmers in the Cross Timbers diversified their activities, some planting orchards of fruit trees. The 1890 census figures reveal that peaches were an important crop in the Texas Cross Timbers, providing more than 5,000 bushes that year (32 percent of the state total). The 1904 issue of The Texas Almanac observed, "Thousands of acres of land have within the past few years been planted to apples, peaches and other fruits in the counties crossed or reached by the Cross Timbers, and in many of them the production will soon be sufficient to afford large shipments." That same article—titled "Fruit Growing in 'The Cross Timbers' " — noted, "Bowie, Fruitland and Sunset, in the order named, are the principal shipping points."The article then added that "two years ago growers inaugurated [rail] carload shipments, and since then they have sent out in that manner 3 carloads of Elberta peaches, 3 cars of apples, several mixed carloads of fruits and vegetables and several of potatoes."95 The almanac also noted that plums, grapes, pears, and blackberries were produced in,

144

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and shipped from, the Texas Cross Timbers to the state s Panhandle, New Mexico, Colorado, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and Kansas by rail, and to many closer points in Texas and Oklahoma by wagon.96 DIVERSIFIED FARMING

Crop farming had a major ecological impact on the region. In 1900, the Cross Timbers counties in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas produced 86,328,800 bushels of corn (21 percent of their states' combined total production), 13,594,400 bushels of wheat (19 percent of the total) and 617,000 bales of cotton (21 percent of the total). At that time, these counties included 138,669 farms cultivating 25,611,040 acres of farmland. The average size of a farm was 185 acres, of which about half was cultivated by farmers urging horses and oxen to pull plows through the sandy Cross Timbers soils. In a nostalgic account of the Texas Cross Timbers, Worth S. Ray noted that the plow had transformed the region, turning "a threatened wilderness into an empire." In Ray's words, "[A] farm was not a farm without a 'bull-tongued plow/ " which "was the main-spring of the industry and the scarecrow of idleness." Ray further added that "post oak stumps gave way to its advance and cotton, corn, potatoes, vegetables, fruits and grains flourished in the wake of its progress."97 To farm in the Cross Timbers, farmers first had to cut down trees, then clear them. The brush and dead trees were commonly dragged to the edges offieldsand stacked into piles to be burned. The smoke would fill the air, and the ashes mixed with the sandy soil, serving as a type of fertilizer. In this way, about 26 million acres of forested and prairie land in the Cross Timbers was converted into fields by the 1920s and 1930s. Of that figure, approximately 8 million acres —about one third of the farmland—was developed on formerly forested land. Among the most striking images from the region is a lithograph of "Grandpa Snazzy" (FIG. 3-12), created from memory in 1938 by north Texas artist Merritt Mauzey (1898-1973). This work presents a classic image of the Cross Timbers in transition: a farmer and his mule working in unison to plow the soil of a characteristically hilly site. That the farmer subdued the Cross Timbers is apparent from the numerous charred stumps and the array of wooden buildings, including a log dogtrot house built from the felled trees. Two stalwart post oaks remain, the only natural features left in a landscape that has—however grudgingly—yielded to civilization. Although this lithograph was created in black and white, the red soil, hazy

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FIG. 3-12. A lithograph titled "Grandpa Snazzy"by Texas artistMerrittMauzey strongly suggests a Cross Timbers setting—judging from what appear to be post oak trees, a small log house, and a rockyy stump-infestedfield(Source original owned by Mary Flory, New Orleans, as reproduced in Prints and Printmakers of Texas, Ron Tyler, editor, the Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1997)-

blue skies, and bare brownish vegetation typical of early spring planting time (likely mid-March) in this part ofTexas are easy to picture. A biographer noted that "Mauzey believed he knew the lay of the land as few other Texas artists did,"98 and his lithograph certainly captures the ongoing drama of man toiling to subdue the Cross Timbers and to make it home. 146

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RANCHING IN THE CROSS TIMBERS As farming expanded, ranching and grazing also continued to have profound and somewhat surprising effects on the Cross Timbers. Since the earliest days of settlement in the region, livestock had proved their ability to subsist on formerly and partially forested land. Cultural-historical geographer D. W. Meinig observed that one of the major thrusts of Texas ranching was "out of the Cross Timbers from Jacksboro and Palo Pinto, and on beyond Fort Belknap and Fort Griffin up the divergent headwaters of the Brazos." Meinig used the example of the legendary Charles Goodnight, who "epitomizes important geographical patterns in the development of the Texas cattle industry." In 1866, the Illinois-born Goodnight trailed a herd of cattle from the Cross Timbers to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Having got his start as a rancher in Palo Pinto County before the Civil War, Goodnight expanded his operations far into west Texas and Colorado in the years following it." Significantly, however, Goodnight s Cross Timbers lands served as a nucleus for the expansion of Texas cattle empires. By the late 1860s, ranching had become big business at the periphery of the Cross Timbers, even making some inroads into the forest as ranchers cut and burned trees to make way for pastures. As Elmer Johnson noted in The Natural Regions of Texas, "[WJith the coming of ranching into the various portions of the State and the subsequent fencing of the range, fires which previously swept the plains and prairies annually were gradually reduced in extent and number." Johnson concluded that "consequently woody vegetation was no longer killed regularly by these fires and was free to develop in areas where it could compete with the grasses."100 In some places, mesquite invaded pastures, while in others, oaks sprang up. This shift may help explain an enigma in the vicinity of Dallas, east of the Lower Cross Timbers, where early accounts from the 1840s and 1850s reveal the vegetation to be prairie, but where about 25 years later, accounts and lithographs depict oak trees in sometimes fairly dense, orchardlike settings. Prominent in an 1872 lithographic birds-eye view of Dallas are what appear to be oaks crowding the edge of the community, where— significantly—the prairie had reigned just two generations earlier in many locations. Ranching apparently has maintained and even expanded the Cross Timbers vegetation pattern in some locales, resulting in an open or parklike understory. In addition to outright suppression of fires by settlers, the grazing of livestock itself reduced the potential for fires to start by reducing the fuel available to sustain them. M7

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A lithographic bird's-eye-view map of Fort Worth in 1876 (FIG. 3-13) reveals certain basic vegetation patterns that continue to the present. The mapmaker shows the prairie surrounding the rapidly growing community, and a swath of riparian vegetation along the Trinity River at the base of the bluff. In the distance, Cross Timbers vegetation clings to a high ridge southeast of town. This map provides a glimpse of the historic Eastern Cross Timbers. The railroad is depicted as a train arriving from the east (Dallas and points beyond), while a farmer cultivates bottom land alongside the river. The surrounding country was likely used for the grazing of livestock, but was yielding to farms. This farming and ranching activity generally resulted in the reduction of both prairie and forest. By the 1880s, portions of the forest were being cut down by farmers. An 1883 map by Charles S. Sargent (FIG. 3-14) depicts two belts of Texas Cross Timbers, but notes that these yielded only 5 to 10 cords of wood per acre. Through this map, Sargent—a noted authority on American forests—appears to

FIG. 3-13. ^ lithographic birds-eye-view map of Fort Worth in 18j6 looks southeastwardy revealing three environments: riparian habitat along the Trinity River (foreground)y the large expanse of prairie (center)y and the Eastern Cross Timbers clinging to higher land (left distance) (Map by D. D. Morse, Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University ofTexas at Arlington Libraries). 148

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FIG. 3-14. Charles S. Sargent's map ofthe Density of Forests in I88J suggests a reduction ofcord woodyields in the late nineteenth century (Source Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin).

confirm that the eastern forests and the Cross Timbers were thinning as settlement increased. This thinning was part of a larger pattern of deforestation that affected eastern North America, a reminder that the Cross Timbers, however distinctive, are part of the eastern hardwood forests. THE RAILROADS AND INDUSTRY IN THE CROSS TIMBERS

This deforestation was linked to forces that stimulated the Cross Timbers' economy. Of these forces, the railroad is often overlooked, but is essential to understanding how the region evolved. An agricultural historian concluded that the development of productive farms in the Cross Timbers was spurred by the coming of the railroad, "for its presence gave the area access to outside farm markets."101 However, there is an element of coinci149

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dence here, for the regions railroads originally developed not to serve the Cross Timbers directly, but rather to reach developing urban markets that were located at the edges of, or even miles distant from, the region. The first railroad in the Cross Timbers developed in the Indian Territory and moved southward into Texas in the years immediately following the Civil War. Historian Donovan L. Hofsommer has observed that the iron horse was a relative latecomer to the Indian Territory, for its construction required treaties with Native Americans. Nevertheless, the necessary treaties were effected in the 1860s, and by 1870, the first rails were laid. Within two years, two railroad lines crossed the Indian Territory, both passing near the Cross Timbers. The north-south line—the MissouriKansas-Texas — soon reached into the Lone Star State. Upon its 1872 completion, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (the MKT, or "Katy," as it was popularly known) through the relatively poor, lightly settled country north of the Red River, a chief engineer of the railway commented that he had "accomplished an unheard of feat in railroad building, I have built a railroad through a tunnel 240 miles long, that is, I have built the Missouri, Kansas and Texas across Indian Territory."102 This statement no doubt referred to the fact that there was little settlement worth serving for much of the route. The second significant regional railroad in the Indian Territory, the Atlantic and Pacific, ran around the north end of the Cross Timbers forest, and it too served a lightly populated area, in this case mostly prairie. The next wave of railroad construction in the Indian Territory Cross Timbers occurred when the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe line was built from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth in 1886. Within the next two decades, a number of railroad lines—including the Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf, and the Saint Louis-San Francisco (Frisco)—crossed the region. The railroad network here opened up markets for farmers in many areas on the eve of Oklahoma's statehood (1907).103 The coming of the railroads also helped open the Oklahoma Cross Timbers to agricultural settlement; as noted earlier, wheat and cotton farming soon spread into the area north of the Red River in the vicinity of Ardmore and other locations close to either the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroads. However, the colder winters in the northernmost Indian Territory and in Kansas appear to have limited cotton farms from developing as fully there, for maps of the period typically show cotton growing only in the southern and central part of what would become Oklahoma. Kansas, meanwhile, was well suited to growing wheat and corn. As a result, Kansas has more in common with the wheat or corn belts of the lower Midwest than with the 150

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famed cotton belt, of which the Oklahoma and Texas Cross Timbers are a part. The northern and southern Cross Timbers have cultural differences, too. Whereas many Irish Americans lived in the Texas and southern Oklahoma Cross Timbers, southern Kansas was home to more Germans. In addition, the railroads brought workers of varied ethnicity, thus increasing the region's cultural diversity. It is difficult to overestimate the railroad's effect on the region's environment, from Kansas through Indian Territory and into Texas. First, the very act of railroad construction removed a swath of trees in places. In general, however, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas and a few other early railroad lines appear to have missed much of the Cross Timbers. An analysis of the early railroad routes suggests that they tended to avoid the Cross Timbers not because of its impenetrable vegetation (which was not likely to deter an eager railroad construction crew), but because of its topography. As noted earlier, the Cross Timbers typically grow on higher, more rugged country, while railroads sought the most level, if not the straightest, routes between communities. Existing transportation lines also influenced the location of railroad lines. When the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad first built south through the Indian Territory on its way to Texas, it crossed diverse ecotones but largely followed several well-established cattle trails, which generally followed even earlier routes, such as bison trails on the prairie lands. Thus, the MKT was the first railroad built not through, but actually parallel to, much of the Cross Timbers. Its generally north-south route was intended to open the Texas prairies and rangelands to major markets such as Kansas City and St. Louis. If its engineers purposely shunned the Cross Timbers, as some local folklore suggests, they appear to have left no record of it. Meanwhile, railroad building in Texas kept apace. Rail lines spread westward into the Cross Timbers as the threat of Indian raids was winding down. The first railroad to pass east-west through the Texas Cross Timbers had an even more ambitious goal than those that ran into the Lone Star State from the Indian Territory: namely to become a southern transcontinental railroad. The Texas and Pacific (T&JP) had been a dream since well before the Civil War, but came into existence only in the 1870s. Building westward from two separate points in Arkansas and Louisiana, the Texas and Pacific—as its name suggests—was bound for the West Coast. By 1873, it reached Dallas, where it lingered for another three years, in part as a consequence of the great financial panic of 1873. As economic conditions improved by 1876, the T&P crossed what would soon become Arlington in the Eastern Cross Timbers to reach Fort Worth at the east-

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ern edge of the Grand Prairie in July of that year. There the T6cP's Arkansas and Louisiana lines converged. The Texas Cross Timbers did not prove to be a peaceful place for the T8cP and other railroad lines: no fewer than four trains (as well as several stage coaches) were robbed within a 25-mile radius of Dallas in the spring of 1878. On April 11,1878, a letter received by the Department of Justice from U.S. Marshall Stillwell H. Russell reported that "the mail train of Texas 6c Pacific road was again attacked by a large force last night and after a desperate fight of half hour was robbed 6c conductor wounded." Russell then opined that "the robbers no doubt rendezvous in Denton Co. in the dense thickets 6c local authorities have warrants for suspected persons but no arrests are made"—a situation that forced the marshall to organize a posse to apprehend the perpetrators.104 The Cross Timbers provided ample hiding places for the desperadoes, perpetuating the regions reputation as wild backcountry. The train robbers were headed by one of Texas' most famous outlaws, Sam Bass, who turned to his new trade after gambling away the proceeds from a cattle drive from Texas into the northern Plains. In the fall of 1877, Bass robbed a Union Pacific express train in Nebraska. Returning home to Texas, he was identified in an "Important Letter from Denton County" which was printed in the Marshall Tri-Weekly Herald on April 25, 1878. The letter's author, Denton County judge Thomas Hood, identified a group of "certain lawless characters who infest what is known as the Cross Timbers." Hood's letter, certified by seven county authorities, attempted to assure the public that the law was not protecting the "five desperate men, headed by Sam Bass, who have for some time been scouting about in that portion of the county lying between the city of Denton and the town of Lewisville, on the Dallas County road." The letter was likely one reason that Bass left the Cross Timbers. A shootout during a bank robbery attempt in Round Rock, Texas, that July ended Bass's life, but his reputation lingers as part of Cross Timbers lore. Train robberies notwithstanding, the T&JP had even more pressing problems during the late 1870s. By 1880, it continued building westward through the Upper Cross Timbers in a desperate race with the Southern Pacific to become the first southern transcontinental railroad. Under the aggressive direction of financier Jay Gould, T&JP "construction crews exploded across the Cross Timbers" and into the country beyond, reaching Weatherford by June, and Baird, at the far western edge of the Cross Timbers, by Christmas.105 Although the T6cP lost that race, with the Southern Pacific becoming the true southern transcontinental railroad in 1883, it did continue 152

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FIG. 3 -15. A beautiful lithograph ofthe work crews "laying railway iron at terminus of the Texas and Pacific Railway" typifies construction through the Cross Timbers. Here, as in all locales, the railway avoided the rugged country as it sought the most level route (Source South Western Immigration Company, Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities [1881] Courtesy Special Collections Division, The University ofTexas at Arlington Libraries).

all the way through the Western Cross Timbers and into far west Texas to Sierra Blanca. There the T&P connected with the victorious Southern Pacific, whose tracks continued to El Paso and points west. Original promotional maps of the T&P projected it to run directly through the Cross Timbers of Palo Pinto County on a generous land grant provided by the state ofTexas. However, the line ultimately curved somewhat southward to maintain a better grade and to benefit from the reported bituminous coal fields near Coalville and what would later become Thurber. In so doing, the T&P still traversed portions of the Western Cross Timbers, but avoided the more rugged forested hills and cuestas of the Palo Pinto Mountains (FIG. 3-15). The T&P s decision to traverse the coal fields was significant, for it foretold a sweeping change in the railroad industry that would affect the regions ecology: namely, the transition from wood to coal as locomotive fuel. As railroad historian John H. White Jr. has noted, "[W]ood was the predominant locomotive fuel for the first forty years of the railroad era" (ca. 1830-1870), and farmers fairly close to railroads often supplied them with wood.106 Because a[w]estern railroads, particularly those of the treeless prairies, faced a more difficult problem than did the eastern lines,"107

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which had abundant supplies of wood, railroads presumably valued the vast, forested Cross Timbers. Ironically, however, by the time the railroads were building into the Cross Timbers, wood was rapidly losing favor as a fuel for locomotives. As White noted, "Compared to coal, wood is a bulky, primitive fuel with a low calorific value." White observed that, in the nineteenth century, "one ton of soft coal was considered equal to i% cords of wood, or, roughly figuring wood at 3,000 pounds per cord, 2,000 pounds of coal equaled 5,250 pounds of wood."108 For very sound reasons, then, coal became accepted as the fuel of choice for locomotives, and by 1880, it supplied more than 90 percent of railway fuel needs.109 The Texas and Pacific also converted to coal power and actively encouraged the development of the coal mines atThurber in the mid-i88os. In this regard, the T&P was typical, if not somewhat late: a decade earlier, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railway had aggressively developed the coal resources of the Indian Territory in the vicinity of Coalgate, Lehigh, and other locations. Significantly, a number of the coal mines in Indian Territory were developed in conjunction with Native American tribes, including the Choctaw. Most of the miners on the Choctaw coal lands were not Native Americans, but European Americans and, later, African Americans. Even so, the Choctaw continued formulating agreements with other Native American tribes to get royalties on all "stone, coal, and timber within the boundaries of the Choctaw nation."110 Its route running close to coal mines, the MKT was quick to adopt the black diamonds as fuel: by 1872, its trains throughout the Cross Timbers of Oklahoma ran on coal, and the railroad had also begun shipping coal to urban markets.111 South of the Red River, however, the T&P continued to burn wood well into the late 1870s and early 1880s. The railroads' demand for wood as locomotive fuel dropped significantly after about 1880, as Texas coal mines began to operate close to the T&P mainline in the Western Cross Timbers. Thus, the T&P used Cross Timbers wood as fuel only during its first decade of operations. The railroad did, however, continue to need wood for other purposes, including cross ties, and the Cross Timbers remained a viable lumber source. Some historians of the Cross Timbers note that the post oaks were well suited for use as railroad ties because they are strong and resist the effects of moisture better than many other woods. These small oaks' disadvantages in construction—their short lengths and sometimes crooked shapes—posed less a problem in the railroad tie market: the typical railroad tie is only about eight feet in length and need not be perfectly straight. With the spread of creosote treatment in the late nineteenth century, however, even

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this demand waned as other woods were cheaply treated to become even more durable than untreated oak. Nevertheless, post oaks continued to be used for railroad ties well into the twentieth century.112 Early photographs of Cross Timbers railroad track, especially of the branch lines, reveal the telltale signature of post oak, namely, ties that are often somewhat crooked compared with those from larger trees. Yet there is no evidence that railroad tie manufacturing ever had much of an effect on the Cross Timbers. In fact, as they built westward from east Texas, the Texas and Pacific railroad construction crews did not rely on the Cross Timbers for much wood. Historian S. B. McAllister noted that during construction in the early 1880s, "[M]ost of the lumber used for cross-ties, piling, trestle-work, and so forth, was brought from East Texas," and "the greatest single article of transportation on westbound trains was lumber."113 Coal mining, in fact, appears to have had a heavier impact on the trees of the Cross Timbers than did railroading, for the industry had a surprisingly voracious appetite for wood. Post oaks were widely used for mine props and bracing in the region. At the western edge of the Upper Cross Timbers in Palo Pinto and Erath Counties in 1894, William Whipple Johnson was involved in the operation of a sawmill "for making the oak available on the land usable as props and supports in the mines."114 A geological report in 1891 noted that "the props used in this mine [the Texas and Pacific in Erath County (which was not owned by the railroad of the same name)] are made of wood, and are about thirty inches long. On the top of the props is placed a cap a foot wide and eighteen inches long, to prevent the props from sinking too rapidly into the descending roof." (FIG. 3-16) The short length, just thirty inches, corresponded with the notoriously thin coal seams that required such backbreaking work of the miners in Thurber, where they had to dig out the coal while either bent over or on their knees. The report also noted, "The timber for these props and caps is gotten from the timber in the immediate vicinity of the mine."115 The report noted the timber resources of Palo Pinto County in considerable detail, observing: This county is almost in the center ofthe "Upper Cross Timbers." There are no large prairies in the county. Everywhere timber is abundant. The principal kinds are post oaky blackjack, elm, hackberry, pecan, redoak, and cottonwood. Mesquite is also abundant. There are large cedar brakes along the Brazos River, where large amounts oftimber have been obtained for railroad construction and fencing. More timber has been taken out ofthis county for fencing purposes on the great prairies ofthe west thanfrom any other county

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in the State, and still there are thousands ofacres ofthe veryfinest timber for this purpose awaiting a demand for its use. At the present there is but one railroad that reaches this timber, and that at its southern extremity. The posts are loaded on the cars at about twelve cents apiece, by the carload. This is about the rate paid for the best quality of posts.116 This passage suggests that a wide range of activities, such as mining, ranching, farming, and construction, were affecting the regions vegetation. The report also described the potential development of other mines in the Western Cross Timbers: "There is plenty of timber in the vicinity [of Bridgeport] for all the props needed, and all that is needed to make this as good a locality for coal mining as any in the State, is transportation facilities to get the coal to market." The report also noted of another property in the Cross Timbers that "arrangements have been made to build a railroad from Decatur to the mines, and when that is done this will be a good property."117 The railroad in question was the Fort Worth and Denver City, which passed diagonally through a dense portion of the Western Cross Timbers in 1887-1888 on its otherwise prairie-bound route between its two namesake cities. Its route through dense Cross Timbers forests should dispel once and for all the idea that the railroads deliberately avoided the Cross Timbers. By century's end, several secondary rail lines, including the Texas Central's "Peanut Line" to Cisco and beyond, crisscrossed the region.

/• , > '

FIG. 3-16. The shoring up of coalmines in parts of the Cross Timbers required extensive use of props, orstulls, many of which were madefrom post oak logs (Source W.F Cummins, "Report on the Geology of Northwestern Texas," 1891).

156

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Alongside coal mining, another ancillary industry developed in various parts of the Cross Timbers: brick making. It, too, was dependent on geology, for high-quality clay and shale is needed to make brick. Thurber, Texas, became the Western Cross Timbers' major brick-making site by about 1900, but other locations, including Santo and Mineral Wells, also developed. These sites supplied structural and paving brick to a large area, and employed hundreds of skilled and semiskilled workers well into the twentieth century. The brickmakers' company housing, circular-shaped kilns, and tall smokestacks added more industrial features to an otherwise rural landscape. Thus it was that railroads helped stimulate the economy of the region in regards to both agriculture and industrial activity, as railroads made possible the bulk shipment of brick. EARLY TOURISM IN THE CROSS TIMBERS

The railroads also helped stimulate a third major aspect of the region's economy—tourism. The geology that supplied coal, shale, and clays also held another treasure: mineral-rich waters. The Cross Timbers in both Texas and Indian Territory/Oklahoma served as an important center for spas. People flocked there to cure their "hysterical mania" and other maladies beginning about 1890. Lured by the regions sulfurous mineral waters, which allegedly cured ailments from gout to insanity, thousands of people rode trains to towns such as Mineral Wells, Texas, and the aptly named Sulphur, Oklahoma. By 1920, in fact, the town of Mineral Wells had about 400 medicinal wells118 and the railroads had built spur lines to spas to handle the throngs who sought relief in the waters. Advertisements claimed that the waters in Mineral Wells could cure a host of ills from constipation to "female complaints," and also "nervousness, calculi, stomach, liver, kidney and bladder complaints."119 The waters7 greatest curative success involved constipation, as the potent waters of the mineral well at Arlington, Texas, were nearly legendary for their laxative powers. Early accounts and photographs reveal the health industry's effect on the town of Mineral Wells, which boomed as people made their way to the community, first by stage from the Texas and Pacific main line, and then on the connecting line—the Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern Railroad—that was built directly to the community. Also shipped out by rail was one of Mineral Wells' most controversial products, the Crazy Crystals. Precipitated from the local waters, these crystals were claimed to cure insanity. With the rapid increase in population, the Cross Timbers vegetation

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yielded to development in Mineral Wells, but the surrounding rugged hills, such as West Mountain and East Mountain, remained covered by remnants of the Western Cross Timbers' post oak and blackjack oak forests. With thousands drawn to the city's waters and the beautiful forested parklands on nearby lakes, Mineral Wells thrived well into the midtwentieth century. In Oklahoma, the town of Sulphur was also known for its curative waters. Nestled in a gorge surrounded by geologically complex country with prairies, cedar brakes, and Cross Timbers forests, Sulphur was connected to the outside world by no fewer than two railroads, a Santa Fe line from the west and the Frisco line from the east. Interestingly, although the coming of the railroad helped most communities in the region to grow, this transportation advance helped signal the end for the small community of Cross Timbers, Texas. Located on the edge of the Western Cross Timbers in northern Johnson County, the community had been settled about 1853 and had a school, church, and several businesses—including a gristmill and cotton gin—by 1885. But alas, both the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad and the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad bypassed the town of Cross Timbers, which ceased to exist by about 1910,120 for even communities that started without a railroad could rarely continue to exist without one. However, although the railroad's chosen paths spelled doom for the town of Cross Timbers, the railroad unequivocally stimulated the development of the Cross Timbers region in agriculture, mining, and recreation. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the regions rail lines were nearing completion. The Rock Island line stretched through the Oklahoma Cross Timbers into Texas, where it connected with Fort Worth and Dallas. This was enabled by its affiliated line—the Chicago, Rock Island and Texas—which was headquartered in the Cross Timbers town of Bowie and served as one of the numerous secondary lines and branch lines built in the region in the early twentieth century. By 1925, the region s new railroad construction had ended; shortly thereafter, actual railroad mileage began to decline. The development of roads and highways, many paved with the locally produced brick, eclipsed rail development by the mid-twentieth century. A VANISHING REGION

All of this development took its toll on the forests—and correspondingly the popular perception—of the Cross Timbers. Regional historian Carolyn Foreman succinctly stated that "from 1850 to 1880 or so the Cross Timbers 158

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were important. Then, everybody in Texas knew where they were and what they were."121 Moreover, she concurred with an Oklahoma Historical Society publication that addressed the significance of the Cross Timbers in the nineteenth century: "Had it not been for the Cross Timbers, the whole of the State of Oklahoma, and nearly half of the State ofTexas, would not have had in it [sic] an even dozen landmarks by which rendezvous points could have been fixed in all that great area." Her words suggest, quite accurately, that the Cross Timbers' identity was tied to the presence of impressive forest. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, after years of substantial clearing resulting from agriculture and mining, the forest had lost its critical mass. As a consequence, the Cross Timbers lost both their status as a landmark and their prominence in the region in the popular mind. Not surprisingly, the region virtually disappeared from Texas maps by the 1920s. Across the Red River in Oklahoma, the Cross Timbers' identity fared even worse. With few exceptions, maps had ceased depicting the region well before statehood (1907). Meanwhile, cartographers had their work cut out for them simply depicting the myriad railroads, towns, and roads that were being articulated on the landscape. Typical of maps drawn toward the end of the nineteenth century, the 1891 "Progress Map" by state geologist E. T. Dumble omitted reference to the Cross Timbers but showed the railroad lines and their connections into the Indian Territory in considerable detail. Apparently, the Cross Timbers disappeared cartographically because they were superseded by other, more effective landmarks, such as roads and buildings. Thus, by the 1930s, the Cross Timbers had all but vanished as a recognizable region. Better than words, perhaps, maps tell the story of the demise of the Cross Timbers as regional landmark. With even more extensive clearing in the early twentieth century, the Cross Timbers had vanished so completely that geographer Frederic W. Simonds failed to include the region in his 1912 "Geographic Influences in the Development ofTexas,"122 showing that the region had basically disappeared from the state's geography by the 1910s. The map accompanying Simonds' article is revealing: it shows a large "Forested area" of east Texas and delineates both the "Black Prairie" and "Grand Prairie." However, the Cross Timbers appear neither here nor in Simonds' discussion, having been extensively altered as the land was cleared for cotton. As Simonds stated, "[I]n Texas Cotton is King." Significantly, Simonds did mention the Cross Timbers in his popular 1905 and 1914 Texas geography texts, but only as a type of original or natural vegetation. Though the Cross Timbers had become conspicuous by their absence on popular maps and in most literature after the turn of the cen-

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tury, they remained important in the field of geology. The Cross Timbers also appear on soils and agricultural maps, thereby confirming that scientists and technicians were aware of the region. This is especially appropriate, given the substrate's underlying significance to the physical and cultural geography of the region. Another factor—memory—ensured that the Cross Timbers would remain alive in the regions folklore. As early as the 1850s, newspapers in the Texas Cross Timbers reported a white, ghostlike stallion that would appear briefly, then disappear into the forest. The Cross Timbers thus resonated in folklore. Though the Cross Timbers began to vanish from maps, they nevertheless lived in the perceptions of people, who lived on the formerly forested land while vividly recalling its once grand countenance. After the turn of the century, then, Cross Timbers came to signify not a particular place, but rather the memory of that place. Thus, a cotton farmer could be said to be living in the Cross Timbers, despite the fact that he may have felled a hundred or more acres of its trees. That not everyone considered the Cross Timbers a landmark was verified by the 1886 recollections of George Bernard Erath, an Austrian-born surveyor and legislator who once worked as surveyor for the Robertson colony. In the mid-twentieth century, Erath recalled that in 1886, "the north boundary of this colony was imaginary; there is no way of defining the Cross Timbers; though there is a quantity of timbered land it is not a regularly delineated belt as was then imagined."123 Erath's observation is both disturbing and profound. His use of the word "imagined" suggests that early settlers needed the Cross Timbers to serve as a landmark, but that its actual form was not as geometric or regular—nor its countenance as impressive—as early travelers and mapmakers had imagined. The changes that swept through and forever changed the Cross Timbers beginning in the mid-nineteenth century were not welcomed by all. In an 1895 article, geologist Edwin Theodore Dumble expressed concern about the removal of the forest by agriculture, ranching, and other activities. Dumble noted, "[I]t is safe to say that the policy of clearing this land and putting it into cultivation will in the end materially lessen the supply of water in artesian wells of north-central Texas," because "when timber is cut from any portion of the Cross Timbers, and porous sandy soil exposed to the plow, rapid erosion begins, the area is destroyed for farming purposes, [and] its usefulness as a forest producer destroyed." Dumble concluded, in a surprisingly strong conservationist statement for the era, that "the entire Cross Timbers should remain intact, so that the greatest possible amount of water could be taken up by the underlying sands."124 De160

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spite this call, however, serious conservation efforts in the region would not begin until about a generation later—in the 1930s—when, alas, much of the Cross Timbers had already been thoroughly modified by the axes of the pioneers. BLACK GOLD

Well into the twentieth century, the Cross Timbers region remained dependent on its mineral wealth in addition to its soil. Beginning in the 1910s, it responded to yet another mineral-related boom, one that heralded a decline in coal mining. With the discovery of oil near Healdton, Oklahoma, in 1913 and then at McCleskey well number 1 near Ranger in October 1917, the region entered its second period of industrial-based exploitation.125 Within a few years, small farming communities mushroomed into oil boom towns as forests of oil derricks sprouted. These communities, too, placed their demands on the Cross Timbers just as the oil wells' aggressive, often profligate pumping led to environmental degradation as the crude oil often spilled onto the land for want of proper storage. Nevertheless, within about a decade, the furious drilling and wildcatting slowed considerably as oil prices leveled off. The region settled into a sustained oil production economy that employs few people directly, but supports local industries such as oil well pipe and drilling-machinery suppliers. Even today, small oil and natural gas facilities dot the Cross Timbers in north central Texas and southern Oklahoma, their continued presence reminding the traveler that the area has a diverse economy in which industry, agriculture, and relatively small service-oriented towns coexist. The changes that swept the Cross Timbers economy in the early twentieth century were matched by changes to the regions transportation infrastructure. Railroads began burning oil, rather than coal, as locomotive fuel in the 1920s. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, many of the railroad lines that had proliferated in the Cross Timbers to serve farming, coal, and oil communities began to be abandoned as business declined. Even today, surrounded by the modern road systems that took their place, abandoned railroad rights of way are visible cutting through the landscape, although in places they are almost completely obscured by brush and trees. THE COMING OF THE ROAD

By the late 1920s, state- and federally subsidized road projects ensured that high-quality, all-weather roads would connect the larger Cross Tim161

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bers communities with the outside world. Typically, these main roads and highways parallel the remaining railroad lines, such as the Santa Fe (Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe), the Texas and Pacific, and the Katy, which have likewise connected the major cities. Of the early roads, the Bankhead Highway is representative. On its route across Texas, it united Dallas, Fort Worth, and the Western Cross Timbers communities with places as far distant as El Paso, Arizona, and California. The net effect of railroad abandonment and major highway construction in the region reflected a larger geopolitical reality—namely that the Cross Timbers were first seen as a place to get through. Of lesser importance was connecting the smaller communities and rural areas through a developing system of secondary roads, which remained marginal until well into the twentieth century. This primitive road network and scattering of small farming communities reinforced the regions earlier reputation as underdeveloped backcountry. By the early 1930s, with the coming of the Great Depression, the Cross Timbers became a region of out-migration. A combination of crop failures and economic woes led to massive land foreclosures in the region. Unable to afford machinery such as rubber-tired tractors, those who did stay on the land often found themselves to be disenfranchised tenant farmers, tilling the land for larger landholders. Farm abandonment coincided with an increase in the size of the farms that remained. Throughout the 1930s, out-migration from Cross Timbers counties continued. Those who left either went to nearby urban centers (such as Dallas, Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City) or migrated to California, as immortalized in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Although "Okies" are popularly portrayed as migrants from the western or Great Plains part of Oklahoma, the Cross Timbers contributed a substantial share to the human tide that left cotton farming in the south central United States. A REGION REMEMBERED

By the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Cross Timbers was pretty much worn-out and ripe for a rich, romantic folklore. The region was immortalized in a song by the legendary folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie. An Oklahoman by birth and upbringing, Guthrie wrote and sang about the region in "Pretty Boy Floyd." According to Guthrie's version of events, Floyd was "an outlaw, Oklahoma knew... well." The song notes that after Floyd committed his first crime, he "took to the trees and timbers on the Canadian River shore," where "the outlaw found a welcome at many a farmer's door." In the song, the dense forests along the Canadian River 162

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take on the role of a wilderness where an outlaw could hide. Yet the region was populated by farmers who, sang Guthrie, were given money by Floyd— money that "paid their mortgages and saved their little homes."126 At the time Guthrie wrote this song (ca. 1940), the Cross Timbers were a hardscrabble area weathering the depression. Guthrie romanticized Floyd, believing that he possessed the same anti-establishment but essentially moral values as Robin Hood, who several centuries before had also, according to legend, stolen from the rich to give to the poor. Guthrie's ballad thus translates the forests along the Canadian River into Sherwood Forest. THE CALL FOR CONSERVATION

By the time Guthrie began wandering the dust bowl in search of the spirit of the country, the agricultural complexion ofthe Cross Timbers was changing. As more farmers in the 1930s found it impossible to make a living farming cotton on the regions worn-out land, soil conservationists recognized the Cross Timbers as belonging to a belt of exhausted cotton-farming land that extended from the hills of central Georgia all the way to west Texas and Oklahoma. Geographer Douglas Hurt observes an irony: "Thus, after only several decades of agricultural production, Lincoln County,... had earned the dubious reputation as the most eroded county in Oklahoma."127 By 1945, the Oklahoma Planning and Resources Board had issued a pamphlet titled "Your Oklahoma," which described the Cross Timbers and recommended how to improve conditions there. The pamphlet pointed out that 6 out of every 10 farmers there received less than $600 annually, in part as a consequence of the soil erosion that had so reduced productivity. The report s stern words are typical of that era when government-sponsored programs sought to reverse conditions that had resulted from people's unawareness of, or lack of concern about, the consequences of their actions. The report further noted that "[e]rosion and land-use problems in the Cross Timbers are so critical that the number of farms should be reduced by nearly one-half." It concluded that "farming should shift to livestock, pasture, peanuts, sweet potatoes, feed crops and truck" crops128 rather than cotton. As time went on, cotton lost out as many farmers suffered foreclosure. By 1940, cotton production in the Cross Timbers counties regionwide had declined to only 459,000 bales—less than half of the 1,008,500 produced in 1920.129 Wheat and corn also suffered major declines during this period. Agricultural parcels increased in size as fewer and fewer farmers cultivated crops—such as peanuts—that thrive in the region's sandy soils. 163

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These government recommendations were aimed not at returning the land to forest, but rather increasing its productivity while preserving its soil. In 1944, Dr. H. H. Bennett addressed the Oklahoma Save-the-Soil Clinic, noting a "near miracle of rejuvenation of the land" in the vicinity of Woodward, Oklahoma. This turnabout was accomplished, he said, "by developing the Cross Timbers country into beef-producing grass from scrubby growths of shin-oak; sagebrush [sic], plum thickets, and prickly pear." Bennett described "a simple technique of first removing the small trees and then mowing at regular intervals," by which "this formerly poor quality land has been returned to rich native grasses capable of producing from 25 to 50 pounds of beef per acre." According to Bennett, there should be little or no interest in seeing the land forested, because the "small trees and shrubs removed pay for the labor in needed wood." Like many others at this time, Bennett's goal was clearly not the restoration of forest, but the improvement of rangeland.130 In 1945, Lloyd Noble of Ardmore, Oklahoma, found himself flying over the region frequently on trips for his oil-drilling business. Combined with numerous automobile trips throughout the region, this elevated vantage point allowed Noble to observe that soil erosion had worn out the land: farms that had once produced "[f]ifty bushels of corn or a bale of cotton to an acre on upland and twice that in the valleys, now showed the devastating effect of erosion, abandoned houses, rubble of old rock fireplaces." These changes so greatly disturbed Noble that he created the Noble Foundation to encourage better land management.131 Throughout the region, the term Cross Timbers came to be used by soil conservationists to refer not to the unique forest that had once existed there, but rather to the potential of the area's sandy and clayey soils to support an agricultural economy. In 1941-1942, The Texas Almanac noted that the "East [sic] Cross Timbers," where "post oak is the principal timber," have a small area of productive soil that is "excellently adapted to truck [crop] growing for Dallas." The "West [sic] Cross Timbers" was described as a "diversified farming" area where "cotton, corn, forage, melons, peanuts, [and] peaches" are grown. The almanac also noted that there was "much grazing land for livestock, and timbered country affords browsing for goats which are being introduced" into the Western Cross Timbers. Other agricultural enterprises here included "extensive poultry raising and dairying." Although "large coal deposits were mined before oil was discovered," the region still had a "number of brick plants." 132 In Oklahoma, coal production continued longer than in Texas, lasting until the Second World War, and attempts at agricultural diversification 164

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also helped ease the general decline of cotton growing. Generally, however, farming suffered. This is revealed in the U.S. census figures, which show that many of the rural Cross Timbers counties throughout the entire region continued to lose population up to the time that the United States entered the war. The regions rural population declined by about 42,000 from 1920 to 1940. Significantly, the regions cities increased by about 50,000 people during the same period. A CENTURY IN RETROSPECT

By the start of the Second World War, the Cross Timbers had experienced many transitions. Since about 1845, tne region had gone from virtual wilderness to farmland, with a portion of it being abandoned as farms failed in increasingly greater numbers. It had experienced industry-related development, namely the boom and bust of coal mining. It had also experienced the euphoria of oil booms, which wound down to the more even rhythm of oil pumps whose activity ebbs and flows with the price of oil. The region s aggressive farming heritage had left the soils ravaged, and the Cross Timbers were cited as a textbook example of land abuse. Yet, despite its nearly catastrophic impact on the region, farming came to be heavily romanticized. In the mid-i94os, Worth S. Ray's ode to the rural life of the Texas Cross Timbers cast the dirt farmer as poor but heroic: A farmer in the cross timbers could raise more with the least effort, have the finest cotton and the toughest crab grass, the scrubbiest orchards and the finest fruits; the smallest vines and the largest melons. As a rule he had more intelligence and less education than anybody; more generosity and less to give; was rich without money, poor without poverty, frugal without being stingy, and was contented, gentle, bold, generous, aggressive, fearless and brave.133 Of the Cross Timbers itself, Ray bragged about the inherent contradictions in soil, climate, and hydrology that gave the region its character as hardscrabble farming country: The cross timbers had the... cheapest lands and the richest soils; the deepest sands and the shallowest wells; the hottest days and the coolest nights; the gentlest horses and the stubbornest mules; the longest creeks and the shallowest streams; the crookedest roads and the straightestpeople, ofany place in the whole wide world.134

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These tributes aside, family cotton farming was doomed, and new rural lifestyles would supersede it. With the growth of urban centers, such as Fort Worth, Dallas, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City, the remaining farmlands were ripe for development as dairy farms and ranches. The economy was rapidly changing and ever more dependent on decisions made in Austin, Oklahoma City,Topeka, and Washington, D.C. During and immediately after the Second World War, parts of the Cross Timbers benefited from government largesse as military bases developed and defense-related industries sprouted. Although the region itself was still peripheral to the cities, residents of the Cross Timbers found themselves increasingly in their growing shadows. With the close of World War Two, the scene was set for the Cross Timbers to move into yet another phase of development.

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CHAPTER 4

THE PERSISTENCE OF A PERCEPTUAL REGION

But now we have the modern cross timbers. Magnificent highways, cutting like wide silver ribbons through the post oak and blackjack oak groves...; sightlyfarm homes sitting back among the trees, and wide, roomy fourlane boulivards [sic] skirting the towns and young cities. To this younger and altogether adorable generation the older inhabitants must yield the palm, but it is with a pang of regret he contemplates the awful transition. — WORTH S. RAY, 1 9 4 7

By the time writer Worth S. Ray wrote these melancholy words just after the Second World War, the Cross Timbers had become a very different place from what farmers had known half a century before. The regions economic base continued its shift away from extractive industry and cash cotton farming. The number of farms continued declining, while the cities and larger towns continued to grow. The dramatic changes that swept the Texas Cross Timbers since Robert T. Hill wrote his geological observations along the Texas and Pacific Railroad in the 1880s are revealed in a 1948 booklet published by that railroad. Read by travelers on the T&P's diesel-powered, streamlined trains that flashed through the Cross Timbers on the Fort Worth-El Paso run, "Main Line Minia Tours" noted that Weatherford, in Parker County, "is 'the Texas Fruit and Dairy Center/ famous for its peaches and watermelons," and "here is located one of the few pecan oil refineries in the West." Agriculture, in other words, continued its shift from crops such as corn and cotton—in the process becoming more diversified. According to the booklet, Mineral Wells was still a "Famous spa and health resort," attracting "thousands of visitors who want to relax in pleasant scenic surroundings and to drink and bathe in its mineral waters."

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Further underscoring the region s recreational allure, the booklet also noted that just "a few miles away is Possum Kingdom Dam, impounding one of the largest and most healthful bodies of water in the state, where fishing and hunting are excellent." Significantly, the booklet did not mention the Cross Timbers, but rather stressed the regions prospects. Continuing the theme of agricultural diversification, the booklet observed that "near the city [of Mineral Wells] is the only project in America that is producing silk commercially. More than 250,000 mulberry trees have been planted and are providing food for silkworms."1 The booklet does not mention cotton, and it refers to coal mining only as a memory at the ghost town of Thurber. But change would continue: those mulberry trees would languish, and within a decade and a half, Mineral Wells would lose its image and appeal as a health spa. FARMING IN THE MODERN CROSS TIMBERS

In the half century since Worth S. Ray wrote his tribute to the vanishing rural lifestyle that was being replaced by the modern Cross Timbers, considerable change has taken place in the regions farming. Whereas the Cross Timbers had 113,873 farms in 1950, only 58,329 —about half—remained in 1992. However, the total farm acreage declined less precipitously—about 10 percent—from 26,909,391 acres to 23,810,614. This statistic reveals that the average farm size continued to increase, from 236 acres in 1950 to 408 in 1992. As elsewhere throughout the United States, fewer people in the Cross Timbers are farming, and the remaining farms are consolidating. Today's farms are increasingly capitalized and mechanized, while the family farm is nearly a thing of the past. An interesting story of change and diversification is told in the crop statistics. Whereas in 1950, the Cross Timbers region accounted for fully 17.4 percent of all the corn grown in the Cross Timbers states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas (21,726,600 bushels), that figure dropped to only 3.4 percent by 1992 (15,281,200 bushels). An even more striking tale of decline is seen in the figures for cotton, which amounted to 444,200 bales (7.3 percent of the states' production) in 1950, but dropped to 47,400 bales (only 1.4 percent) by 1992. Peaches, too, continued to decline in production, from 634,600 bushels—or 33.9 percent of the states' production—in 1950, to a production figure so low that it was characterized merely as "minimal" in 1992. Interestingly, Cross Timbers peaches are far superior in taste to those shipped into the region from elsewhere, notably California, but are much harder to find at supermarkets in the region. Yet knowledge168

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able locals seek them out at fruit stands and farmer's markets, where they often fetch higher prices than their California counterparts. These declining figures suggest that some crops do not grow as well in the Cross Timbers as in other areas of the country. Corn (a native American tropical grass) and cotton (an import from the tropics or subtropics) both require significant moisture. Being subhumid to semiarid, the Cross Timbers lack the more consistent rainfall of the cotton-growing South or the corn-growing Midwest. Even so, both crops have periodically thrived in the Cross Timbers. Although the prolonged drought of the 1950s set back corn production, it increased again in the 1970s and 1980s, feeding a growing livestock industry. Then another drought, in the late 1990s, took its toll on the corn crop —a reminder that other types of plants are better suited to the Cross Timbers. Exploiting better-adapted crops, the Cross Timbers remain an important agricultural area. One of its major crops, wheat, is noteworthy in defying the downward trends in area cotton and peach production. Wheat grown in the Cross Timbers accounted for 4.8 percent of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas'production in 1950 (14,224,200 bushels), but accounted for y.i percent (40,958,200 bushels) in 1992. Wheat, being more drought resistant than either cotton or corn, is beautifully suited to the environment of the Cross Timbers. Evoking the native prairie grasses that thrived here, this grass is well adapted to the Cross Timbers' subhumid, midlatitude climate. As part of the region's agricultural diversification, another native American plant (the peanut) is now a major crop. Peanuts thrive in the deep, sandy soils of portions of the Cross Timbers, especially in the vicinity of Desdemona, Texas. Truck farming is practiced in proximity to some of the larger communities, but has declined in many areas. Clearly, big-scale farming, based on crops that are easily machine harvested, such as wheat and peanuts, now dominates the Cross Timbers. THE URBANIZATION/SUBURBANIZATION OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

It was, in retrospect, the nearby cities that helped sustain the population and economy of much of the region. Since the Second World War, Arlington, Texas—located between Fort Worth and Dallas at the eastern edge of the Eastern Cross Timbers—has become one of the cities in the modern Cross Timbers envisioned by author Worth S. Ray. Although Arlington's population was only about 6,000 in the mid-i94os when Ray 169

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wrote so affectionately about the Cross Timbers, that figure had topped 300,000 by the late 1990s and has showed little sign of slowing. Long proud of its Cross Timbers heritage, the city had named a number of streets after native trees (e.g.. Oak, Pecan, and Mesquite) when it was originally platted on the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1876. Arlington has continued to celebrate its trees by naming many new streets after them. In the modern Cross Timbers community ofArlington, people live and drive on streets with euphonious names such as Hidden Oaks, Shady Oaks, and Oak Hill. Circling the western, northern, and southern edges of the city, Green Oaks Boulevard is just the type of four-lane ribbonlike road anticipated by Ray more than half a century ago. This wide boulevard cuts through the Cross Timbers as it curves, rises, and falls with the swells of the underlying sandstone topography. To the thousands of motorists who drive it daily, Green Oaks Boulevard is a reminder of the power of history in preserving, and the power of progress in transforming, the region. This road, in Ray's words, is a thoroughfare that epitomizes the modern Cross Timbers. Although justifiably proud of this thoroughfare, and the trees that line it, Arlington has also suffered some serious setbacks in preserving its Cross Timbers heritage. In the fall of 1992, developers made local headlines by proposing to move a 250-year-old post oak to make way for a parking lot for a new Pace store. The tree (FIG. 4-1) was a local landmark, having served as a "witness tree" to early property surveyors in the nineteenth century. Some sources claimed that the tree was "believed to have been 400+ years old," and that it "was used as a trail road marker by Indians, Spanish Conquistadores, early Texans and soldiers in the War Between the States."2 The tree's spreading crown suggested its lifelong location at the edge of the Eastern Cross Timbers in an oak savanna setting. As might be imagined, moving such a large tree—even to a site just a few hundred yards distant—was both difficult and expensive. Naturally, the prospect of moving the huge stationary tree piqued the community's curiosity and interest. How, people wondered, would this be accomplished? To ensure the tree's survival, Pace hired experts to orchestrate and oversee the move. After extensive preparation, the tree was moved in a dormant state during the winter. When spring arrived, the tree began to show signs of life as buds and leaves appeared. Almost daily, newspaper reports documented the ancient oak's seemingly miraculous survival. However, experts and skeptics warned that the tree might not fully recover, but might in fact be using its last reserves of energy in a futile attempt to regenerate. As the spring progressed, the doomsayers proved correct: the witness tree soon stopped recovering and slowly died before the stunned community's eyes. The 170

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FIG. 4-1. This 250-year-old post oak "witness treey "shown here after its move to make way for theparking lot of a large national chain store inArlingtony Texas; died shortly after being transplanted (1993photo by author).

FIG. 4-2. A section of post oak branch from the "witness tree" serves as a tribute to the ill-fated tree and a reminder of the developers ill-conceived attempt to move it (1997photo by author).

magnificent but mortally wounded oak stood for a few months longer, and when all hope had faded, was unceremoniously cut down. Despite the loss of this landmark post oak, enterprising leaders of the Boy Scouts of America Troop 57 and others found some solace by sawing the historic tree into small souvenirs that were sold to help raise funds for local projects (FIG. 4-2). Some of the souvenirs were marked with the name 171

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"witness tree," and others were carved into a host of pencil holders, gavels, and other memorabilia. Although this commemoration helped console some people, the tree's death sobered a community confident that it could reconcile its rapid growth with conservation. Many critics questioned whether the tree really should have been moved in the first place, arguing that the parking lot could have been designed to accommodate a small open area for the venerable tree to grow unmolested. To add irony to the death of the landmark tree and the public relations nightmare that surrounded the event, the Pace store that had engineered the move went out of business shortly after its grand opening, itself a victim of the market forces that had felled the oak. The witness tree fiasco underscored the vulnerability of the Cross Timbers and their trees: conservationists were quick to point out that what had endured centuries of climatic extremes and historical change could be undone almost overnight by poor planning and overconfidence. The incident did have one positive outcome, for it appears to have been pivotal in helping foster a sense of conservation and environmental protection in the community. In part a consequence of the witness tree incident, Arlington established new tree protection ordinances and added stiffer enforcement mechanisms to older ordinances, in order to give such legislation more "teeth," as one local conservationist put it. To better inform commercial developers of their obligations, the city prepared a brochure aimed at protecting trees before and during construction. This brochure provides basic information about trees, including the statement that "[approximately 95 percent of a tree's roots are located within the top 3 feet of the soil, and the fine feeder roots which collect the moisture and nutrients are located in the top 4 inches of the soil." The brochure notes that "[t]he number one reason why trees die is due to construction," and that "[t]he effects of soil compaction and fill may damage a tree's root system over a period of years." Carefully flagging and surrounding trees with temporary, brightly colored fencing, construction crews can avoid damaging their trunks and branches. However, because "[t]ypically, a tree's root system extends as much as 2 to 3 times the distance of the drip line [the area on the ground directly below the crown] of the tree," contractors often unknowingly cause damage that may take several years to become apparent. Cutting and filling of sites is particularly destructive, for it results in damage to roots which are often severed in the process of excavation. The city thus requires both that "[a] minimum of 75% of the area between the drip line and the trunk of the tree should remain undisturbed," and that "[n]o disturbance of the soil greater than 4" can be located closer than V2 the distance from the drip line 172

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to the trunk." The city prohibits trenching within the drip line, without approval by the city arborist. Because irrigation systems may appear "harmless" while damaging a tree's root system, the city requires that they be limited within the drip line. Any trenching within the drip line must be developed in a radial fashion, "such as in a bicycle spoke configuration,"3 to reduce the likelihood that roots will be damaged. Arlington's "Landscape and Screening Standards," in article 14 of the city ordinances, is intended "to preserve the existing natural environment whenever possible." The ordinance also aims at providing landscape amenities—which "promote a positive city image reflecting order, harmony and pride for new development in the city." One of the ordinances main objectives is "to encourage the preservation of trees which promote clean air, provide shade, beautify the environment, reduce the amount of soil runoff and minimize erosion. "Thus, forested areas are preserved wherever possible. Significantly, the ordinance requires developers of half-acre or larger properties to create a landscape plan signed and certified by a registered landscape architect; the city awards "landscape points" for specific flora based on relative value or merit. Tree points are awarded for the "preservation of qualified existing trees and/or planting of new trees of a certain size and species," with the number of tree points required varying "based on the existing number of protected trees on a lot, and the [developers] intent to remove these trees."The proposed plan must include common and botanical names, locations, quantities, container or caliper (trunk diameter) sizes, heights, spread, and spacing of trees. A plan must also indicate any trees with an eight-inches or greater caliper. To further strengthen the ordinance, "each tree removed in violation of this article shall constitute a distinct and separate offense" (Zoning 14-200). If the city arborist determines that an otherwise protected tree is in danger of dying due to construction practices, he or she may require additional tree points to be earned to offset the loss. DEVELOPERS AND CONSERVATIONISTS In growth-oriented but increasingly conservation-sensitive communities like Arlington, developers have found themselves with otherwise developable land forested with oaks and other trees. By requiring developers to pay into the city's tree fund or replace any trees that are removed, the city's 1994 landscape ordinance penalizes uses that would destroy irreplaceable old trees. However, that ordinance can be overcome by a policy of ex-

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change through which trees donated on other sites may serve to compensate for the loss of trees on the site to be developed. This trade-off was proposed in 1997 w n e n Texas Industries wanted to turn a 14-acre site covered with "solid oaks, and big ones at that" into a Malibu racetrack for small cars similar to go-carts. To develop the site, the developer proposed "swapping"—by donation—a 73-acre wetland site near the city's River Legacy Park. Although the donated site was forested with "hackberry, cedar elms and a few oaks," it was certainly not the classic Cross Timbers configuration on the site of the proposed racetrack. The factors that helped generate the Cross Timbers plant community in the first place, including elevated sites with good drainage and fairly stable soils that are not subject to expansion and contraction, are often considered the most attractive for development. Some developers are all too eager to make the seemingly altruistic swap of more land and more trees for the more desirable Cross Timbers land they hope to "improve" through development. This proposed land swapping generated some concern among residents, one of whom opined that this request "would effectively 'disembowel' the tree ordinance" and would set a precedent encouraging only developers who could afford to buy large pieces of near worthless land to swap with the city "in order to escape from the tree ordinance."4 Despite its checkered success, Arlington's tree ordinance is effective enough to have inspired other nearby communities to follow suit. Residents of nearby Mansfield urged the development of a tree ordinance in 1997, because, as one proponent noted, "as we change so quickly, we are losing a lot of natural spaces and the greenery."5 Yet, even strong tree ordinances often yield when public safety or convenience is at stake. As newspaper columnist Jan Jarvis opined, "[W]hen a tree hangs too far over the city's sidewalks, interferes with utility service or blocks traffic, even the most beautiful old oak is likely to have a date with the chain saw."6 That Jarvis's words proved prophetic and that Arlington's passion for trees continues to run high is seen in the August 1997 felling of a large post oak as part of a road expansion project on South Bowen Road in the city's heavily forested southern section. A poignant newspaper photograph shows a bulldozer pushing over the tree (FIG. 4-3), which was initially estimated to be about "200 years old."7 Members of the nearby Unity Church prayed, sang "Amazing Grace," and protested the day before the tree's removal. However, their prayers, songs, and protests were in vain. After the tree was felled, its trunk was cut to reveal that the tree was "probably less than 100 years old." City engineer Lance Barton reported 90 tree rings, and Mike Wallace, owner of the Woodworking Club of North Texas, counted 72.

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FIG. 4-3. /«theprocess of preparing a site for commercial development, a bulldozer knocks down apost oak tree in Arlington, Texas (1997photo byj. Mark Kegans, courtesy the Arlington Morning News/

However, according to the Reverend Diana Hughes, "the age of the tree was really not that important." Hughes poignantly added that "there is no way you can diminish the tree." A local newspaper article dutifully noted that the oaks trunk was cut into slabs ofwood that would produce benches, tables, and bowls, but also added that the tree's trunk held "a treasure of sorts." Having once had barbed wire nailed to it, the tree "had simply grown around the wire and nestled it into its bosom some 30 years ago." The reporter noted that "the imprisoned piece of barbed wire had the last laugh, though, because Wallace's chain saw had to be sharpened several times after cutting through the metal."8 Another challenge to trees comes from the clearing of utility easements and other rights of way (FIG. 4-4). Sometimes, enthusiastic crews wielding powerful machinery accidentally or deliberately trim or cut down valuable trees. After returning home to find prized trees disfigured by utility crews, property owners who were never informed of an imminent project have expressed outrage. The Arlington Morning News resonated with one such horror tale, titled "Resident upset trees sheared for utility lines — company says notice should have been given." In this case, utility crews ravaged a grove of trees, whose "tops had been sheared off." The casualties included "a large oak that was there when the house was built seven years ago."The irate landowner noted sarcastically that "its one thing to trim a

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. 4 - 4 . The grading of a road andthe placing ofelectric power lines have taken their toll on this post oak tree in Pantego, Texas (July 1996 photo by author).

FIG

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tree, but it's another to cut it in half."9 All too often, homeowners and utility crews have very different perceptions of how much cutting is needed to keep branches from obstructing or severing power lines. Most observers note that a compromise can often be worked out with the owner before the chain saws are started. Although large-scale developments often wreak havoc in the Cross Timbers forest, some developers are more enlightened than others. One such project, Solana, is located 22 miles northwest of Dallas in the Eastern Cross Timbers. In developing the 900-acre parcel, "landscape architect Peter Walker's enthusiasm for the prairie and woodlands of the rolling site"10 led him to recommend preserving the Cross Timbers vegetation on about half of the 600 acres not initially developed for businesses and residences. The site's landscape manager, Tom Blagg, confirmed that the developer's plan minimized construction in the post oak forest because the trees cannot tolerate disturbance. Blagg perceptively concluded that because "these post oak trees can't tolerate people.... [T]he main thing we are trying to do is stay away from them."11 The Solana site plan represents an intricate pattern of prairie and Cross Timbers forest, most of the latter in large blocks. Predictably, development pressures have boomeranged on some insensitive or uninformed developers, with the Texas Cross Timbers witnessing the birth of several conservation groups upset over the seemingly wanton destruction of trees. One automobile dealer's recent razing of post oaks on a forested site near Denton prompted outrage. In a Dallas Morning News article titled "Cross Timbers group rallying to save trees," writer Nita Thurman reported: "Commuters who traveled daily past a tree-covered site just southeast of Denton were stunned when bulldozers, in a single day, turned the 14-acre forest into dirt." Thurman further noted that on the ravaged site, a sign soon sprang up reading, in part, "Do you hear what I hear? . . . the silence of birds; the scream of 100-year-old trees being torn from the earth?" This September 1997 clearcutting of oaks first inspired a scattered opposition that soon turned into an organized protest of about 30 people carrying signs and marching in a "requiem" for the trees. Signs carried outside the Bill Utter Ford car dealership read "Utter Destruction," a denunciation that became the movement's rallying cry12. One of the group's organizers complained during a meeting: "[T]he Cross Timbers is a very unique area, and it is being chopped down just as fast as it will go." In response, automobile dealer Bill Utter, who had not anticipated the public outcry, agreed to plant 60 redbud trees as part of the Keep Denton B eautiful ReLeaf Program. 177

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FIG. 4-5. As seen in this view ofa suburban housing area under construction in Arlington, Texas, developers sometimes level virtually all trees on a site. Note the post oaks remaining at the edge ofthe development (1997 photo by the author).

Hoping to provide an alternative to the unnecessary clearcutting of sections of the Cross Timbers, the protesters cited a San Antonio Cadillac dealership that had developed a wooded site by preserving as many trees as possible. When asked why he had voluntarily saved the trees, the dealer explained: "I'm from West Texas."13 This reference to a nearly treeless part of the state (which is even home to a community named No Trees) underscores the fact that familiarity with the forested portions of Texas, such as the Cross Timbers, often breeds contempt. Developers, insensitive to the significance of trees that seem to abound, level the land and annihilate huge areas of the forest (FIG. 4-5). The Cross Timbers group in Denton wanted to ensure that this devastation will not be repeated. It argued that the tree ordinances in Denton and three other nearby communities were ineffectual. Accordingly, the group drew up a model tree-protection ordinance to ensure that existing trees will be saved wherever possible, rather than replaced through trades that encourage the planting of new, often non-native tree species. Time will tell whether this ordinance achieves the goal of protecting the native trees. Although Cross Timbers communities like Arlington pride themselves on their trees and do maintain fairly demanding tree protection ordinances, the characteristic vegetation in and around these communities is in jeopardy. In addition to simple development pressures, there are several other 178

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reasons. The first is aesthetic: area nurseries stock a wide range of oak trees, such as red oak and live oak, but do not typically carry post oaks and blackjack oaks. After asking why, the prospective buyer of Cross Timbers oak trees will be told that these oaks are not as attractive as the other trees, which are selected for aesthetic factors such as their shape and fall color. The post and blackjack oaks' propensity to retain their gnarled and contorted dead limbs—which add character and provide good perches for birds—is considered undesirable and unaesthetic in a culture that defines a tree's beauty in very narrow terms, namely a generally straight trunk and limbs that sweep upward to form a bulbous crown. As one informant told me when she learned that I was writing a book on the Cross Timbers, "Post oaks grow on my grandparents' farm in Oklahoma, but those trees surely are ugly? Despite not being preferred trees, the post oak and blackjack oak "volunteer" in many lots, whether on lawns or in flowerbeds, and would probably remain fairly common if left to grow to maturity; however, they are usually mowed down or plucked out, being the wrong type ofvegetation now growing in the wrong place. Ironically, then, these young trees are considered weeds in the very habitat they once helped to define. Another reason for the decline of Cross Timbers vegetation involves ecological factors. The rapidly growing suburbs provide habitats for small mammals such as squirrels. These creatures aggressively covet acorns, especially those of the post oak, thus negatively affecting the population of native oaks. In a way, time is one of the ecological factors working against the native oak population in such areas; because they grow relatively slowly (compared to the popular red oaks, for example), post oaks are usually not recommended by the local garden authorities, who sometimes write books and newspaper columns on the subject. As one resident ofArdmore, Oklahoma, asked: "[W]hy should I plant a post oak, which will take twenty years to reach fifteen feet in height, when a red oak will do twice that in half the time?" Additionally, some authorities suggest that blackjack oaks are more prone to disease, and are thus less desirable than even the post oaks. Also, because oaks are difficult for some people to differentiate, they remove any unwanted oak tree as they maintain their yards. For those and other reasons, the native oaks are often outnumbered by other, more exotic, trees. This situation is seen along Arlington's Green Oaks Boulevard, where, paradoxically, most of the trees planted on the boulevard center strip are not oaks at all, but rather elms, ornamental pears, sycamores, and other "attractive" trees. The Cross Timbers have been affected by human activity for centuries, especially during the last century, and few places better reveal this than the 179

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Eastern Cross Timbers ofTexas. The reduction of forest has been so great that geography student Charles Oliver May concluded in his MA thesis about 40 years ago that only the Western Cross Timbers remained.14 However, fieldwork and air photography reveal this obituary to be premature, for significant vestiges of the Eastern Cross Timbers remained by the late twentieth century. The vegetation pattern even shows up on satellite photographs of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and environs. In a 1982 study of the regional habitats, wildlife management student Larry Marcy noted that "agricultural and urban expansion has greatly reduced the E [astern] C[ross] T[imbers] from its original extent to 2 remaining areas; the northern area above, and the southern area below the Fort Worth-Dallas Metroplex, Tarrant County." Marcy further noted that the largest remaining tracts of Eastern Cross Timbers lie in the Hagerman Wildlife Refuge (Grayson County and eastern Cooke County), and that only "scattered woodlots comprised the remaining E[astern] C[ross] T[imbers] below these 2 counties, where once a continuous belt of timber confronted the pioneer."15 Fieldwork conducted in 1997 anc ^ X99^ confirms Marcy's findings: urbanization and agriculture have taken a tremendous toll on the Cross Timbers forest in the Metroplex, where the growth of Fort Worth, Dallas, and their suburbs has, in effect, left the Eastern Cross Timbers as two virtually separate enclaves. However, where fairly sensitive developers have operated—as in portions of Arlington—traces of the Eastern Cross Timbers remain even in suburban environments. In such areas, developers and contractors carefully identify trees to be saved and then avoid damaging them during construction. Housing developments with native trees are not only more attractive; studies have shown that each large tree may increase the value of a lot by as much as several hundred dollars, based on a comparison of sale prices of comparably sized real estate parcels. In real estate developments, conservation makes good sense—both environmentally and economically. Wise environmental design can preserve many trees that would otherwise be lost in most typical developments. After one housing developer in Oklahoma destroyed a venerable post oak forest, researchers from the University of Arkansas urged "as an alternative to this conventional development, future builders in the ancient Cross Timbers might consider a more 'green design/ with a minimum footprint cleared for road, home, and yard, and a two-story structure with elevated deck to take advantage of the magnificent view over the top of a canopy of virgin 20' to 30' tall post oak and beyond to the lovely lake and stunning Oklahoma skies."16 Larger lots typically offer the best protection. In most suburbs, the more 180

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upscale residential sites with larger lots often maintain some land in a fairly "natural" forested state. Cross Timbers vegetation has fared far worse on smaller suburban lots with chemically treated lawns, patios, and other features that radically change the environment. But what about sites that have already been deforested by development? Can post oaks be grown on sites that formerly sustained Cross Timbers but are now devoid of these native trees? For those homeowners in the Cross Timbers who wish to encourage the growth of post oaks, some words of caution are in order. One writer admonished gardeners: "If you own existing post oaks, leave them alone as much as possible." She noted that "their roots are extremely sensitive to disturbance" and that "compacting the soil, raising the soil level, paving over the roots, or over watering all drive out the oxygen in the soil that is vital to their health." She suggested that rather than attempting to transplant even small post oaks, a process that has only limited success, "you might have to start with acorns, although one grower told me that he'd planted fresh acorns in one-gallon containers and was selling eighteen inch seedlings by the next spring."17 In my experience, however, few nurseries bother to sell post oaks. Texas gardening authority Neil Sperry succinctly stated that "post oaks are almost never seen in [the] nursery trade, partly because there are better landscape trees, and partly because they are so difficult to transplant." They should, he stated, "be left in place whenever possible." Sperry went on to caution gardeners that "post oaks grow well in native conditions, but human invasion can be their worst enemy." He further warned post oak owners to "minimize trenching, grade changing, and high maintenance procedures of feeding and watering within drip lines of established trees."18 My own post oak regeneration efforts in the Eastern Cross Timbers confirm Sperry s advice: these trees are difficult to transplant, in part because their roots (especially those near the surface) are easily damaged. Post oaks grown from acorns or transplanted from starter pots are most likely to survive. Again, though, post oaks do best when subjected to the least human interference. But the trees do grow well once started and, despite their slower growth than other types of oaks, can reach heights of four to five feet in as many years; blackjack oaks grow even more rapidly. A key to regenerating the native oaks may lie in the soil: trees growing in a sandy-clayey soil do far better than those growing in soil imported from non-Cross Timbers locales. And what of bird populations that once flourished in the now suburban Cross Timbers? Here there may also be some good news. Although bird populations often decline drastically in new suburban tracts, once the new 181

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trees planted there reach maturity, they offer better avian habitats. Just as bird populations have grown and diversified with age in various southwestern urban settings, bird populations in the Cross Timbers suburbs may approach earlier levels. Ecologist Frederick R. Gehlbach has observed that bird populations in several southwestern cities rose to more than half their undisturbed population level within about 5 years, and to nearly 90 percent in about 70 years.19 Of course, natural conditions will not return; even an ecologically friendly suburb is far from the undisturbed Cross Timbers, but time will likely soften people's impact. As Gehlbach noted, "I suspect that cultural succession is much like natural succession in restoring the most complex community structure the local environment will support."20 This is welcome news for those who hope that the need for development and the need for habitat preservation can be reconciled. THE VALUE OF THE CROSS TIMBERS

Largely aesthetic and economic motives help preserve the natural "feel" of many Cross Timbers developments, with large semiforested housing lots bringing higher-dollar returns (FIG. 4-6). However, there are many other reasons to conserve native trees and the habitat that they compose. Beyond the site-specific, local, or municipal level, the Cross Timbers forest is important in the regional economy and ecology of the south central United States. Regional planners and conservationists often mention one or more of the following reasons to preserve these forests: EnvironmentalDiversity—-The Cross Timbers provide a forested environment that differs from both the historically surrounding prairie and the more recent agricultural and urban development. Habitat Variety—-The Cross Timbers' canopy and thick understory provide shelter and nesting sites for a diversity of birds and small mammals. Wildlife/Animal Sustenance—The Cross Timbers provide food (viz. acorns and other forage) that also supports a diverse population of birds and mammals. Water Conservation—The oaks of the Cross Timbers help protect waterbearing sandstone from rapid runoff and erosion. Aesthetic/Recreation—The oak forests of the Cross Timbers are increasingly enjoyed for their shade, their aesthetic value, and as an escape from large metropolitan areas.21 182

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FI ° i l " 6 ; P ? ^ w r f C w * Timbers post oaks can add to the attractiveness ofresidential neighborhoods and materially increase property values (Arlington, Texas, November m7

photo by author).

yy/

THE CHANGING FOREST Those who have studied the Cross Timbers for any length of time understand that the region is in a constant state of flux. Its boundaries may change because of shifting environmental conditions and human activity. Viewed from the air or topographic maps, the Cross Timbers today appear as a crazy quilt pattern, with more or less naturally shaped enclaves that correspond to topography and soils alternating with straight-edged land parcels in both urban and agricultural areas, (FIG. 4-7). To determine how the Cross Timbers are currently faring, I consulted a variety of maps from various periods. A1948 map of the Western Cross Timbers prepared by the USDA Soil Conservation Service (FIG. 4-8) proved particularly helpful. However, the map was evidently based on soils, so it classified several clearly built-up areas as Cross Timbers even though the native vegetation had been removed. Nevertheless, the map is an excellent predictor of where one might expect to find Cross Timbers-type vegetation in areas of restricted land use. Aerial photographs were also especially valuable, as they depicted actual conditions, as were USGS topographical maps which are based on data that was originally collected in the field. Selected topographical maps from the 1940s and 1950s served as a database, as did aerial photographs of selected areas. 183

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FIG. 4-7. In this aerialphoto looking eastward from about 25,000feetover southcentral Oklahoma's Washita River country, the Cross Timbers appear as part ofa crazy quiltpattern whose edges are natural in some locales and squared off in others (Photo by author, October 1997).

Using these base maps and aerial photos as a guide, a series of transects were run in 1997-1998 to compare the distribution 50 years ago with that in the late 1990s. This field study revealed that two dynamic processes— deforestation and reforestation—are operating simultaneously. Surprisingly, the Cross Timbers appear to have expanded in some places—notably where limited grazing occurs but where fire is suppressed and farming has nearly ceased. In many other areas, however, the Cross Timbers have contracted, especially in rapidly developing urban areas and in aggressively cultivated farmland. Based on a detailed comparison of USGS topographic maps for selected sites, as well as a comparison of aerial photographs from selected periods, my research confirms that two types of land use in particular— urbanization and agriculture—have had a tremendous negative impact on the distribution of the Cross Timbers. As noted by many earlier observers, the Cross Timbers have been heavily reduced by the suburban/ex-urban growth around cities such as Fort Worth, Dallas, Sherman, and Denison (in Texas) and Oklahoma City and Tulsa (in Oklahoma). However, in some ways this change has grown less disas184

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trous over time. People s appreciation of the environment increased during the 1980s and 1990s, and this trend is evident in some residential developments, particularly more expensive homesites which often preserve as many native oaks as possible. In north Arlington, for example, a number of housing developments are nestled among the oaks of the Cross Timbers, helping to preserve some of the region's character. But many other housing

LEGEN D MAIN BELT (Sandy FRINGE (Principally rocky ana" gravelly)

THE WESTERN CROSS TIMBERS OF TEXAS

U.S.D.A. Soil Conservation Service

FIG. 4-8.1948 map ofthe Texas Cross Timbers suggests a dose relationship between soils and Cross Timbers habitat, and has served as a management tool for farmers and ranchers (Source USDA Soil Conservation Service; cf. Dyksterhuis, 1948). 185

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tracts are not as sensitively developed, and in many cases large areas of Cross Timbers have fallen before the bulldozer as suburban expansion has crept outward from the cities. Even in environmentally conscious developments, crews sometimes doom trees by paving too closely to them or by running construction equipment over their roots. In either case, the result is the same: a tree with a largely diminished root system cannot receive enough water and nutrients to support its wide crown. Inasmuch as the plant's moisture supply is reduced, such development creates a more desertlike environment than the oaks can withstand. Similarly, shopping centers and malls in poorly regulated areas often completely obliterate Cross Timbers forest to create parking lots sprawling over hundreds of acres. The reduction of habitat even has its counterpart in nominally rural areas. Landscape architect Phil Huey noted similar attrition in the Eastern Cross Timbers around Cleburne, Texas, where small ranchettes or rural properties have reduced much of the forest; there, Huey notes, many locals refer to the Cross Timbers rather contemptuously as "scrub forest"22 and remove it to obtain better views. ABANDONED FARMLANDS — AND THEIR RECLAMATION

There is another side of the story, however. The Cross Timbers are actually expanding in a number of areas, especially where former farming and grazing lands have been abandoned, giving them the chance to revert to forest. Abandoned farmland may contain the ruins of an old log farmhouse with its sandstone chimney standing as a forlorn monument, the remains of a barn, or the rotting posts of an old fence—all indicators of a farm whose fortunes collapsed. This type of scene is especially common in areas far from centers of growth. Surprisingly, reforestation can occur in more developed areas where expansion has taken place slowly—for instance, when a speculator is holding out for a high sales price. Properties vacant for years may sprout post and blackjack oaks whose days, alas, are usually numbered. Abandoned farms provide good sites to observe the relationships between former land use and Cross Timbers forest regeneration. In his 1948 study of the Western Cross Timbers of Texas, ecologist E. J. Dyksterhuis noted that cultivated fields were common in the main belt, and "readily recognized in all stages of secondary succession by angular [field] perimeters, by virtual absence of oaks, and by presence of numerous gullies."23 How long might oak trees need to regenerate on areas that had been cut for cropland? In observing the subsere (or course of secondary succession), 186

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Dyksterhuis concluded that the oaks' return depended on whether they were protected from extremely intensive grazing. Ungrazed areas revealed an initial influx of weeds and grasses that developed in stages, culminating in the little bluestem or final stage after 14 years. Significantly, post oaks and blackjack oaks "showed almost no tendency to re-enter abandoned fields."24 Dyksterhuis noted that these findings corresponded to those by Smith (1940) in Oklahoma. To determine how succession occurs on the manyfieldswith unrestricted grazing, Dyksterhuis studied a 52-acre family farm near Decatur, Texas. This farm in the Western Cross Timbers supported one family for 35 years before being abandoned. This extensively gullied parcel supported diverse annual forbs herbs and became a repository for all of the least desirable forage species—that is, species which cannot be used by livestock. Dyksterhuis did not record a return of oaks here, but the site was apparently similar to other sites that showed "the natural consequence of first exposing a bared area and then preventing establishment of all species except those which may escape grazing."25 Agreeing with Weaver and Clements (1938) that the Cross Timbers are considered oak savanna in which grasses are climax dominants, Dyksterhuis confirmed that the presence or absence of oaks in a landscape is closely related to the condition of the grass cover. He noted that "where the grasses have been reduced by overgrazing, the density of the stand of oaks increases to a point where the vegetation becomes oak forest or woodland rather than savannah." This process, Dyksterhuis concluded, can be "attributed to reduction in competition for moisture once provided by perennial herbaceous species whose coverage was disproportionately reduced under overgrazing by domestic livestock."26 Regarding fire's effect on the Cross Timbers, Dyksterhuis noted that it "was, no doubt, a factor in the maintenance of the original savannah but today intensive grazing largely prevents accumulation of sufficient fuel. This, too, favors post oak and blackjack oak rather than the grasses."27 Whereas a large quantity of fuel may have once sustained the original savanna by enabling fires to burn back new oak shoots, the weaker fires that accompany livestock allow oaks to regenerate. Because "young sprouts and seedlings of the oaks extend their crowns up out of the reach of grazing animals," within about a decade or less, oaks develop bark strong enough to resist the weaker fires.28 Thus, although overgrazing does not necessarily produce a Cross Timbers-type landscape, moderate unchecked grazing, coupled with the suppression of fire, can lead to the re-establishment of post oak and blackjack oak populations in this region. 187

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By the 1930s, then, ecologists finally confirmed the importance of fire as a sustainer of the prairies, and marked its absence as a factor in the generation—or regeneration—of a forest vegetation pattern. MANAGING THE CROSS TIMBERS

In many parts of the region, farming and ranching profoundly affect which areas are prairie and which are forested. In one farming and ranching area in the Cross Timbers of southern Oklahoma, the Noble Foundation of Ardmore pursues an agenda of making the land more productive while protecting it from erosion and degradation. On several farms that have become experimental management areas in Carter and Love Counties, the Noble Foundation staff seeks to sustain herds of cattle through the removal of unwanted tree growth and the development of rich pasturage. This goal is in keeping with the vision of the foundation s creator, Lloyd Noble, who in 1945 lamented the degradation of the environment. The staff has concluded that the area under study was naturally prairielike, with small areas of oak-hickory savanna, on Cross Timbers-type soil. The area was decidedly not heavily forested with the dense vegetation often associated with the term Cross Timbers. THE ROLE OF FIRE —AND FIRE SUPPRESSION

However, the staff has also noted that Cross Timbers-type vegetation— with a thick understory of brush and vines, and post oak and blackjack oak—tends to establish itself quickly when burning is suppressed. The staff points to numerous areas where substantial Cross Timbers forest has thus essentially intruded into former prairies. As candidly stated by one of the staff members, the notion that the Cross Timbers forest should be protected is incomprehensible, for it is not the regions best nor original condition. In fact, the Noble Foundation is attempting to keep trees from invading, or rather completely taking over, the land. In some places on these experimental farms and ranches, oaks are encouraged to grow in grassy areas that provide browse and winter shelter for stock (FIG. 4-9). Although the Noble Foundation staff's assumptions are not based on historical data, members have observed the forest establish itself onsite within the last 10 to 15 years. These managers confirm what other ecologists have suspected and demonstrated—namely, that Cross Timbers-type forests can establish themselves in areas that were previously prairie. The key ingredient in this establishment is the suppression of fire. 188

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'

"'

' " "

;

* '

FIG. 4-9. O// «w experimental range management area nearArdmore, Oklahoma, the Noble Foundation has encouraged the growth ofoak trees thatprovide browse and shelter for livestock in aparklike setting (1997photo by author).

That fire can devastate oak trees has been observed repeatedly on both the Noble Foundation properties in Oklahoma and the forested land that forms part of the Fort Worth Nature Preserve in Texas. The latter, a varied site containing both prairie and western Cross Timbers vegetation zones, provides an excellent example of people's role in shaping a landscape's vegetation patterns. On a portion of the site, the staff of the Fort Worth Nature Center has curtailed burning and witnessed the rapid regeneration of Cross Timbers post oak and blackjack oak forests. Where fire has been able to burn its way into the developing forest, however, most of the oaks perish in the flames and grass returns. The fires that accompanied a drought from late 1995 into the spring of 1996 destroyed even large oaks. According to observers in both Oklahoma and Texas, during that February—with some days in the low 90s Fahrenheit and very low humidity—oaks virtually exploded as the dense undergrowth of tinder-dry brush and vines carried wildfire flames well into the forest. As is typical with such fires, the oaks died and the grasses began to return. With continued fire suppression, however, the oaks will regenerate under conditions favoring Cross Timbers growth. Numerous ecologists confirm that the larger oaks often are more resistant to fire for their bark is thicker. And yet lightning may prove their nemesis. An oak tree estimated to be at least 250 years old, and 189

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FIG. 4-10. At the Fort Worth Nature Center (Tarrant County, Texas), a large oak tree more than 250 years old was destroyed by lightning in 1996, leaving a charred stump (September 199Jphoto by author). 190

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which had served as a landmark at the Fort Worth Nature Center, was reduced to a charred stump resembling an abstract sculpture after being hit by lightning in 1995 (FIG. 4-10). Fires caused by lightning and by people have profoundly affected the Cross Timbers — especially in times of drought. Ecologist and Fort Worth Nature Center director Wayne Clark suggests that a fire frequency of 2 to 10 years would result in an open savanna or prairie landscape.29 A 1991 report by forage and crop management specialist Ronald Mitchell of the Noble Foundation suggests that a natural fire frequency of 5 to 10 years appears to sustain prairie, while a [i]n topography broken by ravines, mottes of timber, and rivers, such as the Cross Timbers, fire frequency may have been 20 to 30 years."30 Field observation suggests that the persistence of Cross Timbers vegetation in the most rugged portions of the region may partly result from the scarcity of fires there, for the rugged topography retards the flow or passage of fires. In another paper, Mitchell concluded that "[i]n general, burns which create a mosaic of vegetation types over the landscape (patchy) will benefit most species."31 Controlled or prescribed burning has enriched the prairie vegetation and helped sustain edge habitats that are conducive to species diversity in that large area of eastern Oklahoma which is depicted on the Land Resources Area of Oklahoma map as "Cross Timbers." PASTURE AND GRAZING LANDS

Fire helps to sustain rich pastures, but so too does human activity that encourages large grazing animals. As the Cross Timbers evolved in the twentieth century, its proximity to developing urban markets (such as Dallas, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City) ensured ready markets for dairy products. Since the Second World War, the Cross Timbers have become a significant "milk shed" for the regions cities. The Cross Timbers town of Stephenville celebrates the dairy industry's contribution to the local economy with a large statue of a cow—"Moola"—on the public square. A substantial percentage of the Cross Timbers, about a quarter of the region, is devoted to ranchland for beef cattle (FIG. 4-11). A number of these ranches—some run by working ranchers, others by part-time ranchers who may also have city jobs—feature names associated with the Cross Timbers: Green Oaks Ranch near Stephenville, Texas, is an example, as is the even more evocative Tara Oaks nearby (FIG. 4-12). Horse raising, too, is a significant part of the Cross Timbers economy. With horseback riding s growing popularity as a leisure activity in the last 191

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FIG. 4-11. Substantial areas ofthe Cross Timbers are used as grazing landfor cattle, as suggested by this scene nearMillsap, Texas (November 1997photo by author).

FIG. 4-12. Tara Oaks ranch in the Western Cross Timbers near Stephenville, Texas, builds upon an oak theme, but also recalls the romantic literary and cinematic legacy of Gone with the Wind (November 1997photo by the author). 192

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FIG. 4-13. The complex mosaic of Cross Timbers vegetationfindshorse pastures interspersed with forest, as seen near Santo, Texas (November i997photo by author).

25 years, horses are seen with increasing frequency in pastures (FIG. 4-13). The horse and mule were once the working stock of the region, reaching their maximum numbers about 1920 before tractors and pickup trucks almost eclipsed their use. Horses are today in demand for show, rodeo, or personal riding. Although a number of working ranches remain in the Cross Timbers, most horses are raised for aesthetics and personal pleasure. All of the hoofed herbivorous animals that dominate the Cross Timbers' pastures were introduced from the other continents generations ago, but still serve as a reminder of the bison that once ranged in the prairie that bordered the region. Yet livestock also helped transform the region and are part of the modern Cross Timbers lifestyle, which is ex-urban in nature: With the development of the modern highways that author Worth S. Ray described in his 1947 book on the Cross Timbers, people can now commute from a Cross Timbers ranch, or ranchette, to the heart of the city in a reasonable time. Driving an air-conditioned pickup truck or sports utility vehicle to Fort Worth from Parker County, or to Oklahoma City from Lincoln County, a driver might unknowingly speed through a variegated landscape of farm, field, and Cross Timbers forest that looked substantially different a century ago. Even landscapes that appear similar—for instance a pasture today where prairie existed a half century or more ago—may have a different composi193

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tion and type of plants. Studying Cross Timbers-prairie ecotones of Oklahoma, geographer-botanist Bruce Hoagland observed that native grasses (e.g., blue stem) tended to be replaced by exotic grasses such as fescue and bermuda.32 Thus, although the resulting pastures may seem natural, they have been transformed by the importation of new species that fill old niches. LOGGING AND LUMBERING

Two activities largely missing from today's Cross Timbers landscape are logging and lumbering. Lumbering was never dominant in the Cross Timbers, but some harvesting did occur. Although entrepreneurs have wistfully beheld the oak forests of the Cross Timbers with an eye toward profit, these lands remain marginal to large-scale lumber production. In a few areas, trees are harvested for wood chip manufacturing. Generally, however, little wood is presently harvested for timber—no doubt a result of the slow growth rate and unsuitability of the lumber for structural uses. Nevertheless, even in the late twentieth century, the Cross Timbers forest is periodically scrutinized for its potential to yield lumber or other wood products. In the mid-1980s, for example, the Texas Forest Service consulted with individuals interested in developing the timber resources of the region, and seriously reviewed the prospects of cutting tracts for railroad ties and other uses. It was determined, however, that the wood produced from the Cross Timbers sites could not compete with that of the forests of east Texas, where pines and taller hardwoods abound. The few sawmills that do currently operate in the Cross Timbers usually cut and mill wood from other locations, or selectively cut some of the few large hardwood trees, like walnut or pecan, that occasionally grow in the Cross Timbers. However, one sawmill operator in the Western Cross Timbers does make fireplace mantles from post oak.33 Although Cross Timbers oaks are generally not used for lumber, they do fall to the chain saw for another purpose: the Cross Timbers continue to supply wood for the many fireplaces in newer, upscale residential developments. One company, Quality Timber Products of Rose Hill, Kansas, a small community at the northern edge of the Cross Timbers region, markets shrink-wrapped packages of "mixed hardwoods" (including post oak) for fireplace wood. The company's firewood is sold throughout a large area, including north Texas and other urban markets. On crisp evenings, the air in the regions suburbs is filled with the pungent aroma of burning oak that was familiar to the pioneers who heated and cooked with the

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wood of the Cross Timbers, or burned its stumps on newly cleared land. THE CROSS TIMBERS AS ECOLOGICAL LABORATORY

Ecologists caution against thinking of any particular vegetation pattern, including that of the Cross Timbers, as a permanent fixture on the land. They instead suggest that landscapes change as both physical and cultural conditions vary. It may be wise, then, to think of the Cross Timbers forest as somewhat transitory. Beginning in the 1920s, research conducted by ecologists confirmed earlier observers' suspicions that the Cross Timbers are a unique ecological region whose habitats are diverse and varied. Research by Texas ecologist Benjamin C. Sharp was influential in establishing the Cross Timbers as an ecological region. By the 1930s, it was recognized that the region represented a transition from prairie to forest, with the oak savannas being intermediate. Researchers also concluded that those landscapes may change through the actions of both man and nature. Although geologist E. T. Hill and others in the late 1800s considered the oaks of the Cross Timbers to be a climax dominant vegetation type (that is, flora that would naturally emerge and then become dominant over time), these forested areas were more recently interpreted as "relicts from a former moist phase of the climatic cycle," in which "the oaks have been able to survive against competition from the grasses by virtue of the sandy soils."34 By the 1940s, ecologists used the Cross Timbers as a laboratory of sorts where they could study land that had been subjected to particular documented uses—and abuses. They recognized a close relationship between the Cross Timbers and various human factors, notably grazing, agricultural practices, and fire suppression.35 After careful study in the 1940s, Dyksterhuis concluded that fire alone (that is, without grazing) tended to extend the grasslands, while heavy grazing increased the dominance of woody species.36 Similarly, in the 1950s, ecologists Rice and Penfound concluded that upland forests of the Oklahoma Cross Timbers possessed more woody vegetative cover than original stands as a result of grazing and the absence offire.This condition helped transform some of the original oak savanna into Cross Timberstype oak forest or woodlands.37 These findings confirm that fire has played a significant role in shaping the region, as have the activities of grazing animals. Because fire (and its suppression) and grazing animals (especially cattle) are so closely connected with the later human settlement of the Cross Timbers, they help explain the massive change in the region that

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was well under way by the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet change rapidly accelerated as settlers moved into the region during the late nineteenth century. Clearly by the 1930s, coincident with the rise of ecology as a serious discipline, the Cross Timbers had reached a crisis, having been heavily cultivated to the point of abuse. The scene was thus set for yet another perception of the Cross Timbers—that of wildlife habitat—to emerge. THE CROSS TIMBERS AS WILDLIFE HABITAT

The Cross Timbers' ecological significance as wildlife habitat cannot be overestimated, for they help sustain large populations of smaller mammals and birds. More than half a century ago, observers noted that the regions faunal diversity could be attributed to its being a forest-grassland ecotone that "contains dominants from both the deciduous [forest] formation and the grassland formation."38 In Oklahoma, game management scientists Duck and Fletcher identified approximately 17,600 square miles (11,264,000 acres) of land in this condition, which they called the "Post Oak Blackjack Game Type." Although these figures are higher than other, more conservative estimates, they suggest a vast land area in this type of variegated Cross Timbers vegetation pattern. While mostly in east central Oklahoma, fingers of this vegetation type reached as far west as Major, Woodward, Dewey, and Comanche Counties. In this part of the Cross Timbers, the two common oaks dominate, though black hickory {Carya buckley) is also common, and the percentage of blackjack oak increases to the west. Duck and Fletcher further noted that the understory consists of little bluestem (Andropogon scoparius), big bluestem (A.furcatus), and other prairie grass species, depending on the characteristics of the site. Duck and Fletcher concluded that "potentially, the post oak-blackjack condition is a good game and fur producer, and because of its size warrants serious attention." However, several factors affected the regions use as wildlife habitat and as hunting area. Noting that the topography of the area is characteristically rough and that farm tenancy was high (65 to 70 percent), with farms averaging about 80 acres (cotton, sorghum, berries, peanuts and fruit orchards dominating), Duck and Fletcher concluded that the proper management of the area for game animals depended on cooperation with farm agencies, local sports enthusiasts, and other groups, such as garden clubs. Given the proximity of large towns and cities to the forested areas, pressure on the area was intense. Managers noted that improved

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farming methods in particular could help improve small-game habitats, for unwise agricultural practices naturally lead to their reduction. The regions inherently poor or depleted soils were also considered a problem in sustaining game and fur-bearing animals, and it was further noted that fertilization was often necessary to restore vegetation and hence improve habitat. Duck and Fletcher concluded that burning and heavy grazing had resulted in serious destruction of game habitat in much of the region. Quail populations, in particular, were abundant only when soil disturbances brought about variations in the vegetation. This observation confirms that human alteration of the habitat, provided that it is not too severe, can actually increase habitat for certain native species. This aspect, in other words, is the Cross Timbers not as a wilderness area, but as a management area. In fact, the term "Cross Timbers" is officially used for one of a dozen Land Resource Areas in Oklahoma.39 Another important and heavily managed game animal—white tailed deer—has also likely benefited from people's manipulation of Cross Timbers habitat.40 Studies indicate that white-tailed deer consume grasses, browse, and forbs as they forage: forbs make up the majority of their diet during spring (66 percent) and summer (81 percent), while browse use was greatest in the fall (69 percent), with one third of the latter being in the form of acorns.41 High acorn consumption is not surprising, given the abundance of oaks in the Cross Timbers, where acorns constitute fully 23 percent of the average fall diet and 8 percent of the winter diet. In spring and summer, deer consume few grasses (1 percent), though grasses are increasingly important in fall and are even more so in winter, when they comprise about one third of the diet.42 The region is fairly well watered. The creeks and rivers are normally sufficient to sustain deer populations, especially when supplemented by human-made ponds and lakes. In the mosaic of farm, pasture, and woodland that is today s Cross Timbers, then, some populations have likely increased since more than a century ago when a "deer hunt in the Cross Timbers" meant a prolonged or protracted chase. By the late 1990s, the cultural ecology of the agrarian portions of the Cross Timbers had indeed changed. The marginal farms described by Duck and Fletcher in the Oklahoma Cross Timbers (1943) and by Dyksterhuis in the Western Cross Timbers of Texas (1947) are all but gone. The moderate grazing and selective clearing, piling or stacking of brush that Duck and Fletcher had predicted would benefit game species have become commonplace in large areas. Both economic (or market) forces and government-sponsored management techniques recommended by agencies at

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various levels —such as the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; county agricultural extension agents; and the game, fish, and wildlife departments of Texas and Oklahoma—have helped protect portions of the Cross Timbers habitat. Conversations with landowners in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas reveal that techniques once advocated by government—such as crop rotation, contour plowing, and woodlot preservation—are now simply considered good business. In the Cross Timbers region, a few younger landowners even expressed surprise that the clearcutting of trees and aggressive monoculture of cotton farming, with its arrow-straight crop rows that turned land into deep gullies, were once the norm. To be sure, such abused land still exists in the region, and it serves as a haunting reminder of how poorly the area was treated until about half a century ago. Moreover, a number of destructive practices—such as bulldozing forests to create large pastures and fields—continue. Yet the preservation of Cross Timbers forests by agricultural management, and the regeneration of the Cross Timbers by agricultural abandonment and enlightened range management, gives some cause for optimism regarding the regions future. THE CROSS TIMBERS PRESERVED

With the passage of time and an increase in leisure and outdoor recreation, conservation of the Cross Timbers has emerged as another important facet of the region. Among the best locations to observe the unique flora of the Western Cross Timbers of Texas is the popular Lake Mineral Wells State Park. This, according to conservationist Richard Bartlett, "is a prime example of the Cross Timbers ecological area, crisscrossed by deep canyons, with rolling, hilly terrain throughout, studded with post oak, blackjack oak, and mesquite."43 The 3,009-acre Lake Mineral Wells State Park is but four miles east of the former resort town of the same name. Lake Mineral Wells has a long history dating back to the late 1920s. As it was improved and expanded over the years, the project became a state park property in the 1970s, and officially opened in 1981. The preservation of Cross Timbers forest was incidental to the creation of the lake, which inundated a large area of forested land. And yet, although it is the lake and not the forest itself that appears to be the main draw for visitors, the beauty and condition of the Cross Timbers is readily apparent. The lake's eastern side features dense stands of post oak and blackjack clinging to rocky sandstone ledges. This is classic forested land of the Western Cross Timbers, 198

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but the Bartlett quotation's reference to mesquite is telling: although native to the area, this plant has spread aggressively in the Cross Timbers of Texas and southern Oklahoma since about 1850, partly as a result of heavy grazing in nearby areas. The Cross Timbers forest in the Lake Mineral Wells State Park is, however, far less disturbed than in many other locales. This parks upland ridge stands like a forested island in an area that has otherwise been farmed and grazed for more than a century. In 1998, an abandoned railroad corridor traversing the southern edge of the park was opened as a nature trail in yet another example of how natural and cultural features are integrated in heritage tourism/recreation. The regeneration of Cross Timbers is being actively encouraged at the Fort Worth Nature Center, a 3,500-acre refuge of prairie and forest located about 10 miles northwest of Fort Worth just off the old Jacksboro highway (Texas 199). Ecologists there have been successfully preserving a fairly large area of Cross Timbers-type vegetation. As both a preserve and a laboratory, the Fort Worth Nature Center has not only sustained the forest, but actually increased its growth, since the early 1980s.44 Experiments at the center confirm that a careful management philosophy based on the science of ecology is needed to help preserve the Cross Timbers in the face of rapid land turnover and rapid land use change, especially at the periphery of the cities. That oaks have long been part of this ecosystem is evident from the ages of some larger specimens. One such tree was dated by ring analysis to the year 1694. Visitors to the Fort Worth Nature Center gain a glimpse of the Cross Timbers as they might have appeared in say 1800. Immersed in the forest, many visitors are awed by the wealth of vegetation that closes in from all sides. Dappled sunlight reaches deep into the forest, but the oak canopy and cluttered understory are so thick that one can see only a few dozen yards (FIG. 4-14). Throughout the Cross Timbers region, there are individual rural property owners who appreciate the forest's importance as both ecosystem and historic landmark. These include George Tobolowsky, whose 400-acre property northeast of Denton, Texas, preserves a classic Eastern Cross Timbers forest that clothes rugged sandstone topography. Although individual landowners are often cognizant of the need to preserve the trees of the Cross Timbers forest, their individual conservation efforts have generally resulted in a pattern of vegetation that is noncontiguous and fragmented. Could a large section of privately owned forest, say one stretching several dozen miles, be preserved as a vestige of (or tribute to) the presettlement Cross Timbers? To gain sufficient acceptance, such an area would have to have more than purely aesthetic or even symbolic value, but also 199

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FIG. 4-14. At the Fort Worth Nature Center (Tarrant County, Texas), a portion of preserved Cross Timbersforest reveals the density ofvegetation that greeted early travelers in parts ofthe region (September 1997 photo by author).

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both ecological and economic value. Given the deeply ingrained conservatism in the agrarian population here, a large, government-sponsored Cross Timbers preserve would probably not prove popular, regardless of historical justification or aesthetics. The prospect that numerous property owners might voluntarily agree to preserve a large, contiguous body of forest is exciting, but perhaps not realistic. If the Cross Timbers manage to survive in the face of rapid development, they will apparently do so in privately held fragments that are much smaller and less contiguous than the original habitat encountered by pioneer settlers in the early to mid-i8oos. Even though it was developed several decades ago, when government sponsorship of rural land management areas was more popular than today, the Lyndon Baines Johnson National Grassland offers a model that could be used to preserve sections of the Cross Timbers. The "LBJ Grasslands" has worked with some success in the adjacent prairie. It exists as a quiltwork of rectangular, privately owned prairie openings in the Western Cross Timbers ofWise County, Texas. Although noncontiguous, the parcels are large enough—some several thousand acres each—to preserve the feel of the open prairie through range management and controlled burning. But one suspects that the LBJ Grasslands model works because it yields improved rangeland, an economic incentive to local ranchers. A similar Cross Timbers National (or State) Forest in Texas, Oklahoma, or both would be more difficult to promote as a managed conservation area because it would not yield as high a return per acre. Because its wood is not harvestable commercially, and its trees are not edible by cattle, many ranchers consider the forest a detriment. Aesthetically, many people find the prairie more pleasing than the forest, as it permits broad vistas. The preservation of prairie, while the Cross Timbers are often either ignored or regarded as scrub forest land, points to an important issue—namely, that there is relatively little public consciousness of the Cross Timbers region as a conservation area. Although the Cross Timbers do contain several state parks, such as Lake Mineral Wells, that take advantage of the unique forests' natural beauty, the parks are often developed around human-made lakes that provide recreation. The forests do help reduce siltation and enhance the beauty of several state park lakes in the region, but that is, ironically, secondary to the parks' primary goal of recreation. In other words, the Cross Timbers have not been preserved because of any widespread popular understanding of their ecological or aesthetic value. There is considerable potential to preserve portions of the Cross Timbers, especially if government and private interests work cooperatively. On a rugged site overlooking Keystone Lake in southern Osage County, Okla-

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homa, a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Laboratory and the University of Oklahoma Department of Botany located what may prove to be a test locale for the joint-partnership (that is, public and private) preservation of the Cross Timbers. Approximately 4 square miles in size, the site consists of about 2.7 square miles of largely undisturbed forest savanna and glade vegetation. The site's principal owners include the Tulsa Audubon Society (TAS), which owns a 108-acre bald eagle preserve, and Mr. Irvin Frank of Tulsa, who owns over 1,000 acres. Because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) manages the buffer zone lands surrounding Keystone Lake, the researchers suggest that there is "an opportunity to maintain the biological integrity of the important tract," provided that "the cooperation of the principal landowners can be arranged." The researchers further note that "[t]he Frank Tract and adjacent COE and TAS lands represent the most outstanding and diverse examples of the Cross Timbers vegetation type we have ever visited" and that "it could serve as an ideal centerpiece of the Cross Timbers, and could help raise public and professional awareness concerning this authentic but little-known component of Oklahoma's natural heritage."45 THE CROSS TIMBERS IN THE POPULAR MIND Although ravaged in some places, the Cross Timbers have survived in others. Through a fascinating process of collective memory retention and modern image building, they have become enshrined in Texas as a vernacular or perceptual region. There is considerable evidence that the Cross Timbers became such a popular region in the twentieth century as an urbanizing population sought to recover its lost rural/historic roots.The adoption of the term Cross Timbers for business and civic enterprises occurred as early as the mid-1950s in Arlington, when local Boy Scout leaders named their district after the forest. In his "Annotated History of the Cross Timbers Boy Scout District," the late C. George Younkin related the name's origin in a story that resonates with frontier history: The name of our Scouting district had its beginning a long, long time ago and camefrom a physiographic designation. The Cross Timbers set aside a strip of woodlands, blackjack, post and live oak trees that mark the boundary between the black-lands ofEast Texas and the prairie lands ofthe west. These woods, combined with the luxuriant pasture grasses and abundant springs, attracted wildlife including herds ofbuffalo. Thusfor centuries before white settlement, this area was afavorite camping and hunting ground of many tribes of

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Indians. In the years immediately after the Spanish explorations, this Cross Timbers area was dominated by the Wichita Tribe, a subtribe ofthe Caddo Confederacy of East Texas.46 Younkin's history was never published, but it forms the basis of a rich Boy Scout lore. When asked about the meaning of the term Cross Timbers, people in Tarrant County will often volunteer that "it was the name of my sons scout troop."Through such efforts, the term has been immortalized since long after the region lost much of its forested, frontier countenance. According to geographer Terry Jordan, the Cross Timbers are recognized as one of Texas' two-dozen perceptual subregions.47 Jordan further observed that the name Cross Timbers fits into the category of environmental names, such as the east Texas Redlands, which slowly gave way to the now-familiar Piney Woods; or the Big Thicket; or the Blacklands. These environmental names were especially popular in the nineteenth century, and are now joined by commercially appealing sobriquets like Gold Coast and Metroplex. The Cross Timbers form one of those regions that made the transition from nineteenth-century folk culture region to latetwentieth-century popular culture region. The transition was aided in the nineteenth century by the many writers and cartographers who presented the region to the public. The Cross Timbers' status as a vernacular region is evident in the naming of businesses and other enterprises. A search of the Yellow Pages revealed more than 80 instances in the entire United States. Of these, 8 are in Oklahoma, and the vast majority—59 —are in Texas. A listing of these "Cross Timbers" enterprises on the Internet in March 1998 suggests that most are service related, but that some sell or manufacture products. By plotting these enterprises on a map of the United States (FIG. 4-15), two things become apparent: 1) they are scattered across the nation, but are most dominant in the Cross Timbers region, and 2) only in Texas is the name Cross Timbers common. In this regard, the community of Stephenville (pop. 5,700) is phenomenal: it has a dozen enterprises, such as the Cross Timbers Inn (FIG. 4-16), that have a highly self-conscious Cross Timbers identity. What caused the business community of Stephenville to be so aware of its location in the Cross Timbers? Similarly, why do the local residents have such a strong Cross Timbers identity? According to Jordan, although the Cross Timbers' name is venerable, its prevalence there is also rooted in fairly recent popular culture. In fact, Jordan observes, Stephenville provides a textbook example of "a region aborning" in modern times. In the spring of 1977, the 203

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FIG. 4-15. Map ofthe United States showing the number ofestablishments (such as businesses and schools) named "Cross Timbers" confirms that Texas has the most highly developed Cross Timbers regional identityy distantlyfollowed by Oklahoma (Map by author).

FIG. 4-16. The Cross Timbers Inn, located in Stephenville, Texas, capitalizes on a searchfor regional identity in the late twentieth century (1997 photo by author).

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Stephenville Chamber of Commerce sponsored a widely publicized contest to name the surrounding region. Noting that other areas of the state already had identifying names, such as Waco's "Heart ofTexas" and Abilene s "Big Country," the chamber sought a name that would "reflect the character, heritage, and geography or similar identifying feature of the area centered in Erath, Comanche, Eastland, Palo Pinto, Hood, Hamilton and Bosque counties."48 Cross Timbers was, needless to say, the winner. Stephenville s fascination with the Cross Timbers continues to the present. In its programming, FM country radio station KSTV of Stephenville regularly identifies itself as "Cross Timbers Country."49 The naming of the Cross Timbers Oil Company illustrates how a regional name is perpetuated by the business community. When the company was created in 1986, its owners sought a name that connoted the western heritage of Fort Worth and Texas. The name Cross Timbers was selected despite the fact that many people were unfamiliar with it; some even questioned the choice because the name seemed odd. Yet the name Cross Timbers resonated with frontier history, as it had once been commonly used to refer to the region between the plains ofWest Texas and the more forested eastern portion of the state. Deciding on a company name is not done lightly, for the decision may have serious consequences. As the company executives considered the name Cross Timbers, they were reassured by its prominent appearance on historic nineteenth-century maps and historic reports. In other words, the historic quality of the Cross Timbers helped underscore the location of the new oil company, which paradoxically drills little oil in the Cross Timbers proper.50 The Cross Timbers Oil Company's beautifully illustrated annual reports feature historic maps and descriptions of the region that further underscore the company's connections to Texas history.51 Although the name Cross Timbers has both environmental and historical significance, it can have other connotations. For example, 6 of the 80 establishments named Cross Timbers are churches. Of these, 5 are Baptist, and 1 is Church of Christ. The name Cross Timbers here has a decidedly religious connotation, for two timbers oriented at right angles form a cross, or crucifix—the premier symbol of Christianity. In fact, several interviewees in Texas and elsewhere thought the name Cross Timbers was religious in origin. This is unlikely, and I could find no religious reference associated with the region s naming in the early nineteenth century. Rather, I suspect that the name Cross Timbers assumed a religious connotation in the late twentieth century—when fundamentalist religions are increasing

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in popularity. This recent use is another example of a Cross Timbers identity being adapted to accommodate the needs of yet another generation. The name Cross Timbers persists in the popular mind in Texas, although my questionnaires reveal that still only about 15 percent of the general population in the region here recognizes the term—and only about 7 percent can define it. Predictably, in Oklahoma, the term Cross Timbers does not resonate as strongly as it does to many Texans. This leads me to conclude that Texans—ever alert to anything that seems distinctively Texan—have appropriated the Cross Timbers. Although Texans are far more aware of the Cross Timbers than their neighbors north of the Red River, knowledge of the Cross Timbers has not been erased from the public consciousness in Oklahoma. A substantial amount of land there remains as, or has reverted to, the classic post oak and blackjack oak Cross Timbers forest. Some Oklahomans, especially those interested in natural or cultural history, still use the term, but they are rare. How rare? Those who recognize the term north of the Red River appear to account for less than 5 percent of the population. And predictably, very little awareness of the concept of Cross Timbers remains in that small portion of southeastern Kansas that was once part of the region. There, only one enterprise bears the name. Interestingly, however, there is a community named Cross Timbers in west central Missouri, which is well outside the region. A local history book in Cross Timbers, Missouri, sheds light on the origin of the towns name. Originally called Garden City, the town had to change its name when applying for a post office because another community in Missouri had already claimed that name. Some locals resisted using the new name, Cross Timbers, which is said to be derived from a Mr. Cross who built a log cabin on the early townsite.52 One local person volunteered that most of the townsfolk probably do not know why the town is so named. "Besides," the interviewee observed, "there isn't much timber around here anyway; it's mostly prairie." This explanation may be true, but Missouri author C. H. "Skip" Curtis states otherwise. Under the name "Cross Timbers" in the book Whyd They Name It That? A Look at Some Peculiar Missouri Towns (1992), Curtis states that the town was "named in 1847 f° r t ^ ie intersection of two timber belts." Whether the belts were Cross Timberstype forest is unknown. The question of how the community of Cross Timbers, Missouri, got its name remains unclear, but would make an interesting study in local and regional folklore. Regardless of whether Missouri ever had a Cross Timbers identity, the town's new name certainly stuck. In fact, three enterprises in that small town bear the name Cross 206

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Timbers. Ironically and coincidentally, the one establishment in Kansas named after the Cross Timbers is located in a community named Garden City! Several Texas businesses bearing the name operate well outside the region, at least by today's definition, including locations from Midland to San Saba, where trees of any kind, and post oaks in particular, are scarce indeed. There was, in the 1970s in Austin, a Cross Timbers Bar, likely taking the name because of its association with Texas' rough-and-tumble frontier history. Austin is not an unreasonable location for an enterprise so named, for some early definitions of the Cross Timbers state that they covered portions of central Texas. A number of establishments in Houston also are named Cross Timbers, and most are located on a street of that name. Yet most Texas establishments named for the Cross Timbers are, logically enough, located within or very near the region. In a few cases, the name Cross Timbers is used in as far distant places as Virginia, Oregon, Tennessee, Wyoming, and New Mexico. These, however, only account for a total of eight (10 percent of all enterprises). These businesses, so far distant from the south central United States, probably received their names from people who had once lived in or near the real Cross Timbers. Either way, records show that the name Cross Timbers is common only in the Cross Timbers of Texas, with Oklahoma a distant second. In recognition of the rich ecological and historical heritage of the Oklahoma Cross Timbers, Towana Spivey and others formed the Cross Timbers Heritage Association in the 1970s, its goal being to preserve the regions heritage for future generations. The association did develop a number of exhibits, and produced some publications about the region, but today it is pretty much inactive.53 As noted above, the average Oklahoman, unless interested in history or ecology, is unlikely to know the name Cross Timbers or its meaning. Despite Washington Irving s popularization of the term for the rugged, forested areas of Indian Territory, it seems never to have been as widely used in Oklahoma as in Texas. Appropriately, Texas remains the center of Cross Timbers awareness, and this awareness may expand with a growing interest in history. Environmental awareness could also expand knowledge of the region. As a reflection of the increasing public interest in the environment, newspapers throughout the Texas Cross Timbers frequently cover stories about the wanton removal of the trees in the region. They also help promote an awareness of the regions aesthetics and natural history. In the fall of 1997, for example, the simple changing of the seasons—rather than some act of tree desecration—inspired a front-page article called "Days of Gold" in 207

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the November 30 Dallas Morning News. Writer NitaThurman had interviewed common folk and experts for their reaction to that year's spectacular, and unusual, display of color in the landscape. In that article, Curtis Taber, owner of Southwest Landscape Nursery in Carrolton, noted that "suddenly, people are looking up and saying, Vow/ " According to Dr. Don Smith, a professor of botany at the University of North Texas in Denton, the showy colors were attributed to several factors. Smith noted that strong October rains, a light frost, and clear, dry late fall weather had produced "the most brilliant cascade of color this area has seen in years." Oaks in particular turned an unusual "vibrant reddish orange tint," according to Hector Olvera of Classic Trees of Texas. Other observers noted an "unusual abundance of acorns" that, while providing food for animals, could stress trees by deleting their food supply for winter.54 Through such newspaper articles, Texans are growing more aware of their Cross Timbers heritage. THE CROSS TIMBERS' LITERARY HERITAGE

As if to underscore the importance of the Cross Timbers to Texans, the name appeared in the title of the Cross Timbers Review', a journal of poetry, fiction, interviews, and pen-and-ink drawings relating to the Southwest generally and the Texas Cross Timbers in particular.55 Conceived in the early 1980s and published by Cisco Junior College in the Western Cross Timbers town of Cisco, the Cross Timbers Review's first issue appeared in 1984. Interestingly, although virtually all of the literature in that journal addresses Texas and the Southwest, articles on the Cross Timbers forest itself are rare, despite the journal's name. Nevertheless, the name Cross Timbers apparently validates the material as "regional" in focus. The Cross Timbers are blessed with a small but evocative body of literature, written by those who witnessed the regions twentieth-century transformation and remembered their Cross Timbers experiences with nostalgia. As early as the 1930s, the Cross Timbers entered the regions published fiction, kindling a smoldering folkloric and literary tradition in Texas that has perpetuated the name Cross Timbers. Readers of historical fiction novels learned of the Cross Timbers when Edwin Lanham used them to frame the saga of the fictional Texas county seat of Rutherford (really Weatherford) in Paladora (really Parker) County, Texas. A character in Lanham s 1935 novel The Wind Blew West boasts of the riches of the area by noting that "we have them rolling prairies and low hills and the Upper Cross Timbers. You might mention that timber belt supplies all the fencing and fuel wood the county needs."56 Although most of the action in 208

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Lanham's novel centers on the coming of the Texas and Pacific Railroad and the development of the rich prairie farms, the reader is reminded of the "gentle hills that led gradually to the wooded belt of the Upper Cross Timbers"57 and that "there's plenty of timber hereabouts to make rail fences."58 Novels like The Wind Blew West helped fix the Texas Cross Timbers as a landmark in the public consciousness, at least among readers of historical fiction. Similarly, many Texas history books made at least passing references to the Cross Timbers as one of the regions that figured in the state's frontier history. By the mid-twentieth century, the Cross Timbers were being depicted in literature as an archetypal rural cotton-farming area where the drama of life kept pace with the seasons. L. D. Clark's first novel, The Dove Tree (1961), is set in the vicinity of the fictional Texas county seat farming town of Milcourt, which is edged by cotton and peanut fields. Clark describes minute details of daily life, such as "the cotton leaves [which] were flecking with specks of rust as the limbs drooped with bolls ready to open."59 He also describes the topography and vegetation of the surrounding timber that "rose and fell, packing into every wrinkle except where, at one point, the hill asserted control even over the trees by thrusting out a blunt shoulder of rock"60 and "the dark trunks of the nearer trees and the tops of others rising in uneven furls, solid except where, near the summit, a huge brown rock protruded."61 Clark's novel portrays Cross Timbers life in moral terms; Christian religion and earthy passion are never very far apart. Regarding the latter, Clark describes the half-finished attic of a farmhouse that shelters two trysting lovers during several seasons of fickle Cross Timbers weather: From meeting to parting they lay there: on different afternoons, clearly through one window and dimly through the othery came all degrees oflight: the stroke ofthe early fall suny the muted glare of Indian summer, the brooding murk of November, heavy with coming northers, the slow yellow rain of December, the misty glimmer ofdead-of-winter cloudiness giving way suddenly at times to the cold strength of winter clearing.... In the spring the light changed constantly, going from bright to dark in an hour, then to bright again. Wind, thunder, lightning, hail, rain and sunny calm succeeded one another, each with its own light.62 This is the Cross Timbers of the twentieth century, where lovers recite classical poetry to each other in stark contrast to the oppressiveness of mundane small-town life. 209

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Most Cross Timbers literature celebrates the harsh beauty of the land while using it as a backdrop for unsettling experiences. In one of the finest books written about the region, Texan Edward Everett Dale recollected in the 1960s about his boyhood home in the Eastern (or Lower) Cross Timbers. Here, Dale notes that "long 'peninsulas' of woodland extended out into the prairie and small 'islands' of trees were common, usually on top of a low hill surrounded by grasslands." Dale remembered these oaks as "poor land trees" but loved them nevertheless. He recollects the blackjack oaks and post oaks producing "quantities of acorns, which pigs ate greedily, but which were too bitter for human consumption." He recalled, too, the many vines, weeds, and animals of the Cross Timbers. Observing "it was my privilege to live in the Lower Cross Timbers for ten years," Dale concluded that it was "an excellent place for a growing boy to have lived."63 His book helped a generation of readers further appreciate the Cross Timbers, and the haunting illustrations by John Biggers (FIG. 4-17) instill a nostalgia for the hardscrabble farm of log buildings amid the charred stumps of this fascinating locale. Twenty years before Dale, Oklahoma writer Carolyn Foreman captured the sense of nostalgia and loss evoked by abandoned farms in the oak woodlands there. Foreman had discovered, hidden in the Cross Timbers near the right of way of a federal highway, "a pile of rubbish [sic] from the chimney where a cabin once stood." The cabin's foundation stones, as well as the depression of an old well, were still visible. Foreman invited the reader to "[l]ook long into yonder tangle of matted briers where stand, stained green by age, and lined in a row,fivemarble slabs" of a small family cemetery. There, Foreman continued, one might "press the briers to one side and read—one page of history, as written in the Cross Timbers."64 For those who would search for history in the Cross Timbers, such abandoned sites can still be found along the back roads of the region. These sites are sometimes completely overgrown with brambles and punctuated by scrub oaks. The chimneys and grave markers of the Cross Timbers settlements, some of them hewn out of native sandstone, are silent reminders of a rural population that failed in its attempt to permanently settle the region. A recent study by geographer Alyson L. Greiner confirms that the Oklahoma Cross Timbers are especially rich in abandoned cemetery sites.65 These are locales where family farms, now forgotten, once existed. Indeed, figures confirm a rural population decline in many Cross Timbers counties from about the Second World War into the 1970s, the exceptions being those counties where large towns have drawn people toward nonagrarian jobs. While mostly reversed by the 1990s, that depopulation con-

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Jtk

FIG. 4-17. John Biggers' evocative drawing of a Cross Timbers farm graced the cover and frontispiece of Edward Everett Dales The Cross Timbers: Memories of a North Texas Boyhood (1966), conveying vivid images of a hardscrabblefarm among the stumps (Reproduced with the permission of John Biggers, courtesy University of Texas Press).

tinues in a few of the region's rural counties; however, the Cross Timbers' urban counties continue to grow rapidly. L. D. Clark's second work, Is This Naomi? And Other Stories: A Cycle of Rural Life (1979), contains a story whose name—"The Billjones Expedition"—suggests the region's early exploration. Ostensibly about a boy's coming of age, the story also depicts the transformation of the Cross Timbers. Leaving the fictional town of Milcourt one day, the boy goes into the forest, with its "thickets a snake would have a hard time sliding through," its "mustang grape vines weighting down lots of the trees," and the "[b]riars and brangles [sic] all matted up and thick enough to make it dark even in the middle of the day. "This setting was Indian Hollow, a boggy area where, the boy observes, "several farms cornered it, but no fences had ever run far in." Although this forest was nearly impenetrable, "if you could tear your way in deep enough you'd come to these little glades, and then you'd swear you were in some other part of the world altogether and not in the Cross

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Timbers at all." This boy has a good eye for the landscape and has been here before, having been born in a now-abandoned house deep in the mosaic of dense forest, open prairies, and long-abandoned fields. He describes a magnificent savannah with white oaks, ashes, and elms "[a]nd every tree in sight so big you couldn't reach around it." Elsewhere, "[o]n the higher ground . . . the postoaks began, not high but thick-standing, and knobby, twisted and old."66 Yet the story is not bucolic or idyllic, for the boy encounters a bulldozed landscape in which "[a]ll the trees in the space around him had been taken out except a few runts, trees bulldozed out and heaped and piled in low places." Amid the desolation, the boy observes that "[s]ome of the stuff had been burned down to charpiles, but most of it was left in tangledup rows and stacks, with splintered tree trunks and broken limbs with shrivelled-up leaves everywhere." This scene of devastation is the site of a new development which bears the name Comanche Lake, even though the original Indians were "long since gone and not enough of a tribe for their name ever to matter or be remembered." Here, the boy's ancestral home stands abandoned, "the grain of the plank walls gray and streaked yellow with rosin, the chimney of red sandstone." The home harbors the ghosts of his childhood memories, but the scene is forever changed by progress. As Clark puts it, "pushing out trees and smashing the walls and the chimney of the old house . . . , the men on the bulldozers had run his own ghost out of hiding." With that experience, the boy is transformed, for "[t]he time had come for him to leave." Clark adds that "he would come back but under a better name and a long time from now," after having to "cover the world before turning back home."67 For Clark, the Cross Timbers clearly evoke a sense of nostalgia, which means, in its truest sense, both a longing for the past and for home. That the regions rural past continues to cast its spell on writers is seen in the 1997 book Wild Rose: A Folk History ofa Cross Timbers Settlementby Joyce Gibson Roach, who recalled her early days in Keller, Texas, "at the western edge of the Eastern Cross Timbers where the oak lands collided with the prairie and wild roses grew." For her, the Cross Timbers lie suspended between the cosmopolitan "eastern" world represented by Dallas and the more traditional "western" character of Fort Worth. This theme of Cross Timbers as a divide recalls the belief of Capt. Randolph Marcy and others that that region once separated peoples, the Native Americans and whites. To Roach, the Cross Timbers embody vanishing ways, and in her book she uses it as a metaphor for that which stands in the way of progress and, however beautiful or rich in character, is doomed to disappear. Roach

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says that "the second harvest of the Cross Timbers" has begun, but hopes that a sense of history will be preserved; yet she laments that the community of Keller is vanishing as "shopping malls, chain stores, super highways, technology, and communication wonders" changed it forever. She sadly concludes, "Now, goodbye to Cross Timbers," while feeling enriched that "I have known their small world." Her remembrances include a plethora of images, such as "a hawk's shadow, a well turned phrase,... a tall tale, a corny joke, hard-nosed religion, country people, grassroots history."68 Roach's words are reminiscent of Edward Everett Dale's poignant conclusion to North Texas Boyhood, whereupon he moves away from the area in his family's wagon: "then with old Turk jumping about and barking gayly [sic] at the prospect of going somewhere, we headed westward and left the Cross Timbers forever."69 Dale may have left the Texas Cross Timbers forever, but it forever remained a part of him. The same can be said of writer L. D. Clark, whose biosketch proudly states that he "was born and grew up in the Cross Timbers country of north Texas."70 Texans' awareness of the Cross Timbers is kindled by folklorists and others who hope to preserve the region's folkways. Cross Timbers Folklore, a 48page booklet with a red, white, and blue cover designed around the Texas flag, was compiled by seventh- and eighth-grade members of the Congress Junior High History Club and their sponsors, Adelene Martin and Jill Beasley. They note that "in the book, we have brought together a collection of folk 'sayings,' superstitions, rhymes used in playing games, and tombstone epitaphs that are typical of this area ofTexas."71 Although most of the material in the book covers a broader area than just the Cross Timbers, the region serves as a unifying historical theme. This type of project also helps reinforce a Cross Timbers identity. In Texas, and to a lesser extent Oklahoma, writers have observed distinctive speech patterns and word pronunciations that are said to be characteristically Cross Timbers.72 The Texans' heightened recognition of the Cross Timbers is also due in part to the popular guidebooks that refer to both the Eastern and Western Cross Timbers. Some of these modern guidebooks contain wording reminiscent of William Kennedy's 1841 Texas. For example, Laura Trim's delightful Short Trips in andAround Dallas (1974,1984) notes that "[wjhenever you wander up towards the Red River and Oklahoma, you will encounter two curiosities of nature, the Eastern and Western Cross Timbers, the bands of low forested areas that stretch from Oklahoma into Central Texas." Noting that "the Grand Prairie squeezes between the two sections of the Cross Timbers," Trim advises the reader of her popular guide that "the Eastern Cross Timbers pass through Denison and down towards Pilot 213

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Point and Grapevine," while the larger "Western Cross Timbers spread from Oklahoma City down towards Decatur and Mineral Wells." She captures something of the spirit of the early travelers discussing the Cross Timbers-prairie interface when she adds that "[t]he whole region north of Dallas is made up of alternating ribbons of woods and prairies formed on a north-south axis. It is a fascinating game to watch how one moves in and out of these formations."73 Through detailed descriptions, guides like Laura Trims' help Texans better appreciate their Cross Timbers environment and history. For example, she advises that "[w]est of Granbury and Glen Rose, one encounters the Western Cross Timbers, the low range of stunted forests that mark the end of the great woodlands of the East," adding that "the dwindling post oaks stretch out as far as Cross Plains."74Trim also describes the Eastern Cross Timbers tour of Denton and Cooke Counties, noting that "[a] few rare birds will want to see the backwoods section here, the 'heart of the Eastern Cross Timbers', the hills where modern civilization was not much considered and where you can still see a good many log houses and barns and corn cribs."75 Regarding Grayson County, Trim describes the Cross Timbers Hiking Trail on the south shore of Lake Texoma, noting that "both the length of the trail and the wooded terrain make this route attractive to the serious hiker."76 Trim's guidebook serves as a reminder that the automobile, leisure time, and disposable income have opened up the Cross Timbers to modern-day seekers of the frontiers of natural and cultural history. THE CROSS TIMBERS AS VISUAL ICON

The region's cartographic heritage helps put changing perceptions of the Cross Timbers in perspective. If the Cross Timbers forest had pretty much disappeared from popular maps of Texas by the early to mid-twentieth century, only to be replaced by the more mundane concept of management region, there is evidence that the typically Texan fascination with the state's history is resulting in the Cross Timbers' cartographic resurrection. This shift is apparent from the many popular stylized maps that pictorially depict local features and objects, such as the Alamo, oil wells, and armadillos. In 1985, Virginia Vaughan produced a colorful pictorial map of Texas for the Texas sesquicentennial in 1986. Titled "150 Years of Texas," the map depicts the Cross Timbers area as a stylized forest, with two of the trees actually crossing each other, forming an X in a play on words and images.77 214

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In addition to being represented on pictographic maps, the Cross Timbers are perpetuated through the works of local artists. Texas folk artist Aunt Clara (Clara McDonald Williamson, 1875-1976) immortalized the landscape in the vicinity of Bosque County, Texas, in her naive-style paintings depicting historic scenes. Paintings such as "Chicken For Dinner" (1945), "The Night Hunters" (1955-1956), and "Village on the Bosque, 1840" (1959) include the Cross Timbers vegetation as part of a complex, quiltlike mosaic of farm, field, village, and forest.78 Her evocative paintings titled "Roping on the Range" (1957) and "On Our Way" (1961) also reveal her trademark— a slightly elevated perspective reminiscent of a birds-eye view. Aunt Claras paintings depict landscapes that are at once cultivated and occupied, yet always wild and uncultivated at their margins—a reminder of the presence of the Cross Timbers forest (see color plates section). The tradition of painting Cross Timbers scenes continues, as evidenced by the works of local artists shown at local art shows and in the region's galleries. The rich chromatic paintings by Jane Starks of Dallas depict the varied moods of the western Cross Timbers —evidence that the landscape continues as a subject for serious artists. Images of the Cross Timbers also appear in advertising, an evocative example being a mural painted on all four outside walls of a thrift shop in Gainesville, Texas (FIG. 4-18). This panorama features a stylized Cross Timbers as background for bucolic rural farming scenes. Here the Cross Timbers convey a sense of mystery: after passing through a prairie farm scene, a dirt road meanders into the dense oak forest that seems otherwise impenetrable. This mural helps preserve the Cross Timbers as a palpable presence in Texas. Its design also reaffirms that the Cross Timbers landscape is most often, and best, viewed from the open land—the prairie—that frames it. THE CROSS TIMBERS AT CENTURY'S END

Associated in part with history and nostalgia, the name Cross Timbers appears to be making a comeback of sorts in recent years. As mentioned earlier, Johnson County, Texas, once had a community named Cross Timbers, but it disappeared after being bypassed by the railroads. In 1990, however, a newly incorporated community named Cross Timbers reported a population of 245.79 Additionally, the name Cross Timbers appears as a street name in a number of the newer suburban tracts in the region. A look at a recent street guide of Fort Worth and vicinity reveals streets named Cross Timbers in no fewer than seven communities, including Hurst, Fort Worth, Southlake, Denton, Double Oak, Flower Mound, and Arlington.80 215

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FIG. 4-18. The Cross Timbers are sometimes represented in vernacular art, as seen in this muralpainted on the side ofthe Buried Treasures Thrift Store in Gainesville, Texas (1998photo by author).

These street names, and the growing number of enterprises named Cross Timbers, suggest that the region lives on. Although considerably smaller in size and different in configuration than they were about two centuries ago, the Cross Timbers still resonate with a sense of romance and continue to capture the imagination at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Texas Cross Timbers still convey an aura of wilderness or frontier history to a growing number of historians, for Texans are strongly protective of their state s history. In Oklahoma, pride in the state's rural heritage is on the rise, as evidenced three decades ago when Merle Haggard boldly sang T m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee." More recently (1992), in a song that evokes a Cross Timbers heritage, country singer Wynonna Judd sang "[I can see] All of that Love from Here"—a plaintive ballad recalling a rural cotton-growing area. This song s phrasing ("I was raised on love's foundation, rock of ages, goals unshaken") and reference to cotton fields and a love for home that is "stronger than the blackjack tree"81 suggests that it was inspired by Woody and Jack Guthrie s perennially popular folk song "Oklahoma Hills." The Guthries' song reminisced about the good times "Way down yonder on the Indian Nation, ridin my pony on the 216

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reservation."This song depicts the rugged Oklahoma Cross Timbers country "where the oak and blackjack tree, kiss the playful prairie breeze."82 Songs thus help immortalize the poor-but-proud heritage of Oklahoma, if not using the actual term Cross Timbers, then through evocative placenames and landscape images. And so it is that the regions popular culture is helping keep an awareness of the Cross Timbers alive. That awareness appears to be part of a trend nationwide: the search for local and regional color at a time when so much of U.S. culture appears to be standardized from coast to coast. But whether that awareness encourages the population to cherish the actual Cross Timbers forests—rather than just its nostalgic memory—remains to be seen.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

You are doubtless tired enough by this time of these dry, geographical details. I can only say, by way of apology, that I have made them as concise as possible, and have not permitted my imagination to expatiatefor a moment, as it was very prone to do, over the delightful scenery we have traversed. — MARY AUSTIN HOLLEY, Texas. Observations, Historical, Geographical, and Descriptive, 1833

THE IMPORTANCE OF DRY, GEOGRAPHICAL DETAILS Like Mary Austin Holley s observations on Texas, much of what I have written about the Cross Timbers region involves dry, geographical details. Some of this information, such as population and crop statistics, is extremely important regarding the region's ecology. In preparing this book, I consulted 1850 to 1990 census data for the 58 counties that comprise much of the region. These county data are supplemented by information, where available, for Indian lands in portions of Oklahoma where no counties existed prior to Anglo settlement. This census information covers a wide range of items, including crops, farmland, and population. Generally conducted each decade, the census is invaluable in differentiating crops by type, agricultural land by acreage in varied categories, and population by ethnicity. Studying this data permits one to understand the remarkable changes that the region has experienced over the last century and a half. However, because the information applies to entire counties—only a portion of which may be (or have been) forested—the population and other figures cited cover not only the Cross Timbers forest but also the adjoining areas. This inclusion is important because the surrounding prairie lands,

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which hold the region's largest cities—such as Dallas, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City—have had a strong impact on the Cross Timbers. The changes discussed in the previous two chapters cover the most crucial period in Cross Timbers history (from about 1850 to the present), and are perhaps best summarized and interpreted in the form of graphs. Consider population, for example. Fig. c-i shows the population change in the 58 counties composing the Cross Timbers. The population in this region was not enumerated early in the nineteenth century, but probably consisted of several thousand Native Americans. Spanish records are fragmentary and may have undercounted the Indian populations this far north. It should also be remembered that diseases had taken their toll on the native populations by this time as well. With the arrival of Anglo and other European Americans in the Cross Timbers, the population rose noticeably from 1850 to 1870, and then even more rapidly following the arrival of the railroads in the 1870S-1890S. By 1930, the region's population momentarily peaked, then dropped slightly until World War II. Total population growth again resumed, continuing to rise steeply into the 1990s. However, a breakdown of urban and rural populations from 1900 to 1990 (Fig. c-2), reveals that the rural growth began and peaked more rapidly than the urban. By about 1910, farmers had nearly saturated the region. Then, the rural population essentially stabilized for two decades before dropping during the 1930S-1960S. It began to recover, albeit fairly slowly, by about 1970 as more and more commuters and retirees opted to live in rural areas. By contrast, the urban population, as exemplified by urban centers in and adjacent to the Cross Timbers (such as Fort Worth and Tulsa) continued to grow steadily, and then boomed in the decades following World War II. This graph substantiates that the Second World War was a watershed in the region's history, in effect separating the era of the farmer from that of the modern, urban-oriented Cross Timbers dweller. Consider, too, a graph showing the number of farms in the entire Cross Timbers region from 1870 to 1992 (Fig. c-3). The number of farms grew more rapidly (and earlier) in the Texas Cross Timbers than in Oklahoma. Note that in the Kansas Cross Timbers, the number of farms stabilized earlier than in the Oklahoma (Indian Territory) and Texas Cross Timbers—likely a result of the latter's intense emphasis on cotton farming. The steep decline in the number of farms began first in Texas (ca. 1910), followed two decades later by Oklahoma (ca. 1930). This graph confirms that the number of farms has declined throughout the region for more than 70 years (ca. 1930 to the present). Comparing this graph to one showing acreage in farmland (Fig. c-4)—which remained much more stable—

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1850

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FIG. c-i. Population ofthe fifty-eight Cross Timbers counties (refer to Fig. i-i8)from 1850 to 1990, based on United States census data (Graph by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.). Cross Timbers Urban and Rural Population (x1 million)

1920

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1950

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FIG. c-2. Breakdown of Cross Timbers counties population into urban and rural categories, 1900-1990, shows periodic rural decline and sustained urban growth (Graph by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.).

reveals how farm size has significantly increased in the region. The consequences of this increase are discussed in Chapter 4. As suggested earlier, the types of crops grown also varied over time in the region. A fifth graph (Fig. c-5) compares agricultural production from 1850 to 1992. It reveals that corn production rose rapidly in the nineteenth century, reached its zenith before 1910, and dropped steadily throughout much of the twentieth century. More recently, since about the mid-1970s, corn production has again increased slightly. This has partially resulted from increased livestock production, with much of the corn being used as feed. Cotton production reveals a different story: it rose rapidly in the late nineteenth century, dropping sharply (but briefly) after 1900 (likely a result of a boll weevil infestation); it then rose rapidly to its peak in about 1920, followed by a continued decline into the 1990s. Viewed from the

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50

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I 1920

—"——

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r 1969

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FIG. c~3. Graph showing the number of farms in the Cross Timbers counties, 1870-1992, reveals a long decline in the mid- to late twentieth century (Graph by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.). Cross Timbers Farmland (x1 million acres) 3025" 20-

7_

15"

1850

I i I I r i i i i i i i i i 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1959 1969 1978 1992 ——•™—

Farmland

FIG. c-4. A graph of farmland acreage in the Cross Timbers counties (1850-1992) shows a rapid rise in the nineteenth century, relative stability throughout much ofthe twentieth century, with a decline beginning about 1970 (Graph by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.). Cross Timbers Farm Production 100

60

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—

Corn (x 1 million bushels)

—

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Peanut (x 10 million pounds)

1

Cotton (x 10 thousand bales)

-

1978

1992

FIG. c-5. Agriculturalproductionfor selected crops in Cross Timbers counties, 1860-1992, suggests the major changes that have occurred infarming (Graph by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.).

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perspective of the late 1990s, cotton may once have been king, but the king is dead. By contrast, wheat has generally increased to the present with two exceptions (drops from 1900 to 1910 and from 1920 to 1930). Wheat remains the region's major crop, along with the relative newcomers peanuts and sorghum. THE DELIGHTFUL SCENERY

A full examination of the Cross Timbers requires attention to the look of the land as well as to statistics. The Cross Timbers are part of the delightful scenery of the historical imagination, but relatively few people recognize the landscape today. In a recent (1998) article about the western portion of the Texas and Pacific railroad—the same railroad line along which geologist R. T. Hill identified the Cross Timbers in the 1880s—writer Warren Taylor observed that "the route between Ft. Worth and El Paso encompasses a wide variety of geography and terrain." Yet in describing the landscape, Taylor never mentioned the Western Cross Timbers by name, only prosaically noting that "[essentially, the landscape running westward from Ft. Worth to Abilene remains much like the rest of the South— rolling hills with intermittent wooded patches."1 How, one wonders, could the celebrated Cross Timbers of one era nearly vanish from the public mind within a century? The answer lies, in part, in the Cross Timbers landscape itself. To those untrained in reading landscapes, the scrubby oak forest's remnants look like only so many wooded patches. Even many land managers overlook the Cross Timbers. According to researchers at the University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Laboratory, "[M]ost public and private land managers do not realize that ancient forests survive extensively across the rugged terrain of eastern Oklahoma, but in their defense, the Cross Timbers do not satisfy the stereotype for ancient forests, which remains fixated on giant redwoods or massive hardwoods."2 In other words, the very factor that gives the Cross Timbers their character—drought-stressed, relatively short, slow-growing trees —also helps to obscure the area's age and significance. Having seen far grander sights than the Cross Timbers, our culture has mostly relegated them to the historical imagination. With this fact ever in mind, I would like to first briefly summarize the natural and cultural history of the Cross Timbers region in order to reaffirm its importance. I will also summarize the enormous changes that have characterized the landscape of the Cross Timbers region, and will, by way of conclusion, speculate about the meaning of those changes. 223

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• The term Cross Timbers is now commonly understood to signify a prairie-bound forest that is dominated by post oak and blackjack oak in close association with other trees, such as elm and hickory. In numerous areas, the Cross Timbers have had an understory literally choked with a dense growth of vines and shrubs; in other areas they are more open and parklike. The Cross Timbers vary in character from north to south and east to west, but are similar enough throughout to constitute a region in both the popular and scientific mind. • The presence of the Cross Timbers is largely a result of climatic and geological forces in what became the south central United States. They are developed on sandstone and the characteristically sandy-clayey soils that result from its weathering in this climate. The distinctive climatic pattern that is transitional from humid to dry began well before the arrival of people, who have likely been significant witnesses to it for more than 8,000 years. • The Cross Timbers' natural history, especially the underlying bedrock (sandstone) geology and forest-sustaining soils, is closely tied to broad environmental changes, including increasing drought, that have affected the North American continent since the Pleistocene period ended about 11,000 years ago. Beneath the Cross Timbers' dense, droughtresistant cover of vegetation lies substantial groundwater: much of the Cross Timbers overlies a major regional aquifer system that is becoming more valuable (and vulnerable) with increasing population levels. In many areas, this groundwater is being withdrawn more rapidly than it is being replenished by meteoric water. • "Cross Timbers" is a relatively recent (ca. 1820s) Anglo-American term for this forest, which has a long linguistic history. The area was probably originally called the Great Forest by Native Americans, and the Spanish likely adopted the term Monte Grande from them. The Monte Grande was larger than the historic Cross Timbers, reaching well into central and east Texas. With increased exploration and settlement came the ability to differentiate the landscape by vegetation type, and this process helped narrow down the Monte Grande to the portion of the oak forest that was bounded by prairie. • The Cross Timbers can never be considered separate from the omnipresent adjacent prairie, which has historically helped define the forest as a landmark. The prairie both borders and penetrates the forest in many locales. In this context, the role of fire (or rather the lack of it) 224

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is also significant. Frequent fires sustained the prairies, but usually made little or no significant headway into the forest. However, on rare occasions (usually under drought conditions), portions of the forest were destroyed by fires. Variations in the Cross Timbers vegetation are thus the result of both natural and cultural conditions—with people being significant agents who have wielded fire, axes, plows, and bulldozers in transforming the vegetation at both local and regional levels. Culturally and historically, the Cross Timbers region represents the confluence of upland southern and lower middle western culture areas, and includes substantial African American and Native American influences. Viewed broadly, the Cross Timbers are among the westernmost manifestations of cultural patterns derived directly from the eastern United States. West of the Cross Timbers, it is more difficult to discern single-source culture areas, in part because of considerable population mixing. Ethnically, the region is surprisingly diverse: Throughout the region, especially in Texas and Oklahoma, the Anglo-American population may have a fairly high percentage of Native American blood.3 In parts of the region, European ethnic populations are surprisingly common. These include Italian Americans, who originally arrived to work the Oklahoma coal mines and then moved south into Texas, where they raised crops in Montaque County and ultimately became part of the business community.4 In terms of political geography, the Cross Timbers are quite complex. Loyalties are more likely to be formed around political jurisdictions — especially states—rather than regional abstractions; thus, Texas Cross Timbers residents think of themselves as Texans first, then residents of their cities and counties, and Cross Timbers residents as a distant third. Oklahomans and Kansans also conceive of their identities politically. However, there is an important exception in certain portions of Oklahoma, where strong Native American identity is observed. This identity, too, is largely a fact of political history—the area having been set aside for indigenous peoples displaced from other places in the nineteenth century—but it also resonates as ethnic identity. The region's rural development occurred unevenly, with Texas and Kansas being settled by farmers well before Oklahoma. This factor— the time that settlement occurred—affects the look of the land in many 225

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ways; for example, Oklahoma still possesses large areas of Cross Timbers forest that were not altered by farming, a consequence of its later settlement. • The region has a rural character but is in fact dominated by major cities. Geographically speaking, the Cross Timbers' larger cities are generally located toward the region's periphery—that is, at the margins of the densely forested areas. All these cities developed as a consequence of the westward move in the nineteenth century, and all mushroomed in population after the arrival of the railroads. It is noteworthy that all cities in the region are located on major rivers that were always difficult to navigate: Tulsa (population 375,100) on the Arkansas River; Oklahoma City (pop. 463,900) on the North Fork of the Canadian River; Fort Worth (pop. 468,900), Arlington (pop. 300,000), and Dallas (pop. 1,033,600), all on the Trinity River; and Waco (pop. 106,700) on the Brazos River. • The region's towns, cities, and county seats are served by an elaborate network of roads and railroads that transformed the countryside. Viewed geographically, the Cross Timbers' transportation pattern is roughly cruciform, with both railroads and highways (including the modern interstates) generally trending north-south and east-west. These routes cross, as it were, in the major urban centers. • Environmental and cultural changes are interconnected in the Cross Timbers region. Over time, the character of large portions of the Cross Timbers has changed considerably, due to both natural factors such as drought, and economic factors such as crop prices; however, despite considerable attrition through deforestation, the Cross Timbers have survived into the twenty-first century as discontinuous patches of forest—from copses or mottes of but a few trees to sections of hundreds of acres or more. These exist in an extremely complex pattern as they are interspersed with farms, pastures, and urban developments. The region's complex rural land-use pattern is best summarized by its current classification in atlases: "cropland, woodland, and pastureland." • The Cross Timbers have, over time, served different purposes as a cultural device. They have been perceived as wilderness (ca. 1750-1820); as barrier, or line separating civilization from savagery (ca. 1830-1855); as frontier outpost of civilization (ca. 1855-1880); as agricultural region (ca. 1890-1940); as a management area (1930s to the present); and as a marketing-oriented perceptual region (1950s to present) — all in the 226

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space of less than two centuries. More recently, the Cross Timbers have been gaining attention as an endangered natural area. If the Cross Timbers owe some of their visibility to early writers and cartographers, others also deserve credit. It was, in retrospect, both the natural scientists (who so embraced the region's physical geography) and the historians (who have so zealously treasured the regions past) who laid the groundwork for the Cross Timbers to endure. Credit, too, should be given to citizens who have kept the region alive by naming businesses and organizations after it. Upscale subdivisions, such as the aptly named Cross Timbers development in Southlake, Texas, also perpetuate the regions identity. As a perceptual region, the Cross Timbers are much smaller today than earlier, notably the early to mid-nineteenth century, when they included much of central Texas and large portions of Indian Territory. However, there is little historical evidence that the Kansas Cross Timbers were considered part of the region until the twentieth century; hence the region has expanded northward—in the scientific mind—in recent years. Today the Cross Timbers as a popular perceptual region are pretty much confined to a portion of north central Texas, though scientists and environmentally-conscious folk consider the region to reach well into Kansas. These two final points, which highlight how the region has changed and how people have perceived this change over time, help stress that the Cross Timbers provide an excellent case study of how cultural attitudes and values shape the landscape and are in turn shaped by it. THE CROSS TIMBERS IN RETROSPECT

If the changes in vegetation and land-use patterns described in the preceding chapters were condensed into graphic form, they would reveal remarkable trends in the evolution of the region's landscape. Consider, for example, the amount of forested land compared with the amount devoted to other types of vegetation and land uses, such as farms and cities. Figure c-6 condenses this long and complicated story. Although this illustration is somewhat impressionistic in that it reflects subjective information, such as travelers' accounts, it also covers some harder data, including census information, surveyor's maps, and aerial photography. The illustration is both a simple graph and a time line: By reading it from left to right, one can see that the forest and prairie have changed in relationship to other types of vegetation and land-use activity. 227

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The Cast Iron Forest - - - . . ^Other ~

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FIG. c-6. Conjectural depiction ofchanges in Cross Timbers vegetation and land use over two centuries, 1800-2000, is based on historic maps, aerialphotos, andfieldwork as described in the text (Graph by Richard Francaviglia).

In addition to suggesting that the Cross Timbers are in a constant state of flux, this illustration also demonstrates that the character of the landscape is determined by both nature and human agency. However, because climate and geology have not changed significantly over the period in question, the striking changes seen in this 200-year overview of the Cross Timbers are largely attributable to human activity. With this illustration in mind, I shall now summarize my interpretation of the natural and cultural landscape history of the Cross Timbers over the last two centuries. I begin at the far left side of the diagram, in the year 1800, when the Cross Timbers was still largely the domain of Native Americans despite years of competitive exploration by Spain and France. The Spaniards had introduced the horse to the region, and Native Americans facilitated its rapid spread. The Spaniards has also introduced grazing animals, but their impact was probably not very pronounced in 1800. In that year, the Cross Timbers region was a huge, complex mosaic of forest and prairie enclaves. The forest dominated large areas, and was contiguous enough to form a widely recognized landmark for both Native Americans and Spanish explorers. Some travelers' accounts suggest that the forest was miles across in many places, and that some of it had an understory thick enough to be nearly impenetrable. Yet, even these observers noted the juxtaposition of prairie that provided a respite from the forest. Con228

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sidered cumulatively, the maps and narrative descriptions of the Spanish explorers in about 1800 suggest a forest cover of about 70 percent, mostly Cross Timbers forest but also the trees of the oak savanna. The remaining land at this time was covered by prairie, as well as the grasslands composing part of the oak savanna. Although some may question these figures, they being either too high for forest or too high for prairie, they seem a reasonable estimate. As indicated on the graph, the relationship between forest and prairie probably did not fluctuate significantly until the arrival of the European American settlers. Beginning about 1840, things began to change rapidly. As documented in Chapter Three, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed phenomenal change accompanying the arrival of European American settlers from the United States. This effect is shown vividly on the graph: by about 1850, forest and prairie had begun declining in favor of farm and pasture, the result of new Texas settlers. Most of this farmland was cut out of both the forest edges and, especially, the adjacent prairies, with the latter being both easier to cultivate and containing richer soils for agriculture. By this time, the Native American population was dropping precipitously in Texas due to their forced removal and the consequences of warfare. Meanwhile, the northern Cross Timbers became a haven for displaced Indian peoples, as it would a generation later (after the Civil War) for displaced African Americans. The Kansas oak-savanna also began to be transformed into farmland by the mid-nineteenth century. At its halfway point, the graph shows the profound change that occurred by 1900. By some accounts, the forests had declined significantly by this time, though suppression of fire encouraged tree growth in some areas. Surveyors' records confirm that the prairie margins of the Cross Timbers yielded earlier than the forests, again because the prairies represented the best farmland. The year 1900 also witnessed the continued growth of towns and cities that now appear on the graph as urban land use. Many factors precipitated these changes to the forest and prairie. The railroads, which had penetrated the region during the late nineteenth century, had encouraged explosive agrarian growth and town development. Their arrival coincided with the steep decline in forest and prairie shown in the middle section of the graph—after about 1875-1880. Cash crops then included wheat, corn, and cotton. During that time, many subsistence farms yielded to larger farming enterprises, which were connected to urban markets by railroad and, to some extent, a developing road network. Coal mining, too, had a significant impact on the region. This mining activity began about 1875 in Oklahoma and 1885 in Texas. Coal mining peaked during 229

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World War I (1915-1918), just when extensive oil production began in both the Texas and Oklahoma Cross Timbers. Farming continued to affect the region's vegetation. Aggressive land cultivation continued despite reductions in crop yields caused first by the boll weevil in the early 1900s and then by drought in the 1930s. The rural population began to decline, as did the number of farms, around 1930. Even so, on the eve of the Second World War, a substantial amount of farmland—about 25,000,000 acres in the Cross Timbers and adjacent lands—remained despite the continued growth of the cities. By about 1950, at the dawning of the modern Cross Timbers (discussed in Chapter Four), the process of forest removal for agriculture had slowed: however, although the number of farms declined, the number of farmland acres remained high—about 26 million; this figure remained stable until the 1970s, when it dropped by about 2 million acres (a 7 percent decline). The average size of farms continued to increase, and corporate farming became common. In many areas, the land that had significantly eroded a generation earlier began to heal slowly under the remedial activity of soil conservationists aimed at improving overgrazed areas; meanwhile, soil on abandoned farmland also began to heal, albeit very slowly. However, large areas were still either intensively cultivated or pastured, and often still bore visible signs of intense soil erosion, as in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. And yet, the decrease in fire (which was aggressively controlled in many areas) and the reduction of overgrazing by livestock allowed the forests to regenerate in some areas. For those who doubt that forests could regenerate, or generate anew, consider the following: The site of Fort Washita, Oklahoma, was originally chosen in the 1840s for the view that it commanded of the countryside. Today, however, the site is so forested that no such view is possible. This often unintentional forestation (or reforestation) resulted in a slight upturn or increase in forested land beginning about the mid-twentieth century. However, the gains made by forest regeneration regionwide were slowed by increases in urbanization and other activities. Conditions vary throughout the region, but an overall trend appears toward a generation/ regeneration of forests that are often called Cross Timbers. But it should be remembered that this second-growth timber differs in character from the original Cross Timbers forest. Despite the presence of post and blackjack oak, many invading species—such as cedar and mesquite—were more common there. In addition, these nominally forested areas contained none of the ancient trees that help define the virgin Cross Timbers. As the late twentieth century progressed, the forest—and the prairie— continued yielding to the growth of cities and suburbs in the modern Cross 230

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Timbers. Numerous military bases and defense plants built during the Cold War also took their toll, as did the aggressive damming of the region's rivers and streams, which created large lakes that are now a characteristic feature of the Cross Timbers riparian landscape. However, it bears restating that forests often regenerate in areas where fires are unable to do much damage because their available fuel—tall, dry grasses—is limited by extensive grazing or other activities. This, coupled with outright fire suppression, results in increases of woody growth, including brush and trees. Moreover, parts of the original Cross Timbers forest remain, even accounting for the aggressive agricultural development that continued into the mid-twentieth century. In fact, approximately 30 percent of the land is clothed in forests, some of which are original. This preservation occurred less by design than accident—in part because the Cross Timbers forests were generally not suitable for lumber, and in part because the underlying lands were too rugged to farm. Some portions of the Cross Timbers, especially around sandstone escarpments, were even too rugged to graze. Thus in 1943, despite nearly a century of farming and more than half a century of industrial development in the Cross Timbers, geographer Alice Marriott was able to claim that "while much of the land along railroads and highways has been cleared, enough of the original woodland is left to be easily recognizable."5 This conclusion is supported by my own research, which included a comparison of maps showing vegetation and land use at different times— say 1880,1920, and 1995. By using nineteenth-century General Land Office survey records and twentieth-century aerial photographs, I have compared data for selected locales throughout the region. Land-use maps of the Texas Cross Timbers (which were settled earlier by farmers than were the lands of Indian Territory) reveal a major transformation of the forest and prairie as farms flourished there after the mid-nineteenth century. However, these maps also confirm that even here, patches of old Cross Timbers forest remain where human activity has not been very intense. Map analysis also confirms that the abandonment of farms beginning in the mid- to late twentieth century resulted in the re-establishment of second growth forest in many areas.6 As suggested above, these second-growth areas are not the original Cross Timbers forest, but may look similar. The best way to determine their age with certainty is to conduct tree ring analysis on selected specimens. More than just the percentage of forested land has changed through time. So, too, has the shape of the forested areas. Although the Cross Timbers have always had a variegated pattern, their shape now often cor231

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responds to the razor-straight edges of human-made property lines. Overall, one is struck by how discontinuous the Cross Timbers forest is today, and how "hard" its edges are along fence lines. Because much of the region remains a complex mosaic of farm, field, pasture, homesites, and townsites, the Cross Timbers are now a patchy quiltwork of copses and woodlots, some of it virgin timber and some of it second growth. The area around Mineral Wells, Texas, may serve as representative of the changing composition and shape of the modern Cross Timbers—where a mix of urban, recreational, and farm and pasture land coexists. A comparison of aerial photographs and topographic maps from 1948 to 1998 confirms that the amount of forested land here increased by about 12 percent during that half century. Moreover, like areas throughout the Cross Timbers, the oldest growth here is confined to the more rugged sandstone ridges that have never been farmed or grazed. Thus, considerable virgin forest (about 5 to 10 percent of the area) remains despite intensive use of the land. A somewhat similar condition prevails in Oklahoma—for example, nearTulsa— where farming by settlers occurred later than in Texas. Although portions of the Cross Timbers' oak hickory uplands forest yielded to the axe and other tree-removal methods, such as occasional stump blasting with dynamite, remnants of the Cross Timbers forest also remain here in discontinuous patches. And yet, geographer Brock J. Brown observes that parts of the Oklahoma Cross Timbers are threatened by recent increases in population, including "commuters who were employed in near by [sic] urban centers and chose to live in the Cross Timbers because of the rural life style and wooded environment it offered." Thus it is that a "second wave" of population growth continues to impact the region.7 By the year 2000, the Cross Timbers had become a complicated patchwork of forest, pasture, farm, and urban lands, but also included a growing category of "other" uses, for example, dams for flood control, water storage, and recreation. The resulting lakes, such as Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas and Keystone Lake in Oklahoma, profoundly changed the face of the land and obliterated both riparian areas and Cross Timbers forest. The urban areas included not only towns and county seat communities, such as Stephenville (Texas), and Ardmore (Oklahoma), but also remote suburban locations. These once rural tracts of land are now home to people who work in the towns and cities, including Fort Worth, Dallas, Oklahoma City, andTulsa. By the year 2000, severe and widespread abuse of farming land was less common than in the 1930s, but evidence of erosion is still seen in many areas. In places where intensive farming once felled the Cross Timbers and exhausted the land, forests have not yet returned. These re232

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main denuded, sometimes brush encroached landscapes. On steeper slopes especially, the characteristically red gashes of erosion confirm that the Cross Timbers experienced the same soil erosion that began in the vicinity of Millidgeville, Georgia, in the nineteenth century, and spread toward the setting sun with King Cotton. Rural management techniques encourage continued—but more sensitive—use of the land for agriculture. However, at the same time, insensitive developers continue to ravage sites for the construction of businesses and housing tracts—but with an important difference, for their acts are now coming under greater scrutiny. A small but growing conservation sentiment, rooted mostly in urban/suburban areas, demands the preservation of the Cross Timbers forest, for aesthetic and ecological reasons. As noted above, patches of original Cross Timbers vegetation exist in numerous locations, their impressive gnarled post oaks bearing witness to centuries of climatic variation and a substrate of often sandy, sometimes rocky soils. Although about two feet in diameter and only about 30 feet high, the post oaks here may be 200 to 300 years old.8 Initial fieldwork and projections based on soils and topographic maps led David W. Stahle and other researchers at the University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Laboratory to suggest that "literally thousands of acres of ancient forest survive in the Cross Timbers because these stout oaks were too short for commercial sawlog production."9 The researchers claim that "there is no doubt that the Cross Timbers is one of the least disturbed forest types left in the eastern United States" and that "extensive field experience suggests that 500 square miles of ancient Cross Timbers may survive in a fragmentary pattern on steep terrain in Oklahoma alone."10 These figures suggest that a portion of the region's original vegetation (perhaps about 8 percent) remains in what Stahle and others call the "Ancient Cross Timbers." They are part of a much larger area that is forested. As suggested by the graph, about 30 percent of the region is forested today, versus 70 percent 200 years ago. This inversion of forested to unforested land is one of the profound impacts of "civilization." WHITHER THE CROSS TIMBERS?

Studies by ecologists demonstrate that the borders of the Cross Timbers constantly fluctuate; where fire is controlled and land use conducive, the Cross Timbers may expand. More commonly, though, the area is under constant pressure by urbanization or agriculture. Yet the general parameters of environment restrict the Cross Timbers forest to the area from 233

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Texas northward into southeastern Kansas, with extensions in Oklahoma that spread it eastward to, some geographers suggest, extreme western Arkansas. In Oklahoma, the Cross Timbers forest extends in patches west to about the 99th meridian—that is, in areas where nineteenth-century explorers reported them. The region's very roughly cruciform shape leads some to speculate that the term Cross Timbers refers to the distribution; this, however, is not likely in that the term Cross Timbers appears to have been used well before its full geographical extent was known. And what about that distribution? Has the western border of the region been stable in historic times? If portions of the Cross Timbers are shrinking, might other parts be expanding? Some observers thought so during the later nineteenth century. Consider, for example, the following observation made more than a century ago: In the southern portions ofthe [Texas] Panhandle, as we have marked it off for description, are extensive bodies of post-oak and other varieties oftimbers. These, from their scattered and detached character, yet running in a northeast and southwest direction, tend to create the impression that they may be the advancedportions ofa new and upper line of Cross Timbers that may be forming, similar to the upper and lower Cross Timbers which have been referred to before. Possibly other bodies oftimber may lie at distant intervals in other portions ofthe Panhandle; but after many wanderings over that region on horseback, the writer of this is not able to say where they are. Still, others whosefacilitiesfor observation have been good, say that they exist.11 This suggestion of a westward-expanding Cross Timbers may seem incomprehensible, even absurd, until one remembers that the assessment was written when people widely believed that "rain follows the plow" and that trees would flourish in what was once the Great American Desert. At about this time, too, areas of West Texas began to develop a bushier countenance as shrubs invaded grassland and mesquite trees proliferated in places where fire was no longer as potent a force as it had been before grazing began. Some post oak and scrub oak forests might have begun to grow there with the cessation of burning, but drought and other factors could have eliminated them in more recent times. Thus, nature alone does not shape people's understanding of what is happening to the environment. People's perceptions affect how large they think a particular area or region might be. Their perceptions of how humankind and nature interact also affect views of how an environment changes, or does not change, over time. For example, scholars from various 234

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disciplines may disagree on what is occurring in the Cross Timbers—and even about how widespread the forests are. As noted earlier, some rangeland managers in Oklahoma think the Cross Timbers are expanding and their claim is backed by scientific research; others in Texas see the continued attrition of the post oak and blackjack oak forests as evidence that the Cross Timbers are doomed to extinction. Even the actual size of the Cross Timbers is debated. Some rangeland managers suggest that it occupies a fairly small area (about 12,000 square miles), many historians recognize a somewhat larger area (approximately 18,000 square miles), and some geographers and ecologists define a vast area (up to 30,000 square miles). All have their reasons for doing so, their rationale based, in part, on interpretation of data, and equally important, on perceptions of the relative roles of people (history) and nature (ecology) in shaping landscapes. If one were to include all areas ever called Cross Timbers in the historic record, the size of the region would nearly double; significantly, that doubling would extend well into south Texas and northeastward to the Arkansas-Missouri border, where a Cross Timber Hollow was the site of a Civil War battle. We now know that humankind did not entirely destroy the original Cross Timbers once seen by native peoples, explorers, and early settlers. We can also take some solace in the fact that good management can help restore portions of these fascinating forests. Some land users may reject this claim, arguing that the forest is a figment of the historical imagination. But considerable evidence—both historical and ecological—suggests that the Cross Timbers have long been one of North Americas major ecosystems. My research, and that of many others, suggests that the region remains so despite the fact that much of it has been altered, and (again equally important) that it does not match people's traditional image of a forest as a place with large, tall trees. As a crucial part of the past and a vital link to the future in a vast section of the south central United States, the Cross Timbers should thus be better understood and appreciated than they are currently. However, better understanding requires that the region be considered as both an ecological and'a cultural region. This will be difficult to do in a society that considers people and nature as two separate entities. Although it is tempting to think of the Cross Timbers as a purely "natural" region, evidence suggests that its landscape has been shaped over the centuries by both people and nature. This was as true when fire-wielding Native Americans occupied the region as when axe-wielding settlers arrived. That sometimes abusive relationship continues to the present. Perhaps it is time that we recognized the Cross Timbers by acknowledging people's long association with it. 235

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Indeed, the Cross Timbers have developed in such close harmony with humankind for so long that people should now be included among the regions natural agents of change. Consider the words of J. B. Jackson, a perceptive student of American landscapes, who reflected: "The older I grow and the longer I look at landscapes and seek to understand them, the more convinced I am that their beauty is not simply an aspect but their very essence and that that beauty derives from the human presence."12 To paraphrase Jackson, people have been a factor in the grand design of the Cross Timbers: they developed along with the region s forest in prehistoric times, and eliminated more than half of it in more recent times. Yet it is people, with their ability to discriminate and discern patterns, who have differentiated the Cross Timbers from other forests. By naming the region, numerous cultures have recognized, and immortalized, its distinctiveness. That helps explain why the Cross Timbers became the major cartographic landmark on maps in the mid nineteenth century. In fact, other forested areas existed nearby but were deftly omitted by map-makers of the period. Similarly, the persistence of the name Cross Timbers into the present helps keep that venerable process of regional image-building alive and can aid in the protection and conservation of the region. Today the more sensitive Cross Timbers dwellers and observers lament the near loss of a unique habitat, both seeing beauty and sensing fragility. "Protect the Cross Timbers" is a call heard with increasing frequency in recent times, both in Texas and, to a lesser extent, in Oklahoma. One suspects that this call will grow stronger with the passage of time. Yet the deeply held American penchant for unrestricted private property development—an attitude considerably sustained by recent political trends to the right—will mean that those seeking to protect the Cross Timbers will have their work cut out for them. Effective protection will require ingenuity. Some recent successful private-public partnerships suggest that the answer to conservation may involve compromise and cooperation. Preservation may thus require two types of reconciliation—one between people and nature, and the other between individuals and government. This, then, is the Cross Timbers at the dawning of a new century—a magnificent ecosystem that offers us, here and there, glimpses of the sublime scenery beheld by those early travelers more than a century and a half ago. What changes will the new millennium bring to the Cross Timbers forest and its ever present prairie interface? Although it is difficult to hazard a guess as to how the forest will fare, a growing interest in both aspects of history—natural and cultural—will likely play a role. This growing interest could increase demands on the region for heritage tourism, and per236

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haps even ecotourism. Tourism, too, would present challenges, but I would like to thinkTexans and Oklahomans are intelligent enough to meet them. They now recognize that the Red River—the border that divides their states—has a long tradition of compartmentalizing human history. Even today, the states are rivals, as evidenced in the lively competition in sports, education, and business. Jokes are still commonly told about the people who live on "the other side" of the river. Even the location of the states' boundaries at the ever shifting Red River caused a seemingly interminable legal dispute as to which lands are in Texas and which are in Oklahoma. But the Texas-Oklahoma border is in fact bridged by the Cross Timbers, that remarkable ecosystem which extends north into Kansas and possibly eastward to Arkansas. The distribution of the Cross Timbers suggests that several states would benefit from thinking of the region as a venerable, shared resource—and with good reason: despite incredible changes, the cast iron forest stubbornly refuses to disappear. Its survival was partly accidental, but that survival was woven into a rich folklore by those who recognized the forest s unique role in history. This study confirms that their energy was well spent. Despite the passage of several centuries, the Cross Timbers still resonate with history and generate a sense of wonder.

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NOTES

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

1. Ferdinand Roemer, Texas: Mit besonderer rucksicht auf deutsche Auswanderung unddie Physichen Verhdltnisse des Landes (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1849). 2. Llerena Friend, ed., M. K. Kelloggs Texas Journal, 1872 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), p. 73. 3. Ibid., pp. 85-86. 4. Jerry Bryan Lincecum, Edward Hake Phillips, and Peggy A. Redshaw, Science on the Texas Frontier: Observations of Dr. Gideon Lincecum (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), p. 112. 5. Ibid. 6. R. T. Hill, "The Topography and Geology of the Cross Timbers and Surrounding Regions in Northern Texas," The American Journal of Science, XXXIII, nos. 193— 198, January to June, 1887, p. 291. 7. Samuel Wood Geiser, Naturalists of the Frontier (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1948), p. 271; see also pp. 19-29. 8. Eugene Hollon and Ruth Lapham Butler, eds., William Bollaerts Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), p. 321. 9. Ibid., pp. 321-322. 10. George M. Diggs, Jr., Barney L. Lipscomb, and Robert J. O'Kennon, Skinners & Mahler s Illustrated Flora ofNorth Central Texas (Fort Worth: Botanical Research Institute ofTexas; and Sherman: Austin College Department of Biology and Center for Environmental Studies, 1999), p. 24. 11. Friend, ed., M. K. Kelloggs Texas Journal, 1872, p. 81. 12. Ibid., p. 82. 13. Hill, "The Topography and Geology of the Cross Timbers," p. 300. 14. Ibid., p. 301. 15. Ibid., p. 302. 16. Ibid. 17. Ground Water Atlas of the United States (Segment 4, Oklahoma/Texas), U.S. Geological Survey Atlas 730E (Reston, Va.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1996), p. E19. 18. Hill, "The Topography and Geology of the Cross Timbers," p. 303. 19. Richard McCluskey, "Some Population Parameters of Quercus Stellata in the Texas Cross Timbers," Ph.D. Dissertation, North Texas State University, 1972, pp. 44 and 51. 20. Ibid., p. 9. 21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, Soil Classification— A Comprehensive System, yth Approximation (Washington, D.C.: Government Office, i960,1967).

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Notes to Pages 22-30 22. Ibid. 23. Fenton Gray, "Soil Map of Oklahoma" (generalized) (Stillwater: Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station, 1959). 24. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, Soil Classification— A Comprehensive System, yth Approximation', see also R. L. Donahue, R. W. Miller, and J. C. Shickluna, Soils: An Introduction to Soils and Plant Growth (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1977). 25. E. J. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," Ecological Monographs 18,1948, p. 327. 26. Patricia L. Kawecki and Don G. Wyckoff, Contributions to Cross Timbers Prehistory (Studies in Oklahoma's Past, no. 12) (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1984), p. 8. 27. Thomas NuttaH, A Journal ofTravels into theArkansa /sic7 Territory, During the Year 1819 (Philadelphia: Thos. Palmer, 1821), p. 142. 28. See Glenn T. Trewartha, Introduction to Climate (New York: McGraw Hill, 1954). 29. This fact was evidenced by the destructive tornado that damaged Prague, Oklahoma (Lincoln County), on October 4, 1998, as a cold front collided with a moist tropical air mass in the central Cross Timbers. 30. W. B. Parker, Notes Taken During the Expedition Commanded by Capt. R. B. Many, U.SA., Through Unexplored Texas in the Summer and Fall of 1854 (Philadelphia: Hayes 6c Zell, 1856), p. 85. 31. Lincecum, et al., Science on the Texas Frontier, p. 119. 32. A letter from John P. Coles to Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, in Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Texas State Library 5, pp. 83-84. 33. Ibid., p. 84. 34. Ibid., p. 83. 35. George Bomar, Texas Weather (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), p. 207. 36. David W. Stahle and Malcolm K. Cleaveland, "Texas Drought History Reconstructed and Analyzed from 1698 to 1980," Journal of'Climate 1, January 1988, p. 62. 37. Ibid, p. 66. 38. Ibid. 39. David W. Stahle and Malcolm K. Cleaveland, "Southern Oscillation Extremes Reconstructed from Tree Rings of the Sierra Madre Occidental and Southern Great Plains," Journal of Climate 6, no. 1, January 1993, p. 132. 40. Ibid., p. 129. 41. During the severe drought of 1998, when only 2.5 inches of rain were recorded in Arlington, Texas, during the summer months ofJune, July, and August, the oaks of the Cross Timbers survived despite more than 50 days of daytime high temperatures that reached at least 100 degrees (with one no-degree day); while the grass withered and some introduced trees perished, the oaks revealed only a general browning at the edges of some leaves. 42. Friend, M. K. Kelloggs Texas Journal, 1872, p. 92. 240

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Notes to Pages 30-40 43. Ibid., p. 96. 44. Ibid., p. 98-99. 45. Lois E. Albert and Don G. Wyckoff, "Oklahoma Environments: Past and Present," in Robert Bell, ed., Prehistory of Oklahoma (New York: Academic Press, 1984), pp. 24-25. 46. McCluskey, "Some Population Parameters," p. 61. 47. Ibid, p. 64. 48. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," p. 327. 49. McCluskey, "Some Population Parameters," p. 59. 50. Sally Wasowski with Andy Wasowski, Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1991), p. 344. 51. McCluskey, "Some Population Parameters," p. 64. 52. James B. McBryde, "Vegetation and Habitat Factors of Carrizo Sands," Ecological Monographs 3,1933, pp. 260—294. 53. Eula Whitehouse, Texas Flowers in Natural Colors (Austin: Texas Book Store, 1936), p. xvi. 54. Terry Jordan, with John L. Bean, Jr., and William M. Holmes, Texas: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), p. 29. 55. See, for example, Erwin Raisz, the map of "Physiography," in Edward B. Espenshade, Jr., ed., Goodes World Atlas, 17th ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1986), pp. 80-81. 56. A. W. Kuchler, "Natural Vegetation," map in Edward Espenshade, Jr., ed., Goodes WorldAtlas, 17th ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1986), pp. 84-85. 57. Charles Sprague Sargent, Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico), vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1949), p. 294. 58. George A. Petrides, A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs (Boston: Houghton Miffin Company, 1958), p. 216. 59. Charles Oliver May, "A History of the Cross Timbers in Texas Including the Historical Cartography," M A Thesis, Southwest Texas State College, 1962, p. 35. 60. Ibid. 61. Palo Pinto County Historical Commission, History of Palo Pinto County, Texas (Dallas: Curtis Media Corporation, 1986), p. 596. 62. Sargent, Manual of the Trees of North America, p. 294. 63. David W. Stahle and John G. Hehr, "Dendroclimatic Relationships of Post Oak across a Precipitation Gradient in the Southcentral United States," Annals, Association of American Geographers 74, no. 4, December 1984, pp. 561-573. 64. David W. Stahle, "Tree Rings ofAncient Forest Relics,"Arnoldia—The Magazine ofthe Arnold Arboretum 56, no. 4,19 9 6-19 97, pp. 4-5. 65. Sargent, Manual of the Trees of North America, p. 294. 66. H. A. Stephens, Woody Plants of the North Central Plains (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1973), p. 126. 67. Paul W. Cox and Patty Leslie, Texas Trees: A Friendly Guide (San Antonio: Corona Publishing Company, 1988), p. 108. 241

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Notes to Pages 40-53 68. Stephens, Woody Plants ofthe North Central Plains, p. 116. 69. Sargent, Manual ofthe Trees of North America, vol. 1, pp. 258-259. 70. Petrides, A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs, p. 219. 71. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," p. 328. 72. W. E. Bruner, "The Vegetation of Oklahoma," Ecological Monographs, 1,1931, p. 118. 73. Ibid., p. 143. 74. Cornelius H. Muller, The Oaks of Texas, Contributions from the Texas Research Foundation, vol. 1, Part 3 (Renner: Texas Research Foundation, 1951), p. 52. 75. Cox and Leslie, Texas Trees: A Friendly Guide, p. 108. 76. Ibid., p. 294. yy. Ibid. 78. Bruner, "The Vegetation of Oklahoma," p. 146. 79. Ibid., p. 147. 80. Cox and Leslie, Texas Trees, p. 31. 81. Ibid., p. 34. 82. Thierson Pike Harrison, "A Floristic Study of the Woody Vegetation of the North American Cross Timbers," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Texas, 1974, abstract. 83. Friend, M. K. Kellogg s Texas Journal, 1872, p. 87. 84. Grant Foreman, ed., Adventure on Red River: Report on the Exploration of the Headwaters of the Red River by Captain Randolph B. Many and Captain G. B. McClellan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937), pp. xv-xvi. 85. Larry Eugene Marcy, "Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers ofTexas," MS Thesis, Texas A & M University, 1982, p. iii. 86. Harrison, "A Floristic Study of the Woody Vegetation of the North American Cross Timbers," p. 8. 87. A. W. Kuchler, "Potential Natural Vegetation of the Coterminous United States," American Geographical Society Special Publication j6,1964, as cited in David W. Stahle, Mathew D. Therrell, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, and Sophonia Roe, "The Bioreserve Potential of the Ancient Cross Timbers on the Frank Tract, Osage County, Oklahoma" (unpublished report to Mr. Irwin Frank, February, 1996), p. 1. 88. Patricia L. Kawecki and Don G. Wyckoff, Contributions to Cross Timbers Prehistory (Studies in Oklahoma's Past, no. 12) (Norman: Oklahoma Archaeological Survey; and Duncan, Ok.: Cross Timbers Heritage Association, 1984), p. 3. 89. May, "A History of the Cross Timbers in Texas," p. 58. 90. Ibid., p. 59. 91. Kawecki and Wyckoff, Contributions to Cross Timbers Prehistory, p. 19. 92. See Omer C. Stewart, "Fire as the First Great Force Employed by Man," in William L. Thomas, ed., Mans Role in Changing the Face ofthe Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 115-133; and Stephen J. Pyne, Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, ofEurope and Europe's Encounter with the World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997). 242

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Notes to Pages 53-64 93. Don G. Wyckoff in Robert E. Bell, ed., Prehistory of Oklahoma (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1984), p. 142. 94. Susan C. Vehik, "The Woodland Occupations," Chapter 8, in Robert E. Bell, ed., Prehistory of Oklahoma (New York: Academic Press, 1984), p. 192. 95. Jeff Hanson, "North Texas Prehistory: How Village Creek Compares," Field Notes, spring 1997, pp. 1-2. 96. Charles Goins and John Morry, Oklahoma Homes Past and Present (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), p. 18. 97. Billy Lightfoot, "History of Comanche County, Texas, to 1920," MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1949, p. 61. 98. Alice L. Marriott, "The Cross Timbers as a Cultural Barrier," The Texas Geographical Magazine VII, no. 1, spring 1943, p. 17. 99. Ibid, p. 20. 100. Thomas Frank Schilz, "People of the Cross Timbers: A History of the Tonkawa Indians," Ph.D. Dissertation, Texas Christian University, August 1983. 101. Ibid., p. 93. 102. Ibid., pp. 99-100. NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

1. David Ingram, Across Aboriginal'America: The Journey ofThree Englishmen across Texas in 1568, edited by DeGolyer (El Paso: The Peripatetic Press, 1947), p. 559. 2. P. J. Foik (translator), Capitan Don Domingo Ramon's Diary of His Expedition into Texas in 1716, Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 2, no. 5, as also cited in Daniel E. Fox, Traces ofTexas History. Archeological Evidence of the Past 450 Years (San Antonio: Corona Publishing Company, 1983), p. 20. 3. Del Weniger, The Explorers' Texas: The Lands and Waters (Austin: Eakin Press, 1984), p. 48. 4. Popples Atlas of America, engraved by William Henry Tomas and R. W. Seale (London: 1733). 5. W. J. Eccles, "French Exploration in North America, 1700-1800," in John L. Allen, ed., North American Exploration: Vol. 2—A Continent Defined (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 173-174. 6. Weniger, The Explorers' Texas: The Lands and Waters, p. 48. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. 49. 9. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," Ecological Monographs 18, no. 3, July 1948, p. 332. 10. Eugene Herbert Bolton, Athanase de Mezieres and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, IJ68-IJ8O, vol. 1 (Cleveland: Arthur Clark Company, 1914), p. 114. 11. Lea Anne Morrell, "Spanish Fort, Texas," The New Handbook ofTexas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), vol. 6, pp. 3-4. 12. Bolton, Athanase de Mezieres and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, IJ68-IJ8O, vol. 2, p. 201.

243

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Notes to Pages 64-72 13. Ibid., p. 202. 14. Ibid., p. 202. 15. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," p. 332. 16. See G. Malcolm Lewis, ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998). 17. Noel M. Loomis and Abraham P. Nasatir, Pedro Vial and the Roads to Santa Fe (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), pp. 340-342. 18. Ibid., pp. 342-34319. Ibid. 20. See G. Malcolm Lewis, ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. 21. See David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 22. Jack Jackson, "Nolan, Philip," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 4 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 1026. 23. Thomas Nuttall, Journal of Travels into theArkansa /sic7 Territory, During the Yeari8ip, with Occasional Observations on the Manners ofthe Aborigines (Philadelphia: Thomas Palmer, 1821), as edited by Savoie Lottinville m A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), p. 170. 24. Ibid., pp. 174-175. 25. Ibid., pp. 169-170. 26. Ibid., p. 178. 27. Ibid., pp. 180-181. 28. Ibid., p. 181. 29. Don G. Wyckoff, "The Cross Timbers: An Ecotone in Historic Perspective," in Contributions to Cross Timbers Prehistory (Norman: Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, University of Oklahoma, 1984), p. 14. 30. George J. Goodman and Cheryl A. Lawson, Retracing Major Stephen H. Longs 1820 Expedition: The Itinerary and Botany (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), pp. 195-196. 31. William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993), p. 184. 32. This map is filed in the Stephen F. Austin Papers Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. 33. Robert S. Martin, "Maps of an Empresario: Austins Contribution to the Cartography of Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly LXXXV, no. 4, April 1982, pp. 371-400. 34. See Malcolm McLean, Papers Concerning Robertsons Colony, vol. I l l (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), p. 296. 35. McLean, Papers Concerning Robertsons Colony, vol. VII (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington Press, 1980), pp. 157^158. 244

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Notes to Pages 73-81 36. W . Eugene Hollon, ed., William Bollaerts Texas (Chicago: T h e Newberry Library; and Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), p. 319. yj. Carolyn Thomas Foreman, The Cross Timbers (Muskogee, Okla.: T h e Star Printery, 1947), p. 7. 38. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," p. 327. 39. John D . Hunter, Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen: With Anecdotes Descriptive of Their Manners and Customs. To Which Is Added, Some Account of the Soil, Climate, and Vegetable Productions of the Territory Westward of the Mississippi (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823), p. 57. 40. Ibid., pp. 57-58. 41. Ibid., p. 58. 42. J. P. Cole [sic] to Mr. Lamar, September 3,1835, in Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Texas State Library, vol. 5, pp. 81-83. 43. [M. B. Lamar], Information from W m . B. Stout [ca. 1850], Richmond, Texas, Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Texas State Library, vol. 4, Part One, p. 274. 44. Ibid., p. 275. 45. Ibid., p. 276. 46. Ibid., p. 277. 47. John F. McDermott, ed., The Western Journals of Washington Irving (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), p. 142. 48. Ibid. 49. Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, edited by J. F. McDermott (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), p. 125. 50. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, pp. 26-27. 51. Ibid., pp. 30-31. 52. G. F. Spaulding, ed., On the Western Tour with Washington Irving: TheJournal and Letters of Count de Pourtales (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), pp. 51-53. 53. See Albert Boime, The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting, c. 1830-1865 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). 54. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, pp. 33-34. 55. Army and Navy Chronicle, February 23, 1837, p. 126, as cited in Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 34. 56. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, pp. 36-37. 57. Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948), p. 298. 58. Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, vol. 2 (New York: Henry G. Langley,

1844), pp. 199-200. 59. Ibid., p. 200. 60. Maurice Garland Fulton, ed., Diary & Letters of Josiah Gregg: Southwestern Enterprises, 1840-1847 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), p. 68. 61. Twenty-ninth Congress, 1st Session, Senate Executive Document no. 438, also reported in Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 73. 245

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Notes to Pages 82-91 62. This quote is attributable to Noah Smithwick as quoted in Newcomb, The Indians ofTexas, p. 346, and was more recently quoted by David La Vere in Life among the Texas Indians: The WPA Narratives (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), p. 32. 63. Rachel Plummer, Rachael Plummers Narrative of Twenty-One Months Servitude as a Prisoner among the Comanche Indians (Houston: Telegraph Power Press, 1838), pp. 5-10. 64. McLeod to Lamar, Red River Country, Below Clarksville 60 Miles, January 9, 1839, Papers ofMirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. II, p. 406. 65. Malcolm McLean notes in Papers Concerning Robertsons Colony that this description is found in Department of State Letter Book no. 2, vol. XV, pp. 488-490. 66. Samuel M. Dalton to J. C. Pool, June 21,1875, Cedar Springs, Falls County (T. S. Sutherland Collection, Robertson Colony Papers, the University of Texas at Arlington). By the late 1830s, in Texas at least, the term Cross Timbers was in common usage. 67. Texas in 1840, or the Emigrants Guide to the New Republic (New York: William W. Allen, 1840), p. 222. 68. Ibid., pp. 222-223. 69. Ibid., p. 223. 70. Julia Kathryn Garrett, Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), p. 15. 71. Ibid. 72. Malcolm McLean, Papers Concerning Robertsons Colony, vol. VII, p. 331. 73. Claudia Hazlewood, "Kennedy, William," entry in The New Handbook ofTexas, vol. 3 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 1069. 74. William Kennedy, Texas: Its Geography\ Natural History, and Topography (New York: Benjamin and Young, 1844), p. 59. 75. Ibid., p. 58. 76. Ibid., pp. 58-59. 7J. Ibid., p. 59. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., p. 58. 80. Ibid., p.59. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid. 83. Texas Sentinel, Austin, Saturday, January 16,1841, second page, third column; also reproduced in Malcolm McLean, Papers concerning Robertsons Colony, vol. XVIII, P . 178. 84. George Wilkins Kendall, Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition (New York, 1844), as cited in Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 62. 85. John Miller Morris, El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, I$J6-I86O (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1997), p. 233. 246

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Notes to Pages 93-109 86. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, pp. 72-73. 87. The map referred to here is Bollaert's signed and marked copy of John Arrowsmiths "Map of Texas compiled from surveys recorded in the Land Office of Texas and other official surveys" (London: John Arrowsmith, 1841). Map Division, Library of Congress, January 8,1904, G4030,1841, A, Vant. 88. The City of Fort Worth earned the nickname "Panther City" for a mountain lion said to have been seen sleeping on the streets there. 89. Stephen B. Oates, ed., Rip Fords Texas by John Salmon Ford (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), pp. 116-117. 90. John S. Tomer and Michael J. Bradhead,^Naturalist in Indian Territory: The Journals ofS. W. Woodhouse, 1849-50 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), p. 225.

91. Larry Eugene Marcy, "Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers ofTexas," MA Thesis, Texas A&M University, 1982, p. 7. 92. Rupert Richardson, ed., "Documents Relating to West Texas and Her Indian Tribes" (Marcy s Expedition Through Northern and Western Texas), West Texas Historical'Association Year Book, vol. 1,1925, pp. 50-51. 93. Ben Wayne Huseman, "Romanticism and the Scientific Aesthetic: Balduin Mollhausens Artistic Development and the Images of the Whipple Expedition," MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1992, p. 108. 94. Ibid. 95. Kathleen Doherty, "Mollhausen, Heinrich Balduin," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 4 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 790. 96. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, pp. 104-105. 97. R. B. Marcy, "Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana," U.S. Senate Executive Document 54,32nd Congress, 2nd Session, vol. 8, pp. 279-304. 98. See W. Eugene Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers: The Travels ofRandolph B. Marcy, 1812-1887 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955). 99. Ralph Brown, Historical Geography ofthe United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace 5c World, Inc., 1948), p. 377. 100. Sidney E. Morse, System ofGeography,for the Use of Schools (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844). 101. Sidney E. Morse, System ofGeography,for the Use ofSchools (New York: Harper &c Brothers, 1851). 102. Henry Howe, Historical Collections ofthe Great West, vol. 1,1853, p. 363. 103. W. B. Parker, Notes Taken During the Expedition Commanded by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy USA. Through Unexplored Texas (Philadelphia: Hayes ScZell, 1856), p. 79; also cited in Richard C. Bartlett, Saving the Best of Texas: A Partnership Approach to Conservation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), p. 69. NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

1. William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic ofTexas, vol. 1 (London: R. Hastings, 1841), p. 104. 247

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Notes to Pages no—120 2. Peter Guillet, Timber Merchants Guide (Baltimore, 1832); cited in William S. Reese and George A. Miles, Creating America (An Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University) (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1992), p. 533. William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993), p. 59. 4. Ibid., p. 58. 5. Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects ofthe Republic ofTexas, vol. 1, p. 105.

6. See Richard Francaviglia, From Sail to Steam: Four Centuries ofTexas Maritime History, 7500-/900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), pp. 98-101,132-135. 7. Seymour V. Connor, "A Statistical Review of the Settlement of the Peters Colony, 1841-1848," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 57, July 1953, p. 42. 8. Daily Cincinnati Enquirer, May 10,1843. 9. "Trade with the Cross Timbers," Democratic Telegraph and Texas Register,July 8, 1846, n.p. 10. New York Observer, ca. October 1,1850, n.p. 11. Grant Foreman, "Survey of a Wagon Road from Fort Smith to the Colorado River," Chronicles ofOklahoma, vol. 12, no. 1 (March 1934), pp. 74~~75,86-87; from Beales Report, United States House Executive Document No. 42, 36th Congress, 1st Session. 12. Kenneth Grubbs, "Patterns of Agricultural Development in the Western Cross Timbers Region of Texas During the Last Century," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, June 1953, p. 113. 13. "A Deer Drive," Harpers Weekly XVIII, no. 896, Saturday, February 28,1874, pp. 205-206.

14. Ty Cashion, A Texas Frontier: The Clear Fork Country and Fort Griffin, 1849i88y (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), p. 60. 15. South Western Immigration Company, Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities (New York: E. D. Slater, 1881), p. 25. 16. Ty Cashion, A Texas Frontier, p. 213. 17. Ibid., p. 290. 18. Terry Jordan, "The Texan Appalachia," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 60, no. 3, September 1970, pp. 409-427. 19. Kenneth Neighbours, "Fort Belknap," entry in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 2 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 1086. 20. A. C. Greene, goo Miles on the Butterfield Trail (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1994), pp. 41-42. 21. Ibid., p. 138. 22. Stan Hoig, Beyond the Frontier: Exploring the Indian Country (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 271. 23. Ibid., p. 272. 248

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Notes to Pages 121-128

24. David Paul Smith, Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas Rangers and Rebels (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), pp. 74~~7525. Ibid, pp. 80-81. 26. W. Craig Gaines, The Confederate Cherokees: John Drews Mounted Rifles (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). 27. "Oklahoma Saw More Civil War Action Than Previously Believed, Historian Says," The Dallas Morning News, November 1,1998, p. 42A. 28. Charles M. Robinson III, Satanta: The Life and Death ofa War Chief'(Austin: State House Press, 1998), p. 48. 29. Ibid., p. 82. 30. Ibid., pp. 125-126. 31. Ibid., pp. 109-110, as quoted from the Austin Weekly State Journal, April 28, 1870. 32. Ibid., pp. 119-124. 33. Llerena Friend, ed., M. K. Kellogg s Texas Journal, 1872 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), p. 85. 34. Ibid., p. 85. 35. Ibid., p. 82. 36. TerryJordan, "Vegetational Perception and Choice of Settlement Site in Frontier Texas," in Ralph Ehrenberg, ed., Pattern and Process: Research in Historical Geography, National Archives Conferences, Volume 9 (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1975), p. 245. 37. Ibid., p. 255. 38. Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects ofthe Republic ofTexas, p. 116. 39. Myron P. Gutmann and Christie G. Sample, "Land, Climate, and Settlement on the Texas Frontier," Southwestern Historical Quarterly XCIX, no. 2, October 1995, p. 137. 40. Rupert Norval Richardson, The Frontier of Northwest Texas, 1846 to 18y6: Advance and Defense by the Pioneer Settlers of the Cross Timbers and Prairies (Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1963), p. 100. 41. Ibid., p. 112. 42. Ibid., p. 124. 43. "Diary of Jonathan Hamilton Baker, 1858-1918," Unpublished ms., Tarrant County Historical Commission, Fort Worth, Texas; as provided to author by Ty Cashion, June 12,1998. 44. Survey notebook of Charles William Pressler (Karl Wilhelm Pressler), ca. 1878-1879, n.p., in possession ofJudge Paul Pressler, Houston, Texas. 45. Charles Sprague Sargent, Manual of the Trees ofNorth America (Exclusive of Mexico) (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1949), p. 294. 46. Charles Oliver May, "A History of the Cross Timbers in Texas, Including the Historical Cartography," MA Thesis, Southwest Texas State College, 1962, p. 35. 47. Lynne Richards, "Folk Dyeing with Natural Materials in Oklahoma's Indian Territory," Material Culture 26, no. 2, Summer, 1994, p. 38. 249

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Notes to Pages 128-137 48. Paula Mitchell Marks, Hands to the Spindle: Texas Women and Home Textile Production, 1822-1880 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996), pp. 8-10. 49. Richardson, The Frontier ofNorthwest Texas, p. 127. 50. Seymour V. Connor, "Log Cabins in Texas," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly LIII, pp. 106-116. 51. Joseph Andrew Blackman, "The Ikard Family and the North Texas Frontier," Cross Timbers Review 1, no. 1, May 1984, p. 24. 52. Ty Cashion, A Texas Frontier: The Clear Fork Country and Fort Griffin, 1849— i88y, p. 41. 53. Richardson, The Frontier of North west Texas, p. 128. 54. Recollections by Dora N. Green, "Tragedy and Comedy in the Early Days," as cited by Billy Lightfoot, "The History of Comanche County, Texas, to 1920," M A Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1949, p. 97. 55. Blackman, "The Ikard Family and the North Texas Frontier," p. 24. 56. Friend, M. K. Kelloggs Texas Journal, 1872, p. 88. 57. Ida Lasater Huckabay, Ninety-Four Years in Jack County, 1854-1948 (Austin: Steck Company, 1949), p. 139. 58. Friend, M. K. Kelloggs Texas Journal, p. 82. 59. Viola Block, History of Johnson County and Surrounding Areas (Waco: Texian Press, 1970), p. 93. 60. John Graves, Goodbye to a River (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, i960), p. 69. 61. See Terry Jordan, Log Cabin Village: A History and Guide (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1980). 62. Bob Green, "Ledbetter Picket House," one-page information sheet, n.d., n.L, p. 2. 63. Charles R. Goins and John W. Morris, Oklahoma Homes Past and Present (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), p. 21. 64. Lynne Richards, "Dwelling Places: Log Homes in Oklahoma's Indian Territory, 1850-1909," Material Culture, 25, no. 2, Summer 1993, p. 15. 65. Ibid., p. 8. 66. Ibid., p. 10. 67. Ibid., p. 9. 68. Ibid. 69. Goins and Morris, Oklahoma Homes Past and Present, p. 18. 70. Richards, "Dwelling Places: Log Homes in Oklahoma's Indian Territory, 18501909," pp. 21-22.

71. Terry Jordan, "The Imprint of the Upper and Lower South on Mid-NineteenthCentury Texas," Annals Association of American Geographers 57,1967, pp. 667-690. 72. Carolyn Thomas Foreman, The Cross Timbers (Muskogee, Okla.: The Star Printery, 1947), p. in. 73. Carl Coke Rister, Southern Plainsman (Norman, 1930), pp. 144-145 as noted in Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 112. 250

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Notes to Pages 137-146 74. S. B. McAllister, "Building the Texas and Pacific Railroad West of Fort Worth," West Texas Historical Association Year Book IV, June 1928, p. $y. 75. Grubbs, "Patterns of Agricultural Development," p. 114. 76. Virginia H. Taylor, The Franco-Texan Land Company (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), p. 100. yy. Ibid., p. 150. 78. Ibid., p. 218. 79. South Western Immigration Company, Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities.... (New York: E. D. Slater, 1881), p. 25. 80. Odie B. Faulk, Laura E. Faulk, and Sally M. Gray, Imagination and Ability: The Life of Lloyd Noble (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1995), pp. 11-12.

81. Terry Jordan, "The Anglo-Texan Homeland,"'Journalof* Cultural Geography 13, no. 2, Spring-Summer 1993, pp. 75—86. 82. See David J. Wishart, "Settling the Great Plains, 1850-1930: Prospects and Problems," chapter in Robert Mitchell and Paul Groves, eds., North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman &, Littlefield, Publishers, Inc., 1990), pp. 255-278. 83. Grubbs, "Patterns of Agricultural Development," p. no. 84. Billy Lightfoot, "The History of Comanche County, Texas, to 1920," M A Thesis, 1949, p. 116. 85. Terry G.Jordan, "Pioneer Evaluation of Vegetation in Frontier Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly yGy 1973, pp. 233-254. 86. Brian Hart, "Forestburg, Texas," New Handbook of Texas, vol. 2 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 1080. 87. The White Man, vol. 1, No. 8, Jacksboro, Texas, March 8, i860. 88. From a signed statement of J. B. Nabers, Archives of the University of Texas Library, as cited in Billy Lightfoot, "The History of Comanche County, Texas, to 1920," M A Thesis, p. 180. 89. Lightfoot, "The History of Comanche County, Texas, to 1920," p. 223. 90. Wishart, "Settling the Great Plains, 1850-1930: Prospects and Problems," p. 266. 91. Ibid. 92. See Douglas A. Hurt, "Vexations of Spirit: Environment and Culture in the Cross Timbers," Oklahoma: Magazine of the Oklahoma Heritage Association 3, no. 1, Spring/Summer 1998, p. 29. 93. Source: United States Census Figures for Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. 94. Kenneth Grubbs, "Patterns of Agricultural Development," p. 131. 95. The Texas Almanac (Dallas: Belo &c Co., 1904), p. 104. 96. Ibid. 97. Worth S. Ray, Down in the Cross Timbers (Austin: Worth S. Ray, 1947), p. 2. 98. Richard Cox, "Dust Bowl Realism: Texas Printmakers and the FSA Photographers of the Depression," in Ron Tyler, ed., Prints and Printmakers of Texas: Pro251

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Notes to Pages 14J—15J ceedings ofthe Twentieth Annual North American Print Conference (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1997), p. 144. 99. D. W. Meinig, Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), pp. 68-69. 100. Elmer Johnson, "The Natural Regions of Texas," (Austin: Bureau of Business Research, Monograph No. 8,1931), p. 63. 101. Kenneth Grubbs, "Patterns of Agricultural Development," p. 115. 102. Claren M. Kidd, "Oklahoma Coal, Coal Miners and Coal Mining," in John W. Morris, ed., Drill Bits, Picks, and Shovels: A History ofMineral Resources in Oklahoma (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1982), p. 108. 103. For a discussion of railroad construction in Oklahoma, see Donovan L. Hofsommer, ed., Railroads of Oklahoma, vol. VII, The Oklahoma Series (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1997). 104. Letter to Hon. Chas Devens, by Stillwell H. Russell, U.S. Marshall, Dallas, Texas, April 11,1878, in Letters received by the Department of Justice from the State of Texas, 1871-1884 (M1449), General Records of the Department ofJustice, RG6O (Fort Worth: National Archives Federal Records Center). 105. Ty Cashion, A Texas Frontier, pp. 268-269. 106. John H. White, Jr., A History of the American Locomotive: Its Development, I8JO-I88O (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1968), p. 83. 107. Ibid., p. 84. 108. Ibid., p. 86. 109.Ibid. no. I. C. Gunning, When Coal Was King: Coal Mining Industry in the Choctaw Nation (Eastern Oklahoma Historical Society, 1975), p. 84. in. Hofsommer, Railroads of Oklahoma, p. 15; see also V. V. Masterson, The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952). 112. See, for example, Charles Sargent, Manual of the Trees of North America, p. 294. 113. S. B. McAllister, "Building the Texas and Pacific Railroad West of Fort Worth," West Texas Historical Association Year Book IV, June 1928, pp. 51 and 54. 114. Robert William Spoede, "William Whipple Johnson: An Enterprising Man," MA Thesis, Hardin Simmons University, July 1968, p. 88. 115. W. F. Cummins, "Report of the Geology of the Northwestern Texas," in the Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Texas, 1890 (Austin: State Printing Office, 1891), p. 528. 116. Ibid., p. 523. 117. Ibid., p. 518. 118. See Gene Fowler, Crazy Water: The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas Health Resorts (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1991); also Terry Jordan, "The Texan Appalachia." 119. A. F. Weaver, Time Was in Mineral Wells, A Crazy Story but True (Mineral Wells, Texas: Houghton Printing Co., 1988), p. 60. 252

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Notes to Pages 158—IJ$ 120. Brian Hart, "Cross Timbers Texas," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 2 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 422. 121. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 8. 122. Frederic William Simonds, "Geographic Influences in the Development of Texas," The Journal of Geography^,

no. 9, May 1912.

123. Lucy A. Erath, ed., "Extracts from George Bernard Erath's Memoirs? (Waco, 1956); as noted in Malcolm McLean, Papers Concerning Robertsons Colony, vol. VIII, p. 525. 124. E . T. D u m b l e , " T h e Soils of Texas—A Preliminary S t a t e m e n t and Classification," Texas Academy of Science, 1895, vol. 1, pp. 25-60; also quoted in L. E. Marcy, Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers, 1982, pp. 9-11. 125. Richard Francaviglia, "Black Diamonds to Black Gold: T h e Legacy of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company," West Texas Historical Association Year Book, vol. LXXI, 1995, pp. 7-20. 126. "Pretty Boy Floyd" lyrics by Woody Guthrie

(http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/

~davida/ofloyd). 127. Hurt, "Vexations of Spirit," p. 29. 128. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 116. 129. U.S. Census figures for agricultural production, 1920-1940. 130. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 115. 131. Faulk et al., Imagination and Ability: The Life of Lloyd Noble, pp. 3—4. 132. Texas Almanac (Dallas: Belo Corp., 1941-42), p. 143. 133. W o r t h S. Ray, Down in the Cross Timbers (Austin: Worth S. Ray, 1947), p. 2. 134. Ibid.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. Excerpts from the Texas and Pacific Main LineMinia Tours are found in Charles Zlatkovich, Texas and Pacific Railway: Operations andTraffic (El Paso: Westerner Press: 1998), pp. 83- 84. 2. "The Witness Tree Story," illustrated one-pageflyer,probably prepared by Boy Scout Troop 57, Arlington, Tex., n.d. (ca. 1994), n.p. 3. "Tree Protection: Requirements for Commercial Construction," one-page brochure by the City of Arlington, Tex., n.d. 4. Larry Hail, "No Land Swap for Trees," letter to the editor, Arlington Morning News, August 16,1997, opinions section, p. 7A. 5. C. J. Schexnayder, "Mansfield Group Urges Development of Tree Ordinance," Arlington Morning News, July 21,1997, pp. iA, 6A. 6. Jan Harvis, "Safety, Service Needs Take Priority over Trees," Arlington CitizenJournal, week of July 26,1997, p. 7A. 7. "Uprooted," The Dallas Morning News, August 1, 1997, metropolitan section, p. 29A. 8. Jeff Prince, "Tree's Age Doesn't Ring after Inspection," Arlington StarTelegram, August 9,1997, section B, p. 6. 253

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Notes to Pages iyj—1^4 9. Kathy A. Edgar, "Resident Upset Trees Sheared for Utility Lines," Arlington Morning News, July 21,1997, P- I ^10. "Solana in the Sun," reprint from Progressive Architecture, April 1989, n.p. 11. Tom Blagg, personal communication with author, April 29,1998. 12. Nita Thurman, "Cross Timbers Group Rallying to Save Trees," The Dallas Morning News, October 26,1997, p. 43A. 13. Ibid. 14. Charles Oliver May, "A History of the Cross Timbers in Texas including the Historical Cartography," MA Thesis, Southwest Texas State College, 1962, pp. 119-121. 15. Larry Eugene Marcy, "Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers of Texas," MS Thesis, Texas A&M University, August 1982. 16. "The Ancient Cross Timbers Project Summary," internet web site, http:// www.uark.edu/misc/xtimber/summary.html, p. 5. 17. Sally Wasowski, Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1991), p. 344. 18. Neil Sperry, Neil Sperrys Complete Guide to Texas Gardening (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 98-99. 19.1 base these figures on those provided for Tucson, Arizona, and Claremont, California, in Frederick R. Gehlbach, Mountain Islands and Desert Seas: A Natural History of the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), pp. 142-14320. Ibid., p. 142. 21. Marcy, "Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers of Texas," pp. 3-4. 22. Telephone interview, Phil Huey, June 19,1997. 23. E. J. Dyksterhuis, "The Vegetation of the Western Cross Timbers," Ecological Monographs 18,1948, p. 359. 24. Ibid., p. 364. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 372. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Wayne Clark, personal communication, Fort Worth Nature Center, September 15,1997. 30. Ronald L. Mitchell, "A Brief History of Fire and Related Factors," paper presented at the Prescribed Burning Seminar, February 21, 1991, Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma. 31. Ronald Mitchell, "Fire on Soil, Vegetation and Animals," paper presented at the Prescribed Burning Seminar, February 21, 1991, Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma. 32. Bruce Hoagland, "Spatial Heterogeneity in Grasslands as Affected by Woody Plant Encroachment," paper presented at the SWAAG (Southwest Association of American Geographers) Annual Meeting, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, October 29,1998. 254

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Notes to Pages 194-208 33. Alta Vick, student paper on Cross Timbers, 1995. 34. Marcy, "Habitat Types of the Eastern Cross Timbers of Texas," p. 11. 35. Ibid., pp. 11-13. 36. E. J. Dyksterhuis, "The Savannah Concept and Its Use," Ecology 38,1957, PP435-442. 37. E. L. Rice and W. T. Penfound, "The Upland Forests of Oklahoma," Ecology 40,1959, pp. 593-608. 38. L. G. Duck and Jack B. Fletcher,^ Survey ofthe Game and Furbearing Animals of Oklahoma, Pittman-Robertson series No. 11, State Bulletin No. 3, Division of Wildlife Restoration and Research, Oklahoma Game and Fish Commission, State of Oklahoma, 1943. 39. See, for example, Oklahoma Resources Map, by the Oklahoma Department of Natural Resources, 1991. 40. Kenneth L. Gee, Michael D. Porter, Steve Demarais, Fred C. Bryant, and Gary Van Vreede, White-Tailed Deer: Their Foods and Management in the Cross Timbers (Arbuckle, Oklahoma: Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, 1944), p.i. 41. Ibid., p. 4. 42. Ibid., p. 5. 43. Richard C. Bartlett, Saving the Best of Texas:A Partnership Approach to Conservation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), p. 70. 44. Interviews with Wayne Clark, Suzanne Turtle, and Mike Griswold at the Fort Worth Nature Center, September 15,1997. 45. David W. Stahle, Mathew D. Therrel, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, and Sophonia Roe, "The Bioreserve Potential of the Ancient Cross Timbers on the Frank Tract, Osage County, Oklahoma," unpublished report submitted to Mr. Irvin Frank, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February, 1996, pp. 3-4. 46. C. George Younkin, "Annotated History of the Cross Timbers Boy Scout District," 1 p; n.d. 47. Terry Jordan with John L. Bean, Jr., and William M . Holmes, Texas: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984) pp. 272-273. 48. Terry Jordan, Texas: A Geography (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), p. 27. See also Terry Jordan's "Perceptual Regions in Texas," Geographical Review 68,1978, pp. 293-297. 49. KSTV broadcasts at 93.1 FM; the programming described was heard on August 20,1998, in Gordon/Weatherford, Texas. 50. Personal telephone communication with Louis Baldwin, Cross Timbers Oil Company, Fort Worth, Texas, March 10,1998. 51. Cross Timbers Oil Company, 1994 Annual Report, Fort Worth. 52. Telephone interview with the Cross Timbers Volunteer Fire Department, Cross Timbers, Missouri, March 3,1998. 53. Telephone interview with Towana Spivey, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, April 19,1997. 54. NitaThurman, "Days of Gold: Experts Hail Fall Colors as the Most Vibrant in Years," The Dallas Morning News, November 30,1997, pp. iA, 24A. 255

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Notes to Pages 208—215 55. Monte Lewis, "Cross Timbers Review," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 2 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 422. 56. Edwin Lanham, The Wind Blew West (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1935), p. 10.

57. Ibid., p. 115. 58. Ibid., p. 352. 59. L. D. Clark, The Dove Tree (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday 8c Company, 1961), P . 287. 60. Ibid., p. 337. 61. Ibid., p. 95. 62. Ibid., p. 40. 63. Edward Everett Dale, The Cross Timbers: Memories of a North Texas Boyhood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), pp. 3-6. 64. Foreman, The Cross Timbers, p. 74. 65. Alyson L. Greiner, "Oklahoma Cemeteries: A Preliminary Reconnaissance," paper presented at the Southwest Association of American Geographers meeting, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, October 30-31,1998. 66. L. D. Clark, Is This Naomi? and Other Stories: A Cycle of Rural Life (Tucson: Blue Moon Press, Inc., 1979), pp. 89-93. 67. Ibid., pp. 89-98. 68. Joyce Gibson Roach, Wild Rose: A Folk History ofa Cross Timbers Settlement— Keller, Texas (Virginia Beach: The Donning Company, 1996), pp. 12 and 134-135. 69. Dale, The Cross Timbers, p. 175. 70. Clark, Is This Naomi?, last page. 71. Cross Timbers Folklore: Folklorefrom the Cross Timbers Area of Texas, sponsored

by North Texas State University Historical Museum (Denton: North Texas State University Print Shop, n.d.), n.p. 72. See Alice Mariott, "The Cross Timbers as a Cultural Barrier," The Texas Geographical Magazine VII, no. 1, Spring 1943, pp. 14-20; and Eric Vail Lyke, "Dialect Study of the Central Texas Cross Timbers Region," MA Thesis, Tarleton State University, 1996. 73. Laura Trim, Short Trips in andAround Dallas (Dallas: LDT Press, 1984), p. 246. 74. Ibid., p. 98. 75. Ibid., p. 253. 76. Ibid., p. 257. yy. The Map of 750 Years of Texas is 24 x 36 inches in size, by the Texas Independence Association and Texas Wagon Train Association, copyright by Buel E. Crawford and distributed by Agency, P.O. Box 722, Manor, Texas. 78. See Donald Vogel and Margaret Vogel, Aunt Clara: The Paintings of Clara McDonald Williamson (Austin: University of Texas Press for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1966). 79. Brian Hart, "Cross Timbers, Texas," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 2 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 422.

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Notes to Pages 215-236 80. MAPSCO Fort Worth Street Guide (Dallas: MAPSCO, 1997). 81. Lynn Langham, Sharon Rose Higgins, and Kris Bergsnes, "All of That Love from Here" (Curb Music Company/MCA Records, 1992). 82. Woody Guthrie and Jack Guthrie, "Oklahoma Hills." NOTES TO SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

1. Warren Taylor, "Texas & Pacific: Passenger Trains Westward," Vintage Rails, no. 12, May/June, 1998, p. 46. 2. "The Ancient Cross Timbers Project Summary," internet web site http:// www.uark.edu/misc/xtimber/summary.html, April 6,1998, p. 1 of 5. 3. Terry G. Jordan, "The Anglo-American Mestizos and Traditional Southern Regionalism," in Kent Mathewson, ed., Culture, Form, and Place—Essays in Cultural and Historical Geography, Geoscience and Man 32, (Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, 1993), pp. 175-1954. Valentine Belfiglio, "Italians in Small Town and Rural Texas," in Rudolph J. Vecoli, ed., Italian Immigrants in Rural and Small Town America (Staten Island, N.Y.: The American Italian Historical Association, 1987), pp. 41-46. 5. Alice Marriott, "The Cross Timbers as a Cultural Barrier," The Texas Geographic Magazine VII, no. 1, Spring 1943, p. 14. 6. Bruce W. Hoagland, "Spatial Heterogeneity in Grasslands as Affected by Woody Plant Encroachment," paper presented at the Southwestern Association of American Geographers meeting, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, October 29-31,1998. 7. Brock J. Brown, "Cultural Ecology of the Garber-Wellington Cross Timbers in Eastern Cleveland County, Oklahoma," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1992, abstract. 8. "The Ancient Cross Timbers Project Summary," internet web site http:// www.uark.edu/misc/xtimber/summary.html, April 6,1998, p. 1 of 5. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid.; the authors of this web site also discuss the persistence of post oaks, in David W. Stahle, Mathew D. Therrell, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, and Sophonia Roe, "The Bioreserve Potential of the Ancient Cross Timbers on the Frank Tract, Osage County, Oklahoma," unpublished report submitted to Mr. Irvin Frank, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 1996, p. 1. 11. South Western Immigration Company, Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities (New York: E. D. Slater, 1881), p. 48. 12. J. B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. xii.

257

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Bibliography McCluskey, Richard L. "Some Population Parameters of Quercus stellata in the Texas Cross Timbers," Ph.D. Dissertation, North Texas State University, Denton, 1972.

McCormick, Olin F. "The Archaic Period in North-Central Texas." In The Texas Archaic: A Symposium, edited by Thomas R. Hester. Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, Special Report 2,1976, pp. 39-45. McDermott, John R, ed. The Western Journals of Washington Irving (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1966). McLeRoy, Sherrie. Black Land, Red River: A Pictorial History ofGrayson County, Texas (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning Company, 1993). McPherson, J. K. "Competitive and Allelopathic Suppression of Understory by Oklahoma Oak Forests," Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club 99, no. 6,1972, pp 293-300. Meinig, Donald W. Imperial Texas: An Interpretative Essay in Cultural Geography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969). Morris, John Miller. El Llano Estacado: Exploration andImagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, Morris, John W. The Geography of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1977). , ed. Drill Bits, Picks, and Shovels: A History of Mineral Resources in Oklahoma (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1982). Morris, John W., C. R. Goins, and E. C. McReynolds. Historical Atlas of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976). Muller, Cornelius H. The Oaks ofTexas (Contributions from the Texas Research Foundation, Vol. 1, Part 3) (Renner, Texas: Texas Research Foundation, 1951). Newcomb, W. W. The Indians of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961). Nixon, Elray S. Trees, Shrubs, & Woody Vines of East Texas (Nacogdoches,Tex.: Bruce Lyndon Cunningham Productions, 1985). Odum, E. P. Fundamentals ofEcology, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1971). Olmsted, F. L., F. V. Coville, and H. P. Kelsey. Standard Plant Names (Harnsburg, Pa.: Mount Pleasant Press, 1923). Paddock, B. B. A History of Central and Western Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), 2 vols. Parker, W. B. Notes Taken During the Expedition Commanded by Capt Randolph B. Marcy U.SA. Through Unexplored Texas in the Summer and Fall of1854 (Philadelphia: Hayes & Zell, 1854). Perry, H. G. Grand 01' Erath: The Saga of a Texas West Cross Timbers County, vol. 1 (Stephenville,Tex.: Stephenville Printing Co., 1974). Ray, Worth S. Down in the Cross Timbers (Austin, Tex., 1947). Reaser, Donald Frederick. "Robert Thomas Hill—Father of the Texas Cretaceous," Journal of Geoscience Education 45,1997, pp. 337—343.

Rhodes, Lorna K. "Correlations between Vegetation and Geologic Formations in Oklahoma," Oklahoma Geologic Notes 40, no. 2,1980, pp. 47-62.

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The Cast Iron Forest Rice, E. L. "The Microclimate of a Relict Stand of Sugar Maple in Devils Canyon in Canadian County, Oklahoma," Ecology 41, no. 3, i960, pp. 445-453. Rice, Elroy L., and William T. Penfound. "The Upland Forests of Oklahoma," Ecology 40, no. 4,1959, pp. 593-608. Richards, Lynne. "Dwelling Places: Log Homes in Oklahoma's Indian Territory, 18501909," Material Culture 25, no. 2, summer 1993, pp. 1-24. Richardson, Rupert Norval. The Frontier ofNorthwest Texas, 1846 to 1876: Advance and Defense by the Pioneer Settlers ofthe Cross Timbers and Prairies (Glendale, California: A. H. Clark Co., 1963). Risser, P. G. and E. L. Rice. "Diversity in Tree Species in Oklahoma Upland Forests," Ecology 52, no. 5,1971, pp. 876-880. Roach, Joyce Gibson. Wild Rose: A Folk History of a Cross Timbers Settlement, Keller, Texas (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning Company, 1996). Russell, R. J. "Climates ofTexas," Annals ofthe Association of American Geographers 35, no. 2,1945, pp. 1-17. Sargent, C. S. Manual ofthe Trees of North America, 2nd edition, vols. I, II (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1965). Schilz, Thomas F. "People of the Cross Timbers: A History of theTonkawa Indians," Ph.D. Dissertation, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, 1983. Schulman, Edmund. Dendroclimatic Changes in Semiarid America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1956). Sellards, E. H., B. C.Tharp, and R . T Hill. "Investigation on the Red River Made in Connection with the Oklahoma-Texas Boundary Suit," University ofTexas Bulletin, no. 2327, July 15,1923. Shinners, L. H. Shinners Spring Flora, 2nd ed. (Fort Worth, Texas: Prestige Press, 1972).

Simonds, Frederic W. "Geographic Influences in the Development of'Texas," Journal of Geography 10, no. 9,1912, pp. 277^284. Socolofsky, Homer E., and Huber Self. Historical Atlas of Kansas—Second Edition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). South Western Immigration Company. Texas: Her Resources and Capabilities, Being a Description ofthe State ofTexas and the Inducements She Offers.... (New York: E. D. Slater, 1881).

Spaulding, George F , ed. On the Western Tour with Washington Irving: The Journal and Letters of Count de Pourtales (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968). Sperry, Neil. Neil Sperrys Complete Guide to Texas Gardening (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1991). Stahle, David W. "Tree Rings and Ancient Forest Relics," Arnoldia—The Magazine ofthe Arnold Arboretum 56, no. 4,1996-1997, pp. 2-10. Stahle, David W., and John G. Hehr. "Dendroclimatic Relationships of Post Oak across a Precipitation Gradient in the Southcentral United States," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74, no. 4, December 1984, pp. 561-573. Stahle, David W., and Malcolm K. Cleaveland. "Texas Drought History Reconstructed and Analyzed from 1698 to 1980,"'Journalof* Climate 1, January 1988, pp. 59-74. 266

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Bibliography Stahle, David W., and Malcolm K. Cleaveland. "Southern Oscillation Extremes Reconstructed from Tree Rings of the Sierra Madre Occidental and Southern Great Plains," Journal of'Climate 6, no. i, January 1993, pp. 131-140. Stahle, David W., and Phillip L. Chaney. "A Predictive Model for the Location of Ancient Forests" Natural Areas Journal14, no. 3, July 1994, pp. 151-158. Stahle, David W., Mathew D. Therrel, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, and Sophonia Roe. "The Bioreserve Potential of the Ancient Cross Timbers on the FrankTract, Osage County, Oklahoma." Unpublished paper submitted to Mr. Irvin Frank, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February, 1996, 42 pp. including appendices, illustrations, and correspondence. Stahnke, C. R., Godfrey, C. L., Moore, Joe, and Newman, J. S. Soils and Climate of the TexasA&M University Research and Extension Center at Stephenville in Relation to the Cross Timbers Land Resource Area (College Station: Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, 1980). Steely, Skipper. Six Months from Tennessee:A Story of the Many Pioneers of Miller County, Arkansas, Based upon the Life ofClairborne Wright, the Most Dominant ofThose Who Dared to Settle in What Would Become Southeast Oklahoma andNortheast Texas (Wolfe City, Tex.: Hamilton Publishing Company, 1983). Stephens, A. Ray, and William M. Holmes. HistoricalAtlas of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989). Stephens, H. A. Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines in Kansas (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1969). . Woody Plants ofthe North Central Plains (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1973). Taylor, Virginia H. The Franco-Texan Land Company (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969). Tharp, Benjamin Carroll. Structure ofTexas Vegetation East ofthe 98th Meridian. University of Texas Bulletin 2606,1926. . The Vegetation ofTexas (Houston: The Anson Jones Press, for the Texas Academy of Science, 1939). Thorns, Alston V., ed. The Valley Branch Archaeological Project: Excavations at an Archaic Site (41MU55) in the Cross Timbers Uplands, North-Central Texas (College Station: Archaeological Research Laboratory, Texas A&M University, 1994). Thornthwaite, C. W. Atlas of the Climatic Types in the United States, ipoo-ipjp. Soil Conservation Service, Misc. Publ. 421. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1941. Tomer, John S., and Michael J. Brodhead, eds. A Naturalist in Indian Territory: The Journals ofS. W Woodhouse, 1849-50 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). United States Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa District. Cross Timbers Hiking Trail, Lake Texoma (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Dept of Defense, Dept. of the Army, Tulsa District, 1978). United States Department of Agriculture. Yearbook ofAgriculture: Soils and Men (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938). . Yearbook of Agriculture. Climate and Man (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1941).

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The Cast Iron Forest Vehik, Susan C. "The Woodland Occupations," chapter in Robert Bell, ed., Prehistory of Oklahoma (New York: Academic Press, 1984), pp. 175-197. Vickery, James Norton. "Juniper Invasion of Riparian Habitats in the Cross Timbers of Texas." MS Thesis, Tarleton State University, 1991. Vines, R. A. Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines ofthe Southwest (Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press, i960). Vogel, Donald and Margaret. Aunt Clara: The Paintings ofClara McDonald Williamson (Austin: University of Texas Press, published for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1966). Wasowski, Sally, with Andy Wasowski. Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1991). Waterfall, U. T. Keys to the Flora of Oklahoma, 3rd ed. (Stillwater, Oklahoma: published privately, 1966). Watson, Gary W. "Tree Transplanting and Establishment" Arnoldia—The Magazine ofthe Arnold Arboretum 56, no. 4, Winter 1996-1997, pp. 11-16. Weber, David. The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Whorton, Brenda, and S. Alan Skinner. "The Coho and Nancy Jane Smith Homestead: A Unique Rural Archeological Site," Heritage: A Publication of the Texas Historical Foundation 13, no. 1, Winter, 1995, pp. 16-19. Williams, Michael. "The Clearing of the Forests," in Michael Conzen, ed., The Making ofthe American Landscape (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1990), pp. 146168. Wright, Muriel H., and George H. Shirk. "Artist Mollhausen in Oklahoma, 1853" Chronicles of Oklahoma 31, no. 4,1954, pp. 392-441. Wyckoff, Don G. "The Foragers: Eastern Oklahoma," in Robert Bell, ed., Prehistory of Oklahoma (New York: Academic Press, 1984). . "The Cross Timbers: An Ecotone in Historic Perspective," in Patricia L. Kawecki and Don G. Wyckoff, eds., Contributions to Cross Timbers Prehistory, Studies in Oklahoma's Past, No. 12 (Norman: Oklahoma Archeological Survey; and Duncan, Oklahoma: Cross Timbers Heritage Association, 1984). Young, Marcia Roberts. "Small Mammal Distribution along an Interface of the Blackland Prairie and the Eastern Cross Timbers." MA Thesis, The University ofTexas at Arlington, 1972. Zelinsky, Wilbur. "North Americas Vernacular Regions," Annals ofthe Association of American Geographers 70,1980, pp. 1-16. . The Cultural Geography of the United States: A Revised Edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1992).

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INDEX Page numbers in italics reference illustrations. AbertJames W., 81-82 acorns, 39, 40,41,179,197, 210 aerial photography, 183,184, 227, 232 African Americans, 116,117,141,142,154, 225, 229

"Agricultural Map of Texas" (1880), 139,140 agriculture, 125-128,136-141,142-146,148,157, 159,168-169, 229, 233 Albany, TX, 29,131 Albert, Lois E., 31 "All of that Love from Here" (song), 216 Ancient Cross Timbers, 233 Andropogon species, 51 Anglo Americans, early arrival of, 6^-72,120, 126, 225

Anglo-Texan Homeland, 139 apples, 144 Archaic period, 53 Ardmore, OK, 139,179, 232 Arkansas, state of, 23,49,50, 95,116,151, 234, 237 Arkansas River, 16, //, 62, 69,70,78, 81, 87, 90,100, 226 Arkansas Territory, 68, 70 Arlington, TX, 1,3,151,157,169-177,178,183, 185, 215, 226

Arrowsmith, John, 88, 89 art, Cross Timbers depicted in, 214-215 artifacts, Native American, 53-54 Ashe juniper, 43 Aunt Clara, (see Clara McDonald Williamson) Austin, Stephen E, 70-72, 86 Austin, TX, 80, 207 Baird, TX, 152 Baker, Jonathon Hamilton, 127 Bartlett, Richard, 198,199 Bass, Sam, 152 "Bauholz Walder," 113 Beale, Lt. Edward, 113-114 bears, 47, yy, 93

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beef production, 164 Bennett, H. H., 164 Big bluestem, 51,196 Bigelow, Dr. J. M., 100 Biggers, John, 210,211 Big Tree (Kiowa chief), 130 "Billjones Expedition" (story), 211-212 birds, 41,44,181-182 Birds Fort, 12,76 Birdville, TX, 129 bison. See buffalo black flies, 46 "Blackjack Ridges," 87 blackjack oak, 3,13,32,35,36,37,40-^7,42,51, 79, 80, 81, 87,117,128,129,133,155,179, 186-187,196,198, 217, 230, 235 Blackland Prairie, 19, 23, in, 159 Blagg, Tom, 177 blue jays, 40 Bogue, D., 91, 92 Bois D'Arc. See Osage Orange Boll, Jacob, n-12 Bollaert, William, 12, y^, 94-95, 97 boll weevil, 144 Bolton, Eugene Herbert, 63, 64 Bomar, George, 29 Bonham, TX, 106,121 Bosque County, TX, 205 Bowie, TX, 144,158 Boy Scouts of America, 171, 202-203 Brazos Indian Reservation, 118 Brazos River, 7,16,77,55, 61, 67, 68, 83, 85, 100,107,126,127,130,147,155, 226 brickmaking, 157,164 Brown, Brock J., 232 Brown, Ralph, 104 Bruner, W. E., 42, 43 "Brush Battalion," 121 buffalo, 47,51-52,54,193, 202 buffalo grass, 51 bur oak, 81 Butterfield Trail, 119-120 cactus (Opuntia species), 51

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The Cast Iron Forest Caddo Indians, 54, 93,118, 203 Caliz, Francisco, 58 Canadian River, 16,77, 25,59, 69, 90, 95,100, 103,104,107, no, 113,162-163, 226 captivity narratives, 74-75, 82-83 Carboniferous Era vegetation, 14,75 Carrizo Sands, 35 Carter County, OK, 139,188 Cashion, Ty, 117,123-124 cast iron, as metaphor for Cross Timbers, 1, 57>77 cattle, 117 cedar brakes, 155,158 cedar tree, 8,43-44, 84, 230 cemeteries, 210 Central Hardwoods Region, 23 Central Red Bed Plains (Oklahoma), 23 Chateau Trading House, 104 Chautauqua County, KS, 23,32 Cherokee Indians, 95,121 Chicago, Rock Island, and Texas (railroad), 158 Chickasaw Indians, 133,139 chiggers, 46 Chihuahua Trail, 91, 95 Choctaw Indians, 154 Cimarron River, 16, iy Cisco, TX, 208 Civil War, U.S., 120-121,136,150,170, 229 Clark, L. D., 209-210, 211-212,213 Clark, Wayne, 191 Clarksville, TX, 75,112 clay (soils), 21-22,42 clearing. See deforestation Cleaveland, Malcolm K. 29-30 climate, 25-32,165,195, 228 cloud patterns, 30 coal, 12, 68,153-154,157,161 Coalgate, OK, 154 coal mining, 153-154,155,164, 225, 229-230 Coalville,TX,i53 cocolmecates (vines), 58

Cold War, 231 Coles, John R, 28-29,75 Colony of Cross Timbers, Texas, 112 Comanche, TX, 141 Comanche County, TX, 14,55,126,129,142, 196, 205 Comanche Indian Reservation, 118 Comanche Indians, 39,54, 63,70, 81, 93, 99, 120,129-130,139,142

Comanche Trail, 89 Commerce of the Prairies (1844), 79, 95 conservation, 109,160-161,163-165,172-175, 177—178,198-202, 230, 233, 236-237 Cordova, Jacob de, 97-98, 99,104,105 corn (maize), 115,116,125,145,163,164,167, 168,169, 222, 223, 229 cotton, 115,116,136,143-145,150,159,163,164, 165,166,167,168,169,196, 209, 217, 220, 221, 222, 223, 229, 233

cottonwood, 44,155 counties, of Cross Timbers region, 49,50 Creek Indians, 95 Creuzbaur, Robert, 97^98, 99 cross oak (post oak), 38 cross ties (railroad), 154,155,194 Cross Timber (singular usage), 4,72, 86-87 "Cross Timber Justice," 137 Cross Timbers: as landmark, 79; defined, 224; distribution of, 2,3,44,51-52, 84-85, 90, 93-94, /#5,186-187, 231—232, 233, 234, 235, 237; evolution of, 53; naming of, 37, 58,59,72-74, 95; size of region, 4^-50 Cross Timbers, MO, 206-207 Cross Timbers, TX, 215-216 Cross Timbers Folklore, 213

Cross Timbers Heritage Association, 207 Cross Timbers, The: Memories of a North Texas Boyhood, 210, 211, 213 Cross Timbers Review, 208

dairying, 164,167,191 Dale, Edward Everett, 4, 210 Dallas, TX, 3,53,106,112,121,137,147,151,158, 162,166,169,180,184,191, 212, 220, 226, 232

damming of streams, rivers, 231, 232 Dawson, Capt. J. L., 78 Decatur, TX, 132,187, 214 deer hunting, 114-116,197-198 deforestation, 109-110,148-149,177-178,197, 212, 226, 230-231, 232

Delaware Indians, 118 Denison, TX, 120,184 Denton, TX, 152,177,199 Denton County, TX, 152, 214 Development (commercial), effect on Cross Timbers, 170-182,184,186, 226 devil, the, 59 Dewey County, OK, 40,196

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Index Diary ofa Journeyfrom the Mississippi to the Coasts ofthe Pacific with a Government Expedition (1858), 101-103 distribution. See Cross Timbers, distribution of Diversified farming, 164-165,168-169 Dodge, Col. Henry, 78,79 Double Oak, TX, 215 Dove Tree, The, 208-209 drought, 29-30,39,169,189, 224, 225, 226, 234 Duck, L. G., 196-198 Dumble, Edwin Theodore, 159-160 Dyer, John H., 75-76, 83 Dyksterhuis, E. J., 19, 22,33, 47> 63-64, 6667,73,185,186,187 Eastern Cross Timbers, 12,18,19,37,47, 60, 95,106, in, 126,129,140,148,151,164,169, 177,179-180,186,199, 213-214. See also Lower Cross Timbers eastern hardwood forest(s), 42, 233 eastern red cedar, 43 Eastern Sandstone Cuesta Plains (Oklahoma), 23 Eastland County, TX, 205 ecotourism, 236 edge effect, 2-3,56,126 El Largo (forest), 65 Elliot, Charles, 12 Ellsworth, Henry L., 76-77 elm, 43, 82, 87,155, 212 El Nino, 30 Emory, William, 93-94, 97 English, possible early encounter with Cross Timbers, 57^-58 Ensign, E. H., 95 environmental degradation, 161 Erath, George Bernard, 160 Erath County, TX, 155, 205 erosion, soil, 160,163,164,165,186,187, 230, 232, 233 European Americans, 63 expansion of Cross Timbers, 186,187 fall colors, 34,44,78, 207^208 family farms, 166,168 Fannin County, TX, in farm abandonment, 162,164,165, 210, 230 farming. See agriculture farmland, acreage in, 222

farm production, by crop type, 222 farms, number of, 222, 230 fences, 128,186 fire, 51,52, yy, 85,121,145,147,187^-189,190, 195—196, 201, 224-225, 234; elimination or suppression of, 43,147,187-189,191,195196, 224-225, 230, 231, 234 fireflies, 46 firewood, 194-195 fishing, 53 Five Civilized Tribes, 143 Fletcher, J.B., 196-198 Flower Mound, TX, 215 folklore, 151,159,162-163,165, 213, 237 Ford, John S., 99-100 Foreman, Carolyn, 4,73,158-159 forestation, 230, 234. See also reforestation Fort Arbuckle, Indian Territory, 102,120 Fort Belknap, 118,126,147 Fort Dodge, KS, 122 Fort Graham, 127 Fort Griffin, 118,147 Fort Richardson, 118 forts, 100,118 Fort Sill, 122-123 Fort Smith, 104 Fort Washita, 120, 230 Fort Wichita, 120 Fort Worth, TX, 1,3,32, 97,104,118,126,141, 148,151-152,158,162,166,169,184,191,193, 212, 215, 220, 223, 226, 232

Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, 156 Fort Worth Nature Center, 189-191,199,200 Fountain Site (archaeological), 54 Fragoso, Francisco Xavier, 65-67 Franco-Texan Land Company, 137, IJ8, 139 freezing rain, 25,32 French, presence in Cross Timbers, 56,59, 63-64, 67, 228 Frenzeny, Paul, 114,115 fringe, of Western Cross Timbers, 47 fruit growing, 144,165 fuel (wood as), 109, no, 153-154, 209 Fuller Millsap home, 131 Gainesville, TX, 119,121 Galloway, H. M., 50 Garden City, KS, 206 Garrett, Julia Kathryn, 85 Gehlbach, Frederick R., 182 271

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The Cast Iron Forest geology of the Cross Timbers, 7, 9-10,11-19, 68-69,159~I^o, 224, 228 Goetzmann, William H., 70 Gold Rush (California), 100,103,106 Goodnight, Charles, 147 Grand Forest, 63 Grand Prairie (region of Texas), 12,18, 63, 97, 126,159 grasses, 51,187,197, 231 Graves, John, 130-131 Gray, Fenton, 50 Grayson County, TX, 180, 214 grazing, 187-188,195,197, 230, 231, 234 Great American Desert, 234 Great Plains, 16, 25,59, 60, 88, 93,106,162 Greene, A. C , 119-120 Gregg, Josiah, 79-81, 95 Greiner, Alyson L., 210 groundwater, 224 Grubbs, Kenneth, 114 Guillet, Peter, 109-110 Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe railroad, 150, 158,162 Gulf of Mexico, 16, 28,51,57,58, 61,75 Guthrie, Woody, 162-163, 216-217 habitat variety, 182 hackberry, 43,155 Hagerman Wildlife Refuge, 180 hail storms, 28,32 Hanson, Jeff, 54 Harrison, Thieron Pike, 44,47,50 Healdton, OK, 161

Hunter, John D., 74-75, 83 hunting, 53,114-116,196-198 Hurst, TX, 215 Hurt, Douglas A., 143,163 Ikard,W.S.,i2 9 images, of the Cross Timbers, 214-215,216 Indian grass, 51 Indian reservations, 118-119 Indians. See Native Americans; also see particular tribes Indian Territory, 8,13, 22, 28,48,49,79, 82, 95,112,113,114,116,119-124,126,133-134, 142-143,150-151 industry, 153-157,165,167 iron, 12 Irving, Washington, 1-3,5,57,72—73, yy, 81 Isaac Parker home, 130 Is This Naomi? And Other Stories: A Cycle of Rural Life, 211-212 Italian Americans, 225 Jacksboro, TX, 129-130,141,147 Jackson, J. B., 236 James, Edwin, 69 "jigger district," 46 Johnson, Elmer, 147 Johnson, Lt. Col. J. E., 97, 98 Johnson, William Whipple, 155 Johnson County, TX, 215 Jordan, Terry, 37,117,125,129,131,139,141, 203-204 Judd, Wynonna, 216

Hehr, John G., 39 heritage tourism, 236 hickory, 23, 42-43, 44, 82, 87 Hill, Robert T , 10-11,13,16,18,19, 22,167, i95> 223 Hoagland, Bruce W., 194 Hofsommer, Donald L., 150 hogs, 117,139, 210 Holley, Mary Austin, 219 holly, 87 Hood County, TX, 205 horses, 83,117,145,191, 228 Houston, Sam, 82 Houston, TX, 112, 207 Howe, Henry, 106 Huey, Phil, 186 Humboldt, Alexander Von, 91

Kansas, 1, 2, 23, 25, 27,33,34,37,38,47,74,121, 140,143,145,150-151,168,169,194, 225, 227, 229, 234 Kansas, Oklahoma, and Gulf railroad, 150 Keller, TX, 212-213 Kellogg, Miner K., 8-9,13,30,46,125,129-130 Kendall, George Wilkins, 90-91, 92, 93 Kennedy, William, 7, 86-88,109, no, 125, 213 Keystone Lake, OK, 39, 201-202, 232 Kiamichi River, 68 Kiowa County, OK, 40 Kiowa Indians, 120,122,130,139 Kuchler, A. W., 2,5,37,47-48,50 Lake Mineral Wells State Park, 198-199, 201 Lake Texoma, 214

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Index Lamar, Mirabeau, 75, 85 landmarks, 159, 228 Lanham, Edwin, 208-209 "Latest Map of the State of Texas" (1874), 132 Latrobe, Charles Joseph, yy Ledbetter Picket house, IJI lichen, 46 Lightfoot, Billy, 55 Lincecum, Gideon, 10, 28 Lincoln County, OK, 134,143,163,193, 230 literature, Cross Timbers in, 208-214, 227 little bluestem, 51 live oak, 43, 65, 83,179 livestock, 163,169 //anos, 70

logging, 194-195 log housing, 128-136,145, 210 Long, Maj. Stephen Harrison, 69, no Loomis, Noel M., 64-67 Louisiana Purchase, 68, 69 Louisiana Territory, 68 Love County, OK, 188 Lower Cross Timbers, n, 19, 97,705,107,119, 147, 210, 234. See also Eastern Cross Timbers lumber (production and use of), 100,130-131, 136,141,154,155,194-195 Lyndon Baines Johnson (L.B.J.) National Grassland, 201 magisterial gaze, 78 main belt, of Western Cross Timbers, 47 Major County, OK, 196 Mallet brothers (Pierre and Paul), 59 management, 188,197^-198 "Map of New Spain" (1810), 68 mapping, of the Cross Timbers, 5, 8, 9,56, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66-67,7°> 88-89, II 3- II 4) 124-125,126,132-133,139-140,159,183-184, 214-215, 227, 229

Marcy, Larry Eugene, 47,180 Marcy, Capt. Randolph B., 100-101,103-104, 105,118, 212

Marriott, Alice, 47,55, 231 Mauzey, Merritt, 145,146 May, Charles Oliver, 5,51-52,57,58 McCluskey, Richard, 32-33 McCulloch, Gen. Henry, 120 McKinney, TX, 106 McLeod, General Hugh, 83, 85

Meinig, D. W., 147 melons, 164,165,167 mesquite, 198,199, 230, 234 metaphor, Cross Timbers as, 213 Mexican authorities, 71-72, 91 Mexican Texas, 70-74 Mezieres, Athanase De, 62-64 Mineral Wells, TX, 43,157-158,167,168, 214, 231-232 Missouri, 23,116, 206-207 Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) Railroad, 150-151,154,162

mistletoe, 43 Mollhausen, Heinrich Balduin, 101-103 Montague County, TX, 120, 225 Monte del Diablo, 59 Monte Grande (Spanish term for Cross Timbers), 58-60, 61-65, 66, 67,70-72, 86, 224 Morris, John Miller, 91 Morse, Sidney E., 106 mountain cedar, 43 mountain lions, 47 mulberry, 82 mules, 116,145,146 Muller, Cornelius H., 42 mythology, 38,59, 80 naming of businesses, etc., for Cross Timbers, 227 naming of Cross Timbers region, 58,59, 7274,113, 224, 234, 236 Nasatir, Abraham, 65-67 Native Americans, 22,51,57,58, 63, 64,74-76, 80, 81, 82, 88-89, IO3> II2 > 118-119,121-125, 136,143,150,151,170, 202-203, 212, 225,

228, 229, 235. See also individual Indian tribes natural gas, 161 natural history, defined, 4 "New and Correct Map of Texas" (1845), 8 Noble, Lloyd, 164,188 Noble Foundation, 164,188-189,191 Nolan, Philip, 67-68 northers, 25-26 North Fork Town, Indian Territory, 120 Northwest Texas Cattle Raisers' Association, 117 nostalgia, 212 Nueces River, 75 Nuttall, Thomas, 68-69,7 2 273

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The Cast Iron Forest oak-hickory-bluestem, belts of, 37 oak-hickory forest, 23,37,38,42,47, 232 oak-hickory savanna, 188 oak-savanna, 2,133,170,187,195, 229 oak trees, 3, 8,10,19,30, 87,134 oats, 116 oil, 161,165, 230 Oklahoma, 1, 2, 8,18, 21-22, 23, 25, 28,32,33, 35,37, 38,44,45,54,134-136,142-143, *45, 150-151,161,162-163,168,169,179,187, 188-189,191,195,196-198, 201-202, 203, 206, 210, 213, 216, 220, 225, 226, 229-230, 232, 234, 236-237. See also Indian Territory Oklahoma City, OK, 162,166,184,191,193, 220, 226, 232

"Oklahoma Hills" (song), 216-217 Oklahoma Save the Soil Clinic, 164 Ormsby, Waterman Lilly, Jr., 119 Osage County, OK, 201-202 Osage Orange, 43,53 Osage savanna, 23,31 Ouachita Mountains, 14 oxen, 145 Ozark Mountains, 14, 61

Pleistocene period, 52 Plummer, Rachael, 82-83 popular culture, 215-217 population (human) of Cross Timbers, 5455,136,140,162,165,169-170, 220,227, 225, 230, 232

Possum Kingdom Dam and Lake, 168, 232 post oak, 3,7,10,13,20-2/, 32,35, j6y 37,38, j p , 40,42,48—49, 68, 69,75, 83,117,128, 129,133,154-I55, i7°> 777> : 7 2 , i74, J7Sy J76> 177,179,181,183,186-187,188,198,230,233, 234,235 post oak belt, 35,37, 63, 66,117 potatoes, 144,145 Pourtales, Count de, 78 prairie(s), 1-2,3,7,18, 23, 24,46-47,48-49, 51-52, 60, 63, 69,70, 87, 90, 92,120,125, 148,158,193,194, 201, 214, 215, 224, 228229

precipitation, 29-32 Pressler, Charles William, 128 "Pretty Boy Floyd" (song), 162 prickly pear cactus, 51,164 quail, 40,197 Quercus marilandica. See blackjack oak

Palo Pinto, TX, 39 Palo Pinto County, TX, 126,127,129,147,153, 205

Palo Pinto Mountains, TX, 153 Panhandle, of Texas, 234 Panicum virgatum, 51 panthers. See mountain lions Parker, W.B., 28,107 Parker County, TX, 120,167,193 pastureland, 226, 229, 232. See also grazing Pawhuska, OK, JI, 32 Pawnee Indians, 55,78-79 peaches, 144,164,167,168-169 peanuts, 163,164,169,196, 223 pecan trees, 13,44,55,155 Penfound, W. T , 195-196 perceptions, of the Cross Timbers, 106, 226, 234, 235, 236-237 perceptual region(s), 202-207, 226, 227 persimmon, 45 Peters Colony, no, 125 picket houses, IJI, 735,136 Pike, Zebulon, 68, 91 plateau live oak, 43

Quercus stellata. See post oak rabbits, 47 raccoon, 40,47 railroads, 128,137,139,143,149-156,157-158, 159, 209, 226, 229 rainfall, 25, 26, 29-30,31-32

Raisz, Erwin, 37 Rambler in North America, The (1835), yy Ramon, Capitan don Domingo, 58 ranching, 147,166,191,792 rattlesnakes, 99-100 Ray, Worth R., 145,165,167,168,169,170,193 "Reconnaissances of Routes from San Antonio De Bexar El Paso Del Norte" (map), 98 Reconstruction (following Civil War), 122, 136 Red Fork, 78, 95 red oak, 155,179 Red River, 13,16,77, 22, 23, 25,32,37,55,5859, 63-64, 66, 67, 68, 69,70,72,73,76, 82, 84, 87,112,113,133,154, 213, 214, 236-237 reforestation, 230, 231, 234

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Index religious identity with Cross Timbers, 205206 Report on the Exploration of the Red River, 47 Report on the Geology of Northwestern Texas, 155-156 Republic of Texas, 82, 85-86, 88,113 Rice, E. L., 195-196 Richardson, Rupert, 127,128-129 Rio Grande (river), 82 riparian vegetation, 44, 232 Roach, Joyce Gibson, 212-213 roads, 126,137,158,161-162, 210, 226 Robertson, Sterling Clack, 70, 85, 86 Robertson Colony, 85, 86, 89,160 Rock Mary, 102,103 rock shelters, 54 Roemer, Ferdinand, 8, 9,10,11 "runner oak." See sand post oak Saint Louis-San Francisco (Frisco) Railroad, 150,158 San Antonio, TX, 115,116,178 San Bernardo, 63 "sand post oak," 42,43 sandstone, 16,18,20-21,42, 68, 69,100,114, 129,130,199, 210, 224

sandstone tools, 53 Santa Fe, NM, 59,79,120 Santana (Kiowa chief), 122,123,130 San Teodoro, 63 San Theodoro, 63 Sargent, Charles S., 40,148,149 sassafras, 45 savanna(h), 68,119 sawmills, 141,155,194 scenery, as picturesque, 107 Schilz, Thomas Frank, 55 Schulman, Edmund, 39 scrub oak, 76,119 seasons, 25-35, 2O 9 Second World War, 167,169, 220, 230 settlers, in the Cross Timbers, 110-114,125— 128, 235 shape, of Cross Timbers region. See Cross Timbers, distribution of Sharp, Benjamin C , 195 Sherman, TX, 106 Sherman, Gen. William Tecumseh, 122-123 side oats grama (grass), 51

silver bluestem, 51 Simonds, Frederic W., 159 Sims, Col. Samuel, 83-84 size of Cross Timbers region, 47-50, 235 smilax vines, 43,45 snowfall, 32 Soil Conservation Service, 198 soils of the Cross Timbers region, 18,19-22, 40,75, 87,100,119,145,163-164,165,169, i95> 197' 2 3° Solana, TX, 177 Solis, Jose de, 59 songs, 162, 216-217 sorghum, 196, 223 Southlake, TX, 215, 227 South Western Immigration Company, 139 Spanish, presence of in region, 54,56,170, 228

Spanish exploration of Cross Timbers, 57 Spanish Fort (Taovaya village), 63, 64 Sperry, Neil, 181 Spivey, Towana, 207 squirrels, 40,179 Stahle, David W., 29-30,39,40,50, 233 Starks, Jane, 215 steamboats, no, in Stephenville, TX, 203,204, 205, 232 Stout, William B., 76 stratigraphy (geological), 10-11,17^18,19, 24 subsistence farming, 116-118,143, 229 suburbanization, 230-231 Sulphur, OK, 157 sumac, 12,43 surveying, 127^-128 Taovaya tribe, 64 Taovaya villages, 63, 64 Tarrant County, TX, 126,148 Tavernier, Jules, 114-115 Taylor, Warren, 223 temperature, 25-26, 29-30,31-32 Texan Appalachia, 117-118 Texan Santa Fe Expedition, 90-91 Texas, 1, 2,3,7-14,16-23, 28, 29,37,38,48,49, 87,106,110-113,114-116,134,142-143,145148,161,168,169,186-187, 2°6> 22O> 225> 229-230, 234, 236-237 Texas and Pacific Railway, 10-n, 17,137,151152,154,155,157,162,167-168,170, 209, 223 Texas Central (railroad), 156

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The Cast Iron Forest Texas, Her Resources and Capabilities (1881), 139vines, 12,44,45,46,58, 80, 91,114,188,189, Texas in 1840, or the Emigrants Guide to the 210, 211, 224 violence in Cross Timbers, 123-124,141-142 New Republic, 84 Virginia Creeper, 45 Texas Road, the, 126 Texas State Land Office, 125 Waco, TX, 7,32,142, 226 Thurber, TX, 154,168 Waco village(s), 72, 89 Thurman, Nita, 177, 208 wagon repair, in Cross Timbers, 104 ticks, 46 "Timbered Red Loam Region" (Oklahoma), Washita River, 16, iy water resources, 160,182, 224 140 weather, 25-32 tobacco, 115 Weatherford, TX, 132,152,167 Tobolowsky, George, 199 Weniger, Del, 59, 62 Tonkawa Indians, 55 Western Cross Timbers, 12,19,37,47, 60, 95, "Topographisch-geognostische Karte von 117,119,126-127,130,141,153,156,162,164, Texas" (1849), 8,