Mineola is a city in Wood County, Texas, United States. It lies at the junction of U.S. highways 69 and 80, eighty miles east of Dallas in southwestern Wood County. The population was 4,515 at the 2010 census.
Elgin is a city in Bastrop and Travis Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. The population was 8,135 at the 2010 census. The city is a suburb of Austin, and is part of the Greater Austin metropolitan area. Elgin is also known as the Sausage Capital of Texas and the Brick Capital of the Southwest, due to the presence of three operating brickyards in the mid-20th century.
The American frontier comprises the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in 1912. A "frontier" is a zone of contact at the edge of a line of settlement. The leading theorist Frederick Jackson Turner went deeper, arguing that the frontier was the defining process of American civilization: "The frontier," he asserted, "promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people." He theorized it was a process of development: "This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward...furnish[es] the forces dominating American character." Turner's ideas since 1893 have inspired generations of historians to explore multiple individual American frontiers, but the popular folk frontier concentrates on the conquest and settlement of Native American lands west of the Mississippi River, in what is now the Midwest, Texas, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, and the West Coast.
The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east. The Handbook of Texas defines the southern border of Swisher County as the southern boundary of the Texas Panhandle region.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. Chartered in February 1859, the railroad reached the Kansas-Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farm land from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress. Despite the name, its main line never served Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the terrain was too difficult; the town ultimately was reached by a branch line from Lamy.
Arvid Adolf Etholén, or Adolf Karlovich Etolin was a naval officer, explorer and administrator in the Russian Empire who was employed by the Russian-American Company. He was a Swedish-speaking Finn who was born in Helsinki, Finland. Etholén first reached Sitka in Russian America in the service of the Russian-American Company in 1818, rising to Chief Manager of the Company 1840-1845.
The Missouri Pacific Railroad, commonly abbreviated as MoPac and nicknamed The Mop, was one of the first railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi River. MoPac was a Class I railroad growing from dozens of predecessors and mergers, including the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway (SLIMS), Texas and Pacific Railway (TP), Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad (C&EI), St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway (SLBM), Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf Railway (KO&G), Midland Valley Railroad (MV), San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad (SAU&G), Gulf Coast Lines (GC), International-Great Northern Railroad (IGN), New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railway (NOTM), Missouri-Illinois Railroad (MI), as well as the small Central Branch Railway, and joint ventures such as the Alton and Southern Railroad (AS).
Big Thicket is the name of a heavily forested area in Southeast Texas, United States. Several attempts to provide boundaries have been made ranging from only a 10 to 15 mile section of Hardin County to an area encompassing over 29 counties and over 3,350,000 acres. Scientific studies have been performed also, but with varying results. In "... 1936, ... Hal B. Parks and Victor L. Cory of the Texas Agriculture Experiment station conducted a biological survey of the Big Thicket region". Their study, based on geology, resulted in over 3,350,000 acres of Southeast Texas and covering 14 counties from Houston in the west to Orange in the east and Huntsville to Wiergate on the north. Claude McLeod, a botany professor at Sam Houston State University, performed a botanical based study, resulting in a region of over 2,000,000 acres. While no exact boundaries exist, the area occupies much of Hardin, Liberty, Tyler, San Jacinto, and Polk Counties and is roughly bounded by the San Jacinto River, Neches River, and Pine Island Bayou. To the north, it blends into the larger Piney Woods terrestrial ecoregion of which it is a part. It has historically been the most dense forest region in what is now Texas, though logging in the 19th and 20th centuries dramatically reduced the forest concentration.
The International – Great Northern Railroad (I&GN) was a railroad that operated in the U.S. state of Texas. It was created on September 30, 1873, when International Railroad and the Houston and Great Northern Railroad merged. The railroad was officially incorporated as the International & Great Northern Railroad Company.
The Railroad Commission of Texas is the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, gas utilities, pipeline safety, safety in the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industry, and surface coal and uranium mining. Despite its name, it ceased regulating railroads in 2005.
The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railway, also called the Harrisburg Road or Harrisburg Railroad, was the first operating railroad in Texas. It completed its first segment of track between Harrisburg, Texas and Stafford's Point, Texas in 1853. The company established a western terminus at Alleyton, Texas prior to the Civil War. The railroad was sold after the war and reincorporated as the Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio Railroad. This right of way was acquired by the Southern Pacific Railroad and is today a property of the Union Pacific Railroad.
The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in eastern Texas and to Purcell, Oklahoma.
Glidden is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Colorado County, Texas, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 661. It lies just north of Interstate 10 and 3 miles (5 km) to the west of Columbus.
Lebanon was the name of two different communities that were founded in Texas in the 19th Century, neither of which exists today. The first was a town located in Collin County that had a post office designated as Lebanon, Texas, before it was relocated to Frisco, Texas. The second was a smaller unincorporated community located in Live Oak County of which only a cemetery remains today.
Denver Harbor is a historic community located in eastern Houston, Texas, United States near the Houston Ship Channel. The community, bounded by Wallisville Road, the Union Pacific Railroad, and the Port Terminal Railroad Association, was first settled in the 1890s and platted in 1911 and 1913. The community includes many historic bungalow and cottage homes.
The El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was a short-line American railway company which operated in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with line extensions across the international border into Mexico. The railroad was known as the Arizona and South Eastern Railroad from 1888 to 1902.
Chartered on June 6, 1903, the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway was a 200-mile (321 km) U.S. railroad that operated from Brownsville, Texas, to Gulf Coast Junction in Houston, Texas. It served numerous towns and cities along its routes and operated a rail bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in junction with the Mexican government. The Brownie connected the citizens of Brownsville to nearby Corpus Christi for the first time on land rather than using water transportation.
The Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad Company was a railroad in operation in North Texas from 1921 to 1954. It was incorporated in 1920 by several investors, most prominently Frank Kell and his brother-in-law, Joseph A. Kemp, both of Wichita Falls, Texas.
Cattle towns were midwestern frontier settlements that catered to the cattle industry. The economies of these communities were heavily dependent on the seasonal cattle drives from Texas, which brought the cowboys and the cattle that these towns relied upon. Cattle towns were found at the junctions of railroads and livestock trails. These towns were the destination of the cattle drives, the place where the cattle would be bought and shipped off to urban meatpackers, midwestern cattle feeders, or to ranchers on the central or northern plains. Cattle towns were made famous by popular accounts of rowdy cowboys and outlaws who were kept under control by local lawmen, but those depictions were mostly exaggeration and myth.
Waters Park, Texas was a village located eight miles north of downtown Austin, Texas defined by the boundaries of Farm Road 1325, MoPac, and the Southern Pacific Railroad. It is now part of the City of Austin.
