25 minute read
Jacksboro Highway
Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway
by Billy Huckaby
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Fort Worth earned a reputation as one of the rough and tumble towns in the Old West, and most of the mayhem took place in a part of Fort Worth known as “Hell’s Half Acre.” Located in the general location of today’s Fort Worth Convention Center, “Hell’s Half Acre” had a reputation for alcohol, gambling, and about any other vice a trail-weary cowboy was seeking. Unfortunately, it was also the location of its share of violence, including the famous gunfight between Luke Short and Jim Courtright. Courtright lost.
Although “Hell’s Half Acre” gave way to progress in the late 1800s, another part of Fort Worth soon earned a rough and tumble reputation offering all of the vices of “Hell’s Half Acre” and violence on a larger and more organized scale. The Jacksboro Highway became one of the most famous stretches of asphalt that rivaled the Vegas Strip or Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
(left) Infamous casino mogel and mobster “Cowboy” Benny Binion in 1975 | Wikimedia Commons
(right) Ann Arnold’s book, Gamblers & Gangsters: Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway in the 1940s and 1950s.
(top right) The Casino Ballroom at over 31,000 square feet was the centerpiece of Casino Park.
(bottom right) The Showboat, a major nightclub built in 1937 as a replica showboat along Lake Worth. | Photo courtesy Tarrant County
FORT WORTH
Stretching from near downtown to Lake Worth, the roughly six miles of Highway 199 made its reputation following World War II and stretched into the early-1950s. The road was lined with popular hangouts such as the Four Dueces, the Casino Ballroom, and the Silver Dollar Tavern. They ran the gamut from simple bars to fullblown casinos and showrooms. There was even a floating club called The Showboat moored on Lake Worth.
While the area was created for fun and recreation, it also attracted the violence that permeated Hell’s Half Acre. Ann Arnold chronicled the infamous days of the Jacksboro Highway in her book, Gamblers & Gangsters: Fort Worth’s Jacksboro Highway in the 1940s and 1950s. Her book documents the murders and mayhem where the methods of killing included guns, knives and bombs.
Most of the violence stemmed from the battle to control the area, with Benny Binion pitted against Herbert “The Cat” Noble. The duo had a long-running battle that stretched from Dallas to Fort Worth as each man wanted to control the illicit activities of the time that included loan sharking, gambling and prostitution.
Noble earned his nickname “The Cat” because he survived roughly a dozen attempts on his life, most attributed to Binion. Noble’s cat-like luck ran out in August of 1951 with an exploding mailbox that ended his life while Binion went on to gambling fame in Las Vegas with his Horseshoe Casino.
Like Las Vegas, Jacksboro Highway had a reputation as the place to enjoy some of the biggest names in showroom entertainment, including big band leaders Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. The area also attracted some of the biggest stars of the day, including Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope.
While gambling was against the law in Texas, it flourished on Jacksboro Highway until 1951, when local law enforcement cracked down and indicted more than thirty men for the illegal activity. With the pressure from the law and bad publicity, Jacksboro Highway went into decline, and the bars and showrooms gradually faded away. In the end, there were at least seventeen gangsters with ties to the area that were murdered, and that also added to the demise.
Today the area has given way to used car lots and fast-food establishments, but there are remnants of Jacksboro Highway’s earlier era that can still be seen including the Avalon Motor Court and the building that housed the Rocket Club.
“Prolific”
cannot begin to describe Mike Cox, the celebrated Texas author of more than 30 non-fiction books and hundreds of magazine articles, newspaper columns and essays. Now at age 72, the Amarillo native continues to tackle massive writing projects and, in so doing, uphold family traditions.
y grandfather was a longtime newspaperman and spent more than 60 years as a freelance writer,” Cox says. “His daughter also worked for a time as a reporter. In fact, she met my future dad, who was a reporter in Amarillo, while covering a sensational murder trial – as competitors – in Sweetwater. I tell people I’m the product of two of man’s more singular acts, one of them being murder.”
His granddad and parents eventually moved on from daily journalism, but all of them continued for the rest of their lives as freelance writers. By the time he was 10, Cox knew he wanted to join the “family business.” He started writing in high school and sold his first magazine article to The Cattleman in 1964 for a whopping $35. His first newspaper job was writing a high school news column at $5 apiece for the Austin American-Statesman in 1965.
Cox worked as a full-time reporter at the San Angelo Standard-Times while majoring in journalism at Angelo State University, “a fact reflected in my GPA.” In the fall of 1969, having moved northward to the larger Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock for a bigger paycheck, he transferred to Texas Tech University. “The following spring, I helped cover the aftermath of the devastating Lubbock tornado, which killed 26,” he recalls. “At the end of my junior year, missing water, trees and 35-cent longnecks, I moved back to Austin to go to work for the AmericanStatesman.” He dropped out of the University of Texas his senior year in favor of a day job on the newspaper, but in his early 40s, he went back to college at Texas State University in San Marcos.
“I had 130 hours or so of credits but never graduated,” he says. “Now I laughingly tell folks I’m holding out for an honorary doctorate. I regret I didn’t get that piece of paper, but someone whose judgment I respect once told me that each of quite a few of my books would amount to a doctoral dissertation given the amount of research that went into them.”
Of the many books he’s authored, Cox won’t say which one is his favorite because it’s like asking a parent which one of their children they like best. Yet he’s quite proud of his two-volume, 250,000-word history of The Texas Rangers, which was published in 2008-2009 and continues to sell well.
“In my history of the Rangers, with apologies to Clint Eastwood, I tried to tell the good, the bad and the ugly,” Cox says. “At times, the 19th- and early-20th-century Rangers got out of line, but I think they did more good for Texas than bad. Lately, it’s been popular to villainize them, but I think the truth – as with most things – is somewhere in middle. I favor truth in history, but not taking down monuments. Monuments enable future generations to be able to talk about the heroes and the bad guys. It’s important to know both.”
Another of Cox’s favorite books is Train Crash at Crush: America’s Deadliest Publicity Stunt. “It’s the story of the so-called Crash at Crush, in which the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad deliberately crashed two obsolete steam locomotives head-to-head,” he explains. “The idea was to make money from the sale of excursion tickets to a special venue the railroad built near the small town of West north of Waco. Some 40,000 to 50,000 people descended on the hastily constructed depot named for William G. Crush, the railroad official who spearheaded the event, making it the largest ‘city’ in Texas for the day.
“The crash took place on Sept. 15,
For better or worse, I helped make Lucas famous.
1896, and would have been – pun intended – a smashing success except for the fact the locomotive boilers exploded, sending hot shrapnel flying into the crowd, but amazingly, only two people died as a direct result of the collision. My book about the crash is under option for a possible movie, but we’ll see.”
One of Cox’s best-sellers is a true crime book, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas, the notorious serial killer.
“For better or worse, I helped make Lucas infamous,” Cox says. “In the summer of 1983, I got a tip from an Austin homicide cop that a possible serial killer was in jail in Montague County, so I flew to North Texas the same day to look into it. I happened to be in the courtroom when Lucas first blurted out that he had killed 100 women. The next day my story – rewritten by the Associated Press – attracted national and international interest. Later, when Lucas was in the Williamson County Jail in Georgetown, the sheriff let me interview him in his cell. For a while, I had a standing Tuesday night ‘date’ with Lucas.”
Cox ultimately got a call from an editor in New York asking if he’d like to do a book about Lucas. A revised 30th anniversary edition of that book, renamed The Confessions of a Killer, was published in the spring of 2021.
Cox jokingly says that he writes “just about anything someone will pay me for.” Actually, he’s written everything from biography to folklore to history to a book on commercial diving. “The only thing I haven’t done is fiction,” he notes, “and at this point in my career, though I always thought I’d eventually write a novel, I doubt that I’ll ever get around to it. But who knows? Maybe someday.”
His “problem” is having more ideas than he can handle. He grew up hearing good stories from his grandfather and parents, and he’s been seeking good stories ever since. When he decides to pursue a particular topic, he’s inclined “to over-research my books” because he loves “the thrill of the hunt when collecting material for a magazine article or book,” a habit he developed in his newspaper days. When it’s time to write, he strives for a conversational, interesting style, with a little humor thrown in when it’s appropriate.
Writing has been the central theme of Cox’s career, but there have been other fascinating chapters along the way. After almost 20 years as a newspaperman, he became spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety in 1985.
“During that time, I was the guy you saw on TV, heard on the radio or quoted in the newspaper any time something terrible or weird happened in Texas, which was quite often,” he says. “One of my worst expe-
riences was handling the 1991 mass murder at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen. Not long after the shooting stopped, I was walking among the bodies of the victims trying to get information to provide to the media.
“But that was nothing compared to the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff in McLennan County near Waco. There were some 500 journalists from around the world, and the pressure was intense. I wanted to tell the public as much about it as I could, but the Feds wanted me to say as little as possible. I was involved significantly after the fire when the Texas Rangers were trying to get to the bottom of what happened.”
He later served as communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation before retiring in 2007. Retiring from retirement in 2010, he went back to work as spokesperson for Texas Parks and Wildlife. He left the 8-to-5 world for good in February 2015 to write full time from his home in Wimberley.
Cox firmly believes “the writing life is a great life,” and in his case, the rewards – and awards – have been significant. In 1993, he was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters, an honor society founded in 1936 to celebrate the state’s most-respected writers. He was awed to be inducted the same year as journalist Bill Moyers and novelist James Michener.
In 2010, Cox received the A. C. Greene Award, presented annually by the Abilene Public Library to a distinguished Texas author for lifetime achievement. The honor was all the more special since Cox knew Greene, an author, columnist and Abilene native. Cox also earned a Will Rogers medallion in 2014 for his book about Dean Smith – Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen.
For the benefit of up-and-coming writers, Cox has donated his writing-related papers including correspondence and research material to the Southwest Writers Collection at Texas State University and to several other Texas universities.
“What I am most proud of is that the fast-growing San Marcos Public Library agreed several years ago to accept my Texana collection, some 6,000-plus Texas books,” he says. “The collection’s named after me and gives the San Marcos library a college- or small university-level resource.
I wanted to tell the public as much about it as I could, but the Feds wanted me to say little as possible.
Just a few of the words used to describe Mike Cox: newspaperman, spokesperson, historian, award-winning and best-selling Texas writer.
As a longtime book collector, I was very relieved to know that the collection I worked so long to build would not be broken up in an estate sale someday.”
As for other book topics he’d like to pursue, Cox claims to be afraid of running out of time before running out of ideas. He’s working on an ambitious series of five books called Finding the Wild West. They’re travel guides to all 23 states west of the Mississippi, broken down by region. He got the idea from his best-selling Gunfights and Sites in Texas Ranger History, published in 2015.
He’s also under contract for Wicked San Antonio, which spotlights little-known scandals and crimes in the history of the Alamo City, including the West’s last train robbery – the 1970 holdup of the miniature Brackenridge Eagle in Brackenridge Park. In addition, he’s working on a memoir about his family’s three-generation newspaper story, Blood and Ink.
Cox just finished a how-to book called Seven Million Words: Writing and Selling Nonfiction. The title comes from the number of words he estimates he’s put down on paper or up on a computer screen over the years. “Writing has afforded me many experiences most people never have,” he says, “and hopefully, as I get older, writing will continue to keep my mind as sharp as possible. In a nutshell, my advice to anyone wanting to become a writer is simple as 1, 2 with no 3. Read a lot, and then start writing. You learn to be a writer by keeping at it, day after day, whether you feel like it or not.”
By keeping at it, super-prolific, award-winning author Cox might have to change his “nickname” of “Seven-MillionWord Man” to an even loftier number. His avid readers certainly hope so.
30 AUTHENTIC TEXAS
by Tom Waddill
In existence since 1989, the nonprofit Texas Prison Museum features numerous exhibits to include Old Sparky,” the state’s retired electric chair (upper left), artifacts related to Bonnie and Clyde (upper middle); and the Carrasco siege (bottom right). Travelers along Interstate 45 at Huntsville are greeted by a massive statue of Sam Houston (upper left). yes wide open, Steve Schwartz takes a long look at “Old Sparky” and reads about “riding the thunderbolt.” “This is crazy,” Schwartz said with excitement. “That’s the electric chair the state of Texas used for more than 300 executions.”
That’s right. “Old Sparky,” which earned its nickname from inmates nearly 100 years ago, sits in a prominent place in the newly renovated Texas Prison Museum. The chair which electrocuted 361 men from 1924 to 1964 has a new home in Huntsville where visitors from all over the world can see it, learn the history of the death penalty in Texas and find out what has actually happened inside Lone Star State prisons.
That’s the number one goal for the folks in charge of the Texas Prison Museum. They want people to hear true stories — facts, not fiction — about life (and death) inside Texas prisons.
“We want to make sure people know our history, and a lot of our history is not pretty,” said David Stacks, a former warden who is now the director of the Texas Prison Museum. “We don’t want to change history and we aren’t going to sugar-coat it.”
True stories of Bonnie and Clyde come alive inside the Huntsville Museum, which attracted more than 35,000 guests from around the world in 2019. Visitors can read about the Barrow gang’s breakout from the Eastham Prison, plus the subsequent deaths of Bonnie and Clyde at the hands of former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer.
Guests also can go back in time to the Carrasco siege at the “Walls” Unit in Huntsville in the summer of 1974. Using smuggled pistols and ammunition, Federico “Fred” Carrasco and two other inmates took 11 prison workers and four inmates hostage in the prison library.
Following a grueling 11-day standoff, Carrasco and the other convicts tried to escape by moving out of the library toward a waiting vehicle. The trio of inmates and four hostages surrounded themselves with a makeshift shield consisting of legal books taped to mobile blackboards that was later dubbed the “Trojan Taco” by members of the press who were covering the event.
Acting on a prearranged plan, prison guards and Texas Rangers blasted the group with fire hoses. However, a rupture in the hose gave the convicts time to fatally shoot the two women hostages who had volunteered to join the convicts in the armored car. When prison officials
returned fire, Carrasco committed suicide and one of his two accomplices was killed.
From dangerous weapons created by inmates from contraband to fine furniture crafted by Texas offenders, all are on display here.
Visitors can go inside a life-sized prison cell and learn all about the Texas Prison Rodeo. There are photos and stories of the famous, and infamous, inmates who have spent time in Texas prisons. The powerful work of photographer Barbara Sloan is also prominently displayed. For years, Sloan documented with pictures the victims of violent crime and the families of death row inmates.
“One thing people will learn is there’s a lot of distorted history out there,” Stacks said. “We tell the true history; we tell the facts. For instance, people have always said that when there was an electrocution years ago, the lights would dim in Huntsville. That’s not true … Hollywood also made Bonnie and Clyde out to be good people. They were not good people.”
“Our museum sets the record straight. The Texas Prison Museum is really an interesting place.”
Home of Sam Houston
As one of the oldest towns in Texas, Huntsville boasts today of historic museums, arts and culture, outdoor activities and a Main Street downtown. Located in the East Texas Piney Woods between Houston and Dallas on Interstate 45, Huntsville is proud to be the Walker County seat and home to Sam Houston State University, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Huntsville State Park.
The city was founded in 1835 as an Indian trading post by Pleasant and Ephraim Gray and was named for the Gray family’s former home of Huntsville, Alabama. Just a few years later, Huntsville was home to many influential and prominent early Texians, including Sam Houston. The Sam Houston Memorial Museum is located on 15 acres of the Houston family’s original homestead and celebrates the life of General Sam Houston. The final resting place for Houston is at the historic Oakwood Cemetery. A colossal statue of Sam Houston is visible from the south for six and a half miles to travelers on Interstate 45; standing at 77 feet, it is known as the world’s largest statue of an American hero. Pull in and pay tribute and then spend some time exploring Huntsville.
DON’T MISS
Visit Huntsville Huntsvilletexas.com
Texas Prison Museum
491 TX-75 N. Huntsville, TX 77320 (936) 295-2155 Hours: Mon.—Sat. 10am-5pm Sun. Noon-5pm Admission Fees Charged txprisonmuseum.org
Sam Houston Statue Visitor Center & Gift Shop
Sam Houston Memorial Museum
1836 Sam Houston Ave Huntsville, TX 77340 (936) 294-1832 samhoustonmemorial museum.com
Huntsville State Park
565 Park Road 40 W Huntsville, TX 77340 (936) 295-5644 tpwd.texas.gov/stateparks/huntsville
The Wynne Home Arts Center
1428 11th Street Huntsville, TX 77340 (936) 291-5424 huntsvilletx.gov/304/ The-Wynne-Home-ArtsVisitor-Center
The Gibbs-Powell Home
1228 11 St. at Avenue M Huntsville, TX 77340 (936) 435-2497 (936) 291-9726 Hours: Tues-Fri 12-5 PM Sat 12-4 PM And by appointment Admission Fees Charged walkercountyhistory. org/wc-museum.php
badge is something we recognize. It’s an emblem that identifies a person and frequently their position and their training. Police, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, firemen and women, emergency medical technicians, the Secret Service, the FBI and a whole slew of government offices rely on badges for identification. Even utilities and private companies have issued ID badges to their employees so we have a high comfort level when we open our front door.
Above: Considered the earliest authentic style of Ranger badge, it was worn by a member of Ira Aten’s. © 1880s Texas Ranger badge on display at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco.
Left top: Photograph of Texas Rangers. Shown are: (L-R) Charlie Price, John Caraway, Charlie Blackwell and Will Erskin. | Courtesy Cattle Raisers Museum
Left bottom: Photograph of Texas Rangers in 1915 during the Mexican bandit trouble. Shown are: (L-R) John Cordway, Deputy Sheriff; Clint Adkins; Edgar Turcotte, Deputy Sheriff; T. Armstrong; and Charlie Armstrong, Rancher. | Courtesy Cattle Raisers Museum
But in this world, and certainly our state of Texas, some badges just top all others. That is the case with a Texas Ranger badge. Before “Walker, Texas Ranger” started coming into our homes with a badge as big as our television screen, we have known about this elite law enforcement group. With a reputation for toughness and fairness, Texas Rangers protected the earliest settlers of Texas (maybe numbering in the hundreds) and they continue to protect over 29 million, 21st century residents of Texas. They are a point of pride in the state of Texas.
Over all the years, some outlaws stayed on the run, but many more stopped in their tracks after seeing the badge, knowing that the Texas Rangers were on their trail.
Like each Texas Ranger, the badge they carry or wear is unique. In fact, when Stephen F. Austin formed the Rangers in 1823 to protect the Old Three Hundred, they did not have a badge. The first Texas Rangers may have had a written letter of commission, which did carry a lot of weight. But it’s hard to picture a hardened cattle rustler paying much attention to a piece of paper. Heck, they may not have been able to read it.
So, during the early years Texas Rangers relied on a good horse and a reliable gun. “The saying goes, ‘God created men, Colonel Colt made them equal,’” historian Michael Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, says.
He suggests the idea of a frontier militia dates to 1713 with the development of the Compania Volante. The Compania’s goal was to protect the frontier of New Spain, just as the Texas Rangers’ goal became protection along Texas’ frontier. The Compania Volante also influenced the formation of Ranger organizations in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico.
The idea of a badge is simple and it dates to the Middle Ages, according to Byron Johnson, Director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. Large armies needed a way to identify friend or foe. A crest on a tunic or
Texas Ranger statue outside of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. 100 Texas Ranger Trail, Waco, TX 76706 (254) 750-8631 texasranger.org
Far right: Photograph of five Texas Rangers outside of the Brite Ranch near Marfa, Texas. L-R: Boone Oliphant, Lee Trimble, Clint Holden, Billie Duncan, and Jack Murdock. | Courtesy Marfa Public Library
shield was a way to make that identification during the heat of hand-to-hand combat. Five hundred years later, on the border of Austin’s colony and Mexico, and then along the frontier of Texas, identification was also important. And badges slowly came into use.
Why the Cinco Peso coin? Probably two reasons. First, it has a high silver content, making it both valuable and very workable. Second, and for a long time more important, it wasn’t a U.S. or Texas coin so defacing it was not against the law.
The first badge may have been linked to Ranger Leander McNelly, a member of the Special Force of the Texas Rangers established in 1875 that was charged with ending cattle rustling in the infamous Nueces Strip. McNelly’s badge was probably a gift from local ranchers and while it has been described in authentic documents, it has not survived, according to Johnson.
The earliest surviving badge belonged to Texas Ranger Ira Aten and dates to the 1880s. Early badges, like the Aten badge, were more than likely gifts and were crafted by a local silversmith or the Ranger himself. Even then the preferred starting point was a Mexican coin (the Aten badge
started as a Mexican Ocho Peso coin). In 1935 the Texas Ranger badge was based on a shield design for the Highway Patrol. A 1950-era badge issued to the Rangers featured blue enamel paint and became known as the blue bottle cap badge, according to Johnson. Neither caught on with the rank and file.
It wasn’t until 1961, when Homer Garrison, Jr. was head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that the circle/star badge created from the Cinco Peso coin was issued by the state to all Texas Rangers. Texas Ranger Hardy L. Purvis donated the initial batch of Cinco Peso coins so all 62 Texas Rangers could be issued a badge. Purvis made the donation in memory of his father, Texas Ranger Captain Hardy B. Purvis, and his mother. In 2021, modern badges are made by three silversmiths/engravers in the state (one in Fort Worth, one in Bandera and one in Clarendon). Before anyone can start work, they need a letter of authorization from the Chief of the Texas Rangers to give them permission to complete the work. They use either the 1947 or 1948 Cinco Peso coin almost exclusively. Each coin goes through dozens of steps and countless hours of artistic effort to morph into a badge with a domed star and a flat rim. Badges are now part of the standard equipment issued to a Texas Ranger; visit this link to see the full equipment list (https://www.texasranger. org/texas-ranger-museum/texas-rangers/ standard-issue-equipment/).
The major issue for collectors of the Texas Ranger badge is fraud, Johnson says. The Texas Ranger badge is among the most sought-after law enforcement artifact in the world, according to Johnson. With only a few hundred individuals in the Texas Rangers during the organization’s 198-year history, the potential supply of original Texas Ranger badges is very small. To this day, when a Ranger dies, most bequeath their badge to their family, he explains.
“Unless you know the seller of the badge or can trace its possession by a Texas Ranger’s family through the years, authentication becomes a real problem,” Johnson says. Serious collectors who are able to do their research will pay amazing sums of money for authentic badges, Johnson says. Similarly, beginning collectors who do not complete their research will probably pay amazing sums for a fake Texas Ranger badge.
It was easy for me to locate more than one Texas Ranger badge for sale on the internet. Some were clearly marked as replicas but not one was the real thing.
It’s easy to think the badge gives a Texas Ranger his authority. It doesn’t. A Texas Ranger derives his or her authority from their commission and what it represents. Earning the Cinco Peso badge is one of the hardest things to accomplish in law enforcement. Some classes have more than 100 candidates for one position, Johnson explains. He figures that the Texas Rangers intend to keep it that way.
LIFE
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Historic Jail Museums
Transforming historic county jails into silos for historical and cultural heritage.
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Activities for the fall
Getting lost in At’l Do Farms in Lubbock and other corn mazes.
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Eats & Drinks
Homestyle cooking at the Whistle Stop Café.
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Art
Texas watercolors, a world-class museum and shoot-out entertainment.
