WPA Writers’ Program — American Guide Series2.0

Much of the labor behind this book never shows on its pages, the Texas preface concedes. A reader who adds up the tour and side-trip distances can discover that more than fifteen thousand miles of Federal, State, and county highway were driven and carefully described, and that scarcely a city or crossroads village in the State escaped the project’s attention. Behind the compact volume lay an immense quarry of field copy — more than twelve million words — from which the editors cut and condensed, sifting hundreds of books and periodical files and interviewing authorities in every part of Texas.

J. Frank Davis, State Supervisor of the Texas Writers’ Project, signed that preface and was candid about the difficulty of binding so large and diversified a State between two covers. Population figures were drawn from the 1930 census, with fresh estimates for fifteen cities offered in Part II, since some Texas towns had grown mightily in the decade since. Where the State’s history turned controversial — and, Davis allowed, Texas has “its full share” — the staff leaned on the most authoritative sources and tried to present each case fairly. They leaned, too, on a remarkable roster of consultants, among them J. Frank Dobie on literature and folklore, with 2,914 local volunteers besides.

The State Highway Commission added a warm foreword, commending the book to travelers and reminding them that Texas was once a Republic and is the largest State in the Union — a place that, in the Commission’s words, “combines the glories of the Old South and the energetic qualities of the New West.” Its 254 counties and hundreds of growing cities were by then linked by modern highways and roadside parks; the visitor would find both the ruggedness of “A Home on the Range” and the comforts of the most modern American cities, in a State that genuinely welcomes the stranger.

Out of that abundance the guide takes its familiar three-part shape. Part I, “Texas: Yesterday and Today,” gathers twenty-one essays on the southwestern empire — its natural setting and resources, first Americans, history and government, industry, agriculture and livestock, folklore, religion, and the arts. Part II portrays fifteen cities, from Amarillo and Austin to El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio with its nearby missions. Part III, “Along the State’s Highways,” lays out twenty-nine numbered motor tours and their lettered branches, threading the Panhandle, the Gulf coast, the Rio Grande, and the Big Bend. Sponsored by the Texas State Highway Commission and first published in 1940, it remains a vast and affectionate portrait of the Lone Star State.