I’ve been reading A Texas Frontier by Ty Cashion. It’s the story of the “Clear Fork Country” in the 19th century, and in particular Ft Griffin which was the center of that region. The “clear fork” is the Clear Fork of the Brazos which rises in the Rolling Plains and joins up with the Salt Fork just above Possum Kingdom Lake.

This is the land of western movies and pulp novels. It is the land of cowboys and Indians and buffalo hunters and range wars. It is the land just to the west of the Cross Timbers where I live myself. But it differs a lot from this country in its geography and its history.

One thing that has always been of interest to me is how the various regions of Texas have such different cultures. According to Cashion the Clear Fork country was settled primarily by southerners. He even describes the cow ranch as a variation on the plantation model, something that had never occurred to me and yet suddenly seems very obvious. To this day the region remains about as pure a concentration of white anglo-saxon Baptists as one could ever expect to find.

The sensibility…