Big Bend Texas Galleries & Artists 2016 | Page 17

Big Bend: A Homesteader ' s Story, by J. O. Langford

This modest volume records the history of one of the earliest Anglo settlers in the Big Bend. I read it by lantern light in my tent, the first time I camped alone in the Big Bend. It ' s a fine story and a great introduction to life in the early Bend.

In 1909, J. O. Langford, his wife, and daughter headed south from Marathon to make a home on isolated, forbidding land he had purchased on the Rio Grande. The land included the spot where Tornillo Creek flowed into the river.

Most first-time visitors to the Big Bend are taken with the history and lore, as well as the natural beauty, of our area. They flock to regional bookshops, hungry for information, and find many dozens of books on the Bend, both fiction and nonfiction. Where to start among so many?

I have a strong recommendation: Start with the oldest and the best book: Chronicles of the Big Bend: A Photographic Memoir of Life on the

The nearby hot springs were already widely known for curing all manner of ills. Since Langford had bad lungs, the springs, along with the dry climate, were perfect for the young family.

They built their simple adobe house themselves, situating it on a high bluff above the springs. There they lived for many years, in the rugged and spectacularly beautiful landscape that they made their own.

After getting well settled in, the Langfords built a bath house over the springs and advertised in the

Border, by W. D. Smithers. It ' s a classic and is absolutely fascinating.

Smithers was a multitalented fellow who was born in St. Luis Potosi, Mexico, " at summer ' s end in 1895." The area was a rich silver-mining center and Smithers ' father kept books for a smelting company there. " Our years there were strongly Mexican in local papers. They built basic rock rooms for guests along a river bluff and had a profitable business for years.

Perhaps the best parts of the book relate events and stories of odd things that happened in that desolate place over the years. Life was anything but dull: hunting for deer in the Chisos Mountains; Bessie, his wife, giving birth to a new baby; a spectacular meteor plunging to earth at night( of course) just a few miles from the house; Bessie having a close call with

orientation," Smithers wrote; " Mexican rural enterprise surrounded us, and many of our family habits reflected not American but Mexican tradition."

His years in Mexico gave the boy a deep appreciation and empathy for the culture that was, of course, spilling north over the Border into the lower Big Bend.

He never forgot Mexico, though he spent many years elsewhere. His first glimpse of the Big Bend occurred in

BIG BEND BOOKS

a black bear while she was alone upriver fishing, one of her favorite activities.

People had warned the Langfords that the isolation of river life would ultimate drive them away, but it happened that their lives were full and happy.

Their story is filled with warmth and heart, and is unforgettably told with the help of accomplished author Fred Gipson( Old Yeller, Hound Dog Man).

Chronicles of the Big Bend: A Photographic Memoir of Life on the Border, by W. D. Smithers

Alpine

A gallery of fine Western, Southwestern and Wildlife art

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1916, when he was teamster on a packmule train, and it captured his imagination to such an extent that he determined to chronicle the region and its people with stories and photos. He had the intelligence to know he was witnessing a remarkable place and time, and he devoted the rest of his life to recording it.

Smithers has been called a " genius who was looking for a calling," and he found it in the Big Bend. Chronicles is one of the most affecting books I have ever read, and I re-read it periodically and find it compelling every time.

Book reviews by Jean Pittman, Front Street Books, Alpine.

“ Beware of the person of one book.”- Thomas Aquinas

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BIG BEND GALLERIES AND ARTISTS / 2016 17