History Ahead: Stories Beyond the Texas Roadside Markers by Dan K. Utley and Cynthia J. Beeman is part travel guide and part history book. Loaded with unusual places to explore, this new book puts a face and personality on Texas history. If grade-school history books were this interesting, then recess would become many more students’ second-favorite subject.
Few people are better qualified to know where the ghosts of Texas history are hidden than Utley and Beeman. He is the former chief historian of the Texas Historical Commission, and she is the former director of the Texas Historical Commission’s History Programs Division. Published by Texas A&M University Press, the book carries on the tradition of passing history from one generation to the next through storytelling.
Since the first historical markers were placed around the state in 1932, more than 13,000 of the aluminum signs with raised lettering have sprouted at landmarks and historic sites. Quite often these interpretive plates, many of them written or edited by Beeman, give only abbreviated versions of much larger tales. In 19 chapters and 25 sidebars, the authors take the reader on a journey behind the historical signs from the oil fields of the Permian Basin to the musical lanes of Deep Ellum. Each entry in the book is followed by the location of historical markers related to the story.
For day-trippers and history buffs, this tome is both useful and entertaining. It is going to be hard for many readers not to go in search of the little-known historic places such as the tabernacles of Erath County or to retrace Charles Lindbergh’s flights across Texas once they read the stories of the people and events behind the historical markers.
The pages of the book are filled with the most famous Texans that you have never heard of before. There is Bessie Coleman, “Queen of the Air.” Born in Atlanta, Texas, she was the first black woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license. There also is jazz guitarist Charlie Christian of Bonham, suffragist Jessie Daniel Ames of Georgetown, first solo circumnavigator pilot Wiley Post of Grand Saline, and faith healer Don Pedro Jaramillo of Los Olmos. Even J. Frank Dobie, JP “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and Will Rogers make appearances in this collection of faded Texas tales.
Once you read the histories, you will want to search out places like the Natatorium in Amarillo, Kleb Woods Nature Preserve in Tomball, the Ozark Trail in the Panhandle, and the Armstrong Browning Library in Waco – which houses the world’s largest collection of material about and by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
History Ahead is a fine companion to Betty Dooley Awbrey’s book Why Stop? A Guide to Texas Historical Roadside Markers. The Utley and Beeman book will pique the interest of those looking for something unusual to do for this summer’s driving trip.
977th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of “Day Trips” 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in March 26 • 2010.
