Chronicles of the Big Bend

Download or read book Chronicles of the Big Bend written by W. D. Smithers and published by TX A&m-TX St Historical Assoc.. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a young teamster on a pack-mule train, Wilfred Dudley Smithers saw the Rio Grande's Big Bend for the first time in 1916, and it captured his imagination forever. For decades thereafter he returned to Texas' last great frontier-the great bend of the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border-chronicling the region and its people in words and photographs. The years that Smithers chronicled in the Big Bend were sometimes violent ones. Pancho Villa and Chico Cano were among the many "bandits" playing hide-and-seek with the U.S. Cavalry-events Smithers recorded. He was also an eyewitness to liquor-running and smuggling during Prohibition. His principal subjects, however, were the people of the Big Bend: local ranchers, Mexican American and American families, miners, Texas Rangers, and others living simple lives in this harsh and beautiful land.