January 7, 2018
The Museum of South Texas History
This is one of our all-time favorite museums. Its Spanish Colonial architecture and decorations were attractive. It was well-organized. Exhibits were well-lighted, and it was possible many times to take a photo without getting lights in the shot. The exhibits were interesting, informative and (as best we could tell) honest about the negative effects of development and cultural pressures.
The museum’s Grand Lobby. The iron work at the second floor level is railing from the 1910 Hidalgo County Courthouse.
Staircase
Ceiling of the Grand Lobby
This museum’s nod to prehistory was a mammoth skeleton. A kind museum employee offered to take Dave and Jane’s picture in front of it. (Dave is on the left.)
Jaguars once lived in south Texas but now range no closer than northern Mexico. [This taxidermal specimen was confiscated at an auction in Alaska. We don’t make this stuff up.]
Spanish explorers including Alonso Alvarez de Piñeda, Hernán Cortés, and Hernando de Soto came to Texas in the first half of the sixteenth century. The chest below is from the era of exploration.
The metal on the lid is an elaborate locking mechanism.
By the mid-1800s, settlers were using oxcarts to move freight.
No fasteners were used in the construction of this cart.
Settlers built jacals (pronounced ha-CAHL) of upright wooden posts with smaller branches woven between and any open spaces sealed with mud.
Everyday activities mostly took place outside; the jacals were used mainly for sleeping and were still being used in South Texas in the early 1900’s.
Texas became a state in 1845 and seceded in 1861. An exhibit in the museum recreates an officer’s tent during the Civil War.
Many South Texans made their living raising cattle which were sold to Mexico and moved to railheads in Kansas on cattle drives.
Chuckwagons held several months’ worth of provisions and equipment as well cowboys’ bedrolls and extra saddles. This wagon was built about 1910 and was used into the 1930s.
Railroads were key in the development of South Texas. They brought the irrigation equipment that made the area “The Magic Valley”. Just add water, it was said, and anything would grow there. Crops include citrus, vegetables, sugar cane, cotton and grain.
This cotton gin was made in Atlanta about 1884.
Harlingen, the city where we’re staying while in the Rio Grande Valley, has been called two nicknames that illustrate the difficulties settlers encountered when they moved to the area.
Rattlesnake Junction
Six Shooter Junction. This is a Colt .45 “peacemaker”. The holster was made in San Antonio around 1880.
This is a leña on the Museum grounds. Leña literally is firewood; this is a firewood fence.
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