Seventy-five years ago Texas Historian Walter Prescott Webb published his big laudatory history of the Texas Rangers. His book is filled with tales of old-timers and their derring-do. Webb could only praise them. Modern histories of the Rangers make them out to be, well, more human. They were products of their times, after all.
Webb the historian forecast the demise of the Rangers when they were transferred to the new Department of Public Safety in 1935.
Historians don’t always get it right. Webb did not foresee the influence of a radio drama – The Lone Ranger – on the nation’s image of the Rangers. Texans loved it. The Rangers persisted and prospered.
Earlier, in 1931, the same Walter Prescott Web wrote a better history entitled The Great Plains. He explained how easterners, used to the Great American Forest, adapted to the treeless plains, and the influence of the plains on American culture. I used his book when I was lecturing on grassland ecology. Webb’s perspective is brilliant. But he concluded that the Plains would prosper through dryland farming.
Webb didn’t get that one quite right, either. He didn’t foresee the great dust storms of the plains.
Texas has experienced droughts before, of course. The Nueces River ran dry, way back when George West himself was running cattle. Some of us remember the drought years of the early and middle 1950’s, when farms and ranches failed. Texas had an actual demographic shift, with so many leaving rural areas for the cities (thanks, Irene B., for forwarding the story).
Now - What are today’s historians saying about this year’s terrible droughts? What will be the consequences in agriculture, in water policy, in demographic changes? I think a big question is whether we are seeing the consequences of global climate change, or the repetition of a normal pattern.
This current drought extends Midwest and southeast, including my state – Georgia. What is it telling us?
Be careful how you answer. Our Georgia State Climatologist recently re-defined Georgia’s long-term average temperature (a bit higher) and rainfall (a bit lower).
Our Governor fired him!
Dac Crossley
September 12, 2011
“It does not make a writer popular to speak of the shortcomings and deficiencies of a country, and to do so is to bring down upon one a local storm of adverse criticism.” – Walter Prescott Webb.
*a recent song by Kevin Leftwich
