Aahmm.......... the 18 minutes in question wherein the valiant Texans charged up the field and drove the army of the distracted Santa Anna into the marsh where it was annihilated actually took place in 1836. We have been told that Texas was saved by a stunningly beautiful Yellow Rose that was in the tent of Santa Anna in the early afternoon of the battle .
Back in '09, We spent a month wandering around Texas. We visited the room on the river bluff in Laredo where one of the Texas Republics was hatched. We of course visited the Alamo site of the gallant stand. We traveled back to the East to Goliad and La Bahia, site of the massacre of Col Fannon and others. We went to Houston where I have several clients and Boarded the battleship Texas and then up to the monument and battlefield of San Jacinto.
I immersed my self in the early history of Texas and am convinced that after the revolution, Texas should be the model for our new government. I made my wife read all of Mitchner's TEXAS that was sort of a guide. We traveled as far west as Alpine/Marfa and Great Bend.
In 2012 we followed the Butterfield Trail, route of the Overland Mail, the first transcontinental mail contract route from Memphis to San Francisco. It was routed through Texas to avoid winter weather in the western mountains. The route is 900 miles long in Texas and pretty much sticks to small towns. The route later became the way west for the Army and a string of forts was built all across the state as people flowed west. Texas celebrates it as the Forts Trail but the locals know it was the Butterfield and celebrate it as well. The Butterfield is under study by the National Park Service as a National Historic Trail and will likely achieve that designation. This trip took us again to El Paso and the Hueco Tanks and of course the Guadalupe Mountains National park.
Lest I be accused of omission, we also pretty much proved beyond doubt that the second best Bar B Que in the world is cooked in Llano Texas at Cooper's. There is almost no equal. It is bettered only by that produced nearby at The Ridges Bar B Que that just happens to be on the National Historic Trail followed by the Overmountain Men of East Tennessee as they journeyed to fight the Battle of King's Mountain, the turning point in the Revolution.
