Big Bend National Park (review)

222Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober great collections of manuscripts and rare books to a middle-sized Texas university town. Holland's vivid portrayal of the university's nineteenth-century progenitors, visionaries George W. Brackenridge and George W. Littlefield, casts light on UT's origins and nicely complements Prof. Betty Sue Flowers's reminiscence of Hippie Days on campus in the 1 960s and an elegiac excerpt from Willie Morris's classic memoir of UT of the 1 950s, North Toward Home. Anyone interested in UT Austin should enjoy this thought-provoking book, but readers who have struggled over the many paradoxes of this institution will gain a new understanding and appreciation ofhow UT became the school it is today. The coming decades may produce characters and controversies as memorable as diose that dominated UT's first 125 years, but The Texas Book will nonedieless merit a place of honor in die historiography of a great, unique, and promising university. AustinJames Cousar Big Bend National Park. By Joe Nick Patoski, photographs by Laurence Parent. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 112. Color photographs. ISBN 02971 14416. $29.95, cloth.) In a remote corner of the soudiwest United States the Rio Grande bends around a giant landmass, creating a distinctive 801,163-acre Texas treasure, sixty miles long by sixty miles wide—almost die size of Rhode Island—called Big Bend. A land of astonishing variety, Big Bend contains deserts, mountains, mesas, plains, badlands, and vanished seas. Its complex geology forms diverse vegetative landscapes, from yucca-laden valleys to snow-covered pines. Big Bend, one of the least visited of the fifty-eight national parks, beckons to those individuals who crave "more solitude, wilder country, and wilder wilderness" (p. 15). It is one of the last places in Texas where one might glimpse ajavelina, mountain lion, or black bear. Joe Nick Patoski writes a personal and beautiful account of the park, weaving cultural and natural history through the pages of Laurence Parent's breathtaking photographs. Parent's lens captures the amazing Chihuahuan Desert landscapes, vast and otherworldly, while Patoski illuminates the images with intriguing stories. Covering a lot ofground, BigBend National Park carries the reader from the age of dinosaurs, when Quetzalcoatlus—"a flying monster with a thirty-five-foot wingspan" (p. 26)—ruled the air, to the effects of September 1 1, 2001, on quaint Mexican villages like Boquillas, now depopulated by border closures. In addition to illustrating the physical beauty of the park, Patoski tells the human story of the region, beginning with the earliest hunter-gatherers that moved through its valleys leaving behind middens and pictographs as evidence of their presence. Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca appears to be the first European chronicler to travel across its deserts and mountains. After Cabeza de Vaca and since die colonial period, raising livestock emerged as the staple of the region's economy until overgrazing and environmental degradation in the 1930s forced ranchers to reevaluate carrying capacities and economic feasibility. Texans recognized the natural beauty of the region in 1933, creating the Texas Canyons State Park. Such "heavy hitters" (p. 81) as Vice Pres.John Nance Garner 2007Book Reviews223 and U.S. Rep. Maury Maverick of San Antonio lobbied the federal government to authorize national park status in 1 935. After Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps helped to set in place park structures (campgrounds, cabins, and trails), and Roger Toll (well-known National Park Service superintendent) made exuberant recommendations to die Department ofdie Interior, die campaign to make Big Bend a national park gained steam. Texas historians Walter Prescott Webb andj. Evetts Haley bodi participated in programs to publicize and promote the park. OnJune 1 2, 1944, "Big Bend National Park [became] Texas's gift to the nation" (p. 89). Austin-based author Patoski and photographer Parent have worked together numerous times, including creating two other books in the Texas Landscape Series : Texas Coast and Texas Mountains. BigBend National Park, die third book in this series, serves as a gift and guide to travelers, historians, geologists, geographers, and naturalists. Texas Christian UniversityJahue Anderson Texas Towns and the Art ofArchitecture: A Photographer'sJourney. By Richard Payne, foreword by Stephen Fox. (Austin...