More Ghost Towns of Texas (review)

220Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober More Ghost Towns of Texas. By T. Lindsay Baker. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+210. Preface, maps, photographs, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8061-3518-2. $34.95, cloth.) More Ghost Towns of Texas is a book for history-minded motorists who prefer farm-to-market roads to interstate highways and the state's vast rural expanses to its urban metropolises. The enjoyment for travelers such as these lies in the journey rather than the destination. They yield without guilt to roadside historical markers waiting to be read and side padis ripe for exploration. Such individuals will find invaluable T. Lindsay Baker's newest survey of those tiny Texas communities that cling precariously to existence and those that have already passed into the annals of history. Defining a ghost town as one "for which the reason for being no longer exists" (p. ix), the author, as in his earlier work on die topic published in 1986, used three criteria in selecting die ninety-four communities examined in this volume . The locations had to be evenly distributed across the state, accessible to the public, and feature tangible remains of one kind or another. Baker's selections reveal the multiplicity of factors that gave rise to these towns as well as the causes of their demise. Industry was the raison d'être for communities such as Pluck and Ratcliff in East Texas, Boquillas and Study Butte beyond the Pecos, and Electric City and Red River Station in the north central region of the state. Whether they depended on lumbering, mining, oil, or cattle drives, such towns rose and fell widi the fortunes of the economic activity upon which they based their entire existence. Transportation was die critical factor for others. Magnolia prospered when steamboats on the Trinity River were the quickest and cheapest means of transport but shrank when die International & Great Northern Railroad came through Palestine and lured away its merchants and residents. Panhandle villages such as Conway and Glenrio sprang to life to provide food, housing, and entertainment to tourists motoring west on Route 66 only to be displaced by odier cities, some only miles away, with the construction of Interstate 40. Calamities and natural disasters ended the existence of still other communities. Flooding along the South Concho River in 1882 destroyed Ben Ficklin with startling finality while a subsistence economy and hurricanes forced residents of Brownwood in Harris County to pull up stakes and relocate elsewhere. Baker supplements his synopsis of each town's history with photographs, a map showing the town's location, and driving directions for those who wish to visit. Designed and packaged for the popular market, the text lacks footnotes but does include an exhaustive bibliography, which leaves no doubt as to the depth of the author's research. This is a handsome volume and a worthy follow-up to Baker's original effort despite its lack of interpretive analysis. Given its oversize format, my only problem will be in fitting it under my vehicle's front seat for easy access. Austin Community CollegeL. Patrick Hughes ...