Echoes of Glory: Historic Military Sites across Texas by Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley (review)

Someone—the authors, perhaps, or an imaginative editor—had a good idea: identify, describe in engaging prose and revealing photographs, and physically locate important sites in the military history of Texas. Historians, historical preservationists, curious tourists, local booster groups—all would be interested in reading about and seeing photographs of the places where significant military events happened over the last 200 years. Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley, longtime students of Texas history and authors of numerous books and articles on the subject, set about the task and published their findings in Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Military Sites in Texas, Then and Now. Published to widespread acclaim from professional historians as well as general readers, the book took its place among those publications that bridge the gap between heavy academic history and popular and colorful lighter fare. The whole thing was so successful that the authors put together a second book to cover events and places they did not include in the original, and the result is Echoes of Glory: Historic Military Sites across Texas.

This volume covers twenty-four sites, organized chronologically from the presidio at San Saba (1752–1772) to the ill-fated “Homeport” naval air station near Corpus Christi (1985–2010). It would be misleading to say that every one of these places was the scene of some stirring military event. At quite a few of them, nothing much at all happened, important or otherwise. Still, some of them were significant and interesting: the presidio at San Saba, the forts along the Rio Grande, the arsenal at San Antonio, some of the training fields of World War II scattered across the Great Plains of Texas, and an Atlas icbm site near Abilene. (The plains of West Texas were a prime location for a missile facility because a Soviet nuclear counterstrike would be less destructive against the widely dispersed population around the missile base.)

The fact that about half the sites covered in this book were not places of great military significance makes this volume somewhat less fascinating than its title implies. In addition, nearly two-thirds of the locations are not easily accessible. In some cases, little or nothing remains of the original structures; in other cases, the property is owned and controlled by private parties and is not open to inquisitive visitors. Nevertheless, scholars, diehard Texans, and fascinated history buffs will find something to instruct and entertain in this valuable review of military sites. Every library in Texas should add this book to its collection.