Sutherland Springs, Texas: Saratoga on the Cibolo by Richard B. McCaslin (review)

Historians may stew around on projects for years. We intensively braze and sear them, and then we push them to the back of the stove. We pour in measures of good intentions but often allow them to simmer at low heat, occasionally picking up fresh data and adding it like potatoes and carrots to a mostly cooked pot roast. Then the project bubbles along further, sometimes for years, before we lift the lid and decide that it is time to finish up preparing the repast. This is just what historian Richard B. McCaslin did in writing a superb history of the Sutherland Springs community in Wilson County, Texas.

McCaslin's purpose in the book was to examine the story of people who lived in a rural community and aspired for it to become more important, but never quite achieved their goal. For a time in the mid-nineteenth century Sutherland Springs served as the seat of Wilson County, but the mostly agricultural area languished for lack of railway connections for years. Old-time settlers and new arrivals intermittently promoted the town as a destination where health-seekers could bathe and drink the waters from mineral-laden springs along Cibolo Creek. By the time steel rails eventually arrived from San Antonio in 1895, times were changing, with people learning about germs and starting to take antibacterial medications rather than using mineral waters to treat illness. Then by the 1920s depletion of groundwater resources reduced the flow of the springs. By the twenty-first century, Sutherland Springs was unincorporated, and its population had declined to under 400.

Now recognized as one of the leading Texas historians, McCaslin first discovered Sutherland Springs when he was a master's-degree student at the University of Texas. Professors Terry G. Jordan and Robin Doughty took him with other students on a field trip to the San Antonio area to identify topics for seminar papers in their team-taught course. Sutherland Springs caught McCaslin's attention. He proceeded to conduct research mostly in documents left by old settlers, writing a paper focusing on early days. After completing formal studies, he maintained an interest in the little town, continuing for twenty years to add new data to his files. Then, after writing multiple award-winning books on other aspects of the Texas past, he returned as a mature scholar to look anew at Sutherland Springs. Applying his experience in finding and interpreting evidence, he prepared a masterful study of the life and death of a Texas community that places its history solidly within the contexts of both regional and national events. His copious endnotes for manuscripts, newspapers, government documents, and ephemera carry readers to source materials uncovered during decades of investigation. McCaslin's Sutherland Springs will stand for years as a model of how best to approach writing monographs in state and local history.