Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History

Lone Star Landscape: Texans and Their Environment

387 GLISTENING WITH RAINBOW COLORS against the setting sun, the ocean swells roiled past the ship’s wooden hull and swirled smoothly into a wake that trailed like furrows behind a plow. The experienced lookout in the crow’s nest was mesmerized by the view. For as far as the eye could see the rough edges of breaking waves, gentle swells, and windblown eddies were seemingly smoothed by an invisible blanket overlaid on the scene. The surface had a glistening sheen that was complemented by a translucent swirl of color. Alarmed and curious, the crew scampered aloft in the rigging for a better view. What magic was this? Was it some sort of miracle? Was it an omen? No one had an answer, at least not for another 400 years. What the ship reported was the first sighting of an oil slick glistening on the surface of the Gulf waters. While it would be commonplace many years later, it is not something one would expect during the so-called pristine pre-history period of the New World story. But it is an example of how “pollution,” or environmental degradation, as it would come to be called, is an entirely subjective manifestation, taking on a negative connotation only when human action or malfeasance is involved. In fact, natural environmental degradation has occurred from time immemorial, but only now, Lone Star Landscape Texans and Their Environment Tai Kreidler ★ 20centtxtext.indd 387 20centtxtext.indd 387 1/18/08 1:50:03 PM 1/18/08 1:50:03 PM 388 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXAS with the rapid movement of the human hand and the inability of nature to respond quickly enough, has it become a serious problem for humanity.1 The Texas environment has been exposed to human contact, interaction, and impact for over half a millennium and, iconic romantic ideals notwithstanding, it has been among the most severely affected environments in the world. Texas has been blessed with vast amounts of available space out of which it has carved for itself a legendary place in national and world history. Thoughts of Texas, at least in popular culture, bring to mind Indians, cattle barons, timber tycoons, and oil kings, and there certainly is some basis for such a perception. Texas was in fact a vast frontier of open space populated by Indians and buffaloes, and later cowboys and longhorns. While this mythic image persisted in popular lore, song, and literature, by the early twentieth century Texas had become something quite different . Through the discovery of oil and the attendant production and refining activities, it had become one of the more industrialized states in the union, even comparable to Pennsylvania. Just as the Homestead steel mills near Pittsburgh were described as “hell with the lid off,” various parts of Texas, through the pell-mell oil-well drilling and resultant pollution, looked otherworldly—like the surface of the moon.2 As industrialization followed, predicated upon the distribution of lands to individual or corporate ownership, the “hothouse” environment created a positive climate for exploitation of natural resources by corporations at an unprecedented level. While progressive reformers of the early twentieth century managed to rein in business to some extent and thereby preserve in other parts of the nation the landed legacy of the frontier and the public domain, they had little success in Texas, where land was quickly gobbled up. To escape efforts at federal regulation, corporations in Texas divorced themselves from their larger national affiliates and became independently chartered in the state. As a consequence, the regulatory 20centtxtext.indd 388 20centtxtext.indd 388 1/18/08 1:50:03 PM 1/18/08 1:50:03 PM LONE STAR LANDSCAPE 389 reform spirit had little impact in Texas, and companies continued to exploit the state’s resources at will. Within such a laissez-faire climate, there was less government oversight. Regulation, if it existed at all, only occurred to ensure that companies did not destroy themselves in the competitive fray. So, in that spirit, twentieth-century Texas allowed for minimal oversight over the use of its land and resources. There were efforts to address immediate issues when they arose, but there was no effort at long-range planning to forestall problems before they occurred. Hunting game to extinction occurred frequently. The east Texas black bear, the passenger pigeon, deer, elk, and others vanished from the landscape. The eradication of “nuisance” wildlife was a foregone...