Crystal City: Named for Water, Famous for Spinach RoadyGoat

1907

The name conjures up quartz, gemstones, maybe a mine full of glittering rock. But Crystal City has nothing to do with crystals. It was named for water, the clear, crystal-clean artesian water that bubbled up from the springs and wells of this South Texas town. And what that water really grew wasn't gems. It was spinach. Crystal City calls itself the Spinach Capital of the World, and it backs it up with a statue of Popeye, the sailor man himself, standing proudly downtown since the late nineteen thirties. So the town that sounds like it's full of jewels is really full of leafy greens, all thanks to crystal-clear water that made the soil rich enough to feed a nation.

10.7 mi away

Big Wells, TX RoadyGoat

Big Wells, Texas. It might not be on everyone's map, but it's a place that holds onto its own. You can feel it in the air, a real sense of community woven into the landscape of ranches and farmlands stretching out toward the Neches River. At 633 feet above sea level, a bit higher than San Antonio, the land here has always been about hard work, drawing life from the earth. It's a quiet life, not chasing the spotlight. But every now and then, a spark from here catches the wider world.

17.5 mi away

Big Wells, TX RoadyGoat

Big Wells sits a little higher than you might think, a good six hundred feet above sea level, which probably helped when those first settlers dug their wells. That’s what gave the town its name, you know – Big Wells. Water is everything out here, and it’s what allowed the agriculture to take root and become the lifeblood of the place. It's no accident that the Neches River flows close by; it's kept the land fertile for generations of farmers and ranchers. Now, Big Wells isn’t a place chasing the latest trends. We’re about tradition, about the land, and about each other. Friday nights, you’ll see the whole town turn out for the high school football games. That’s where the real rivalries play out, and you feel that community spirit. Some even say a ghostly stagecoach still roams near the old stage stop, a reminder of the history that’s still very much alive here. We might be just a quiet dot on the map, but Big Wells is home, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

17.5 mi away

Bell, Peter Tumlinson

1869

Peter Tumlinson Bell, master texas fiddler, was born on February 26, 1869, near Gallinas Creek, in Atascosa County, Texas. He was the son of Marion “Mace” Bell and Sarah Jane (Tumlinson) Bell and was one of eleven children. His grandfather, Jonathan Bell, had come to Texas from Mississippi in 1853 and settled sixty miles southeast of San Antonio. Jonathan Bell was killed in a gunfight the following year, leaving his young son Marion “Mace” Bell (Peter’s father) to be raised on the frontier by an older brother Bill. In 1862 Mace moved his young family to join several others and settled on land that would one day become Carrizo Springs. Peter Bell grew up in the town of Carrizo Springs in Dimmit County. Besides the role he played as a founder and citizen of standing, Bell was a gifted musician who occupies a significant place in the history of American music. Peter’s father, Mace Bell, was a musician who played the fiddle, and he brought with him to Texas a store of tunes and the ability to play what the Bell family still recognizes today as the “old mountain music,” some of which was carried on by the playing of his son, Peter Tumlinson Bell. Old-time mountain music is represented by a relatively few field recordings made in the eastern mountains of Appalachia during the 1930s to the 1960s and by certain commercial recordings of professional entertainers during and after the late 1920s. Listeners can form a serviceable opinion about the fiddle music of Georgia in the 1920s based on the commercial recordings of John Carson, Gid Tanner, Clayton McMichen, and others, but the ability to imagine what the music of the same region sounded like a generation before leads to little more than speculation. Influenced by his father, Peter Bell began playing the fiddle when he was eight years old. The Bell family was at the center of the music and dance tradition that helped to sustain the settlers through the early years in the Carrizo Springs area. Along with the Frasier Family, also renowned musicians in the area, the Bells performed at house dances, holiday celebrations, and homecomings—all occasions for music and dance that often lasted well into the night and sometimes the following day! The families continued these musical traditions well into the twentieth century. Peter Tumlinson Bell married Mary Louisa “Molly” Hilburn on July 12, 1888. They had seven children, several of whom were distinguished by their own musical abilities. The reputation of Carrizo Springs for this music drew the attention of a university professor from Texas A&M who was travelling the country and making field recordings of the vanishing traditions of his home state. In 1941 William A. Owens journeyed down to the Nueces Strip with his second-hand Vibromaster to record P. T. Bell who was then seventy-four years old. Verner Lee Bell remembered the day the professor came to record his grandfather and recalled how the shiny, curled metal tailings fell on the floor as the Vibromaster recorded the masterful playing, cutting the signal into a set of aluminum disks. Bell played thirty-one tunes that day which were preserved on the disks that Owens took with him when he left. The memory of the event remained strong for Verner who, years later, would compile the recollections of his grandfather with his extensive research and publish the story of this remarkable man in the book, Memories of Peter T. Bell . It is also largely due to the efforts of Verner and his son Bert Lee Bell, that the important recordings of P. T. Bell have been preserved. Verner Bell, historian for the Dimmit County Historical Commission, passed away on March 11, 2002. Bert Lee Bell continued to serve as chairman of the Dimmit County Historical Commission in 2010. Owens’s recordings of Peter Tumlinson Bell have been restored and are available from the Field Recorders Collective. Although a renowned fiddler in his day, Bell never made nor sought to make commercial recordings. And though he played con

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Lemmons, Bob

1864

Bob Lemmons (or Lemons), "the most original mustanger," according to J. Frank Dobie , was born about 1847 and moved to Texas in 1854. He was the slave of John English, who had come to make a home at Carrizo Springs in Southwest Texas. Lemmons's birth name is not known. After being freed, he came under the tutelage of Texas rancher Duncan Lemmons, who took the seventeen-year-old youth to Eagle Pass to work for him. Out of respect for his new employer and friend, Lemmons adopted the rancher's last name. He worked at the Eagle Pass ranch learning the techniques of ranching and mustanging. When Duncan Lemmons died, Bob continued to work as a "brush cowboy" and ranch foreman in the Carrizo Springs area. He eventually purchased his own ranch near Carrizo Springs and worked it until his failing eyesight forced him to retire. His fame came about as a result of his mustanging methods. Said Lemmons, "I grew up with the mustangs....I acted like I was a mustang...made them think I was one of them." His methods were unusual because he would mustang alone. When working a herd of mustangs , Lemmons lived off the land, taking for comfort only a Mexican blanket, which served as both cover and slicker. The legend of the man who lived as a mustang and gained the confidence of the wild horses spread throughout Texas, but his career as a mustanger ended when the Carrizo Springs area population began to grow and when fences sprang up on the landscape. Though he could no longer mustang, Lemmons determined to live "alone in the brush." In 1931 author J. Frank Dobie interviewed Lemmons for his book The Mustangs (1952). Lemmons was eighty-four years old. He died in Dimmit County on December 23, 1947.

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English, Levi

1817

Levi English, pioneer, cattleman, and one of the first settlers of Dimmit County, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 25, 1817, to Bailey Inglish and Susanna Walker. His mother died while he was an infant, and his father married Jane Sloan. The family lived near the Clear Creek settlement on the Red River in Miller County, Arkansas, until the death of Jane Sloan in 1835. According to his son Jake, lived for perhaps six months with a group of Comanche Indians . Family tradition says that English served as a scout for the Texas Rangers after leaving the Comanches and participated in several battles against Indians. In the winter of 1836 Bailey Inglish moved his family to Fannin County, Texas. According to his son, he also fought in the battle of San Jacinto , though no record of his service can be found. He married Matilda Jane Burleson on February 22, 1839, and the couple had eleven children. In May 1851, he divorced his wife for suspected infidelity and a few days later she married Major Ross Byers. On May 28, English shot and killed Major Ross Byers in Lockhart. By the 1850s English had become a cattleman and a leader of a frontier community in Atascosa County, where he served as a county commissioner in 1856. From August 6, 1855, to November 13, 1855, he served as a captain of mounted volunteers in Bexar County. He enlisted in a company of Minute Men for Atascosa County under the command of Captain Benjamin Slaughter on November 2, 1861. He re-enlisted for six months on November 16, 1863, as a first lieutenant in a company of mounted volunteers from Frio City. In 1865 he led a group of fifteen families into what is now Dimmit County and established a settlement at Carrizo Springs. In 1880, when Dimmit County was organized and Carrizo Springs became the county seat, English donated land to the town for churches, schools, and a courthouse square. English died in Carrizo Springs on May 14, 1894, and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.

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Dimmit County Courthouse

1883

Named for one of the framers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Dimmit County was created from four other counties in 1858. The county was formally organized in 1880, and Carrizo Springs was chosen as the county seat. On November 12, 1883, the county commissioners court chose noted architect Alfred Giles to design a permanent courthouse for Dimmit County. Later that month, on November 26, the court reversed its decision and selected J. C. Breeding & Sons of San Antonio to act as both architects and builders. Probably working from Giles' initial plans, they erected a structure which featured a double gallery porch. The building's cubical form and Italianate detailing resemble Giles' designs for other Texas courthouses erected about the same time. By the 1920s, the thriving Dimmit County needed a larger government facility. The commissioners court called in Henry T. Phelps to design an expansion. At Phelps' instruction, the San Antonio Construction Company demolished the north second story wall, removing exterior rock from the lower north and south walls and adding new, longer wings on each end. As was his custom, Phelps worked along a Classical Revival plan, requiring a symmetrical façade. He relocated the main entrance to the west side of the building, highlighting it with four massive columns and a recessed porch. The 19th century windows were widened, and Phelps changed the Second Empire roofline to an elaborate cornice. The architectural character of the Dimmit County Courthouse was transformed from a simplified Italianate style of the late 1880s to the restrained Classicism popular in the 1920s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2000

Historical Marker →

Crystal City - Spinach Capital & Chicano Movement

1963

Crystal City, the 'Spinach Capital of the World,' was the birthplace of the Chicano political movement in Texas when Mexican American citizens won control of the city council in 1963.

Historical Marker → · 10.8 mi away

Zavala County

1863

In 1832 land grant of Mexico to John Charles Beales. Lake Espantosa was campsite on road from Mexico to San Antonio. County created from Uvalde and Maverick, 1858. During the Civil War, especially in 1863-1864, was crossed by Cotton Road to Eagle Pass, entry point of Confederate goods. Including guns, powder, medicines. Organized 1884. Named in honor of Lorenzo de Zavala (1788-1836), signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence; first vice president to serve Republic of Texas. Original county seat was Batesville. Since 1927 it has been Crystal City. (1965)

Historical Marker → · 13.5 mi away

Carrizo Springs, Texas

Music in Carrizo Springs

Songs About Carrizo Springs

Artists From Carrizo Springs

Rivers & Roads in Song near Carrizo Springs

History of Carrizo Springs

Crystal City: Named for Water, Famous for Spinach RoadyGoat

Big Wells, TX RoadyGoat

Big Wells, TX RoadyGoat

Bell, Peter Tumlinson

Lemmons, Bob

English, Levi

Dimmit County Courthouse

Crystal City - Spinach Capital & Chicano Movement

Zavala County

Everything Near Carrizo Springs