A collection of photos and stories from out-of-the-way sites in Texas. Morgan Page and Dustin Rice love history, especially the history of ordinary people and places. What began as an early date--a road trip to Spanish Fort, a ghost town near Wichita Falls--grew into years of crisscrossing Texas in search of stories hidden in abandoned buildings, neglected cemeteries, and all-but-forgotten towns. Bones of Texas features nearly 100 color photographs and 28 compelling histories. The book opens at Medicine Mounds, a sacred site of the Comanche people, and moves through tales both notorious and obscure, with subjects ranging from Machine Gun Kelly's Texas hideout, to the "orphan train" of Galveston, to a high school gym where students once played a basketball game astride donkeys, to the grave of James "Double Jimmy" James, a 100-year-old watermelon farmer-turned-local legend. Each story, and every photo, is an act of preservation, allowing readers to encounter Texas history as a landscape of lives once lived, even as the physical markers continue to decay. Ultimately, the "bones" that Page and Rice encountered--often mysterious, always evocative--transcend time and place, and now endure in the pages of this unique book.
Morgan Page has been exhibiting photographs since 2003. Page's work has been displayed in Japan, Mexico, and across the United States, and has been published in Athenaeum Review, Glasstire, Number: Inc., Texas Monthly, and Texas Highways. Dustin Rice has been exhibiting photographs since 2019. His work has been shown in galleries and museums across Texas and has been published in Texas Monthly and Texas Highways.
Introduction The Mounds (Precivilization) First Sheriff of Bandera County (1860) The Spark (Post-Civil War to World War II) Double Jimmy (1860s) Mother of the Panhandle (1870s) Queen of the Flats (1874) Bad Hand at Dead Horse (1874) Field of Glass (1876) Legends and Mythos (1872) Juice and Apple (1886) Good Intentions (1899) Grace from Amarillo (1907) Devil in the Mine (Early twentieth century) The Express Manager (1912) Angelina's Lessons (Early twentieth century) The Dark Halls of the T&P (1920s) The Road Between Mankins and Dundee (1925) Booger Town (1926) The Little Zoo up the Hill (1927) The Thorne in the Side of Texas (1930s) Octavio Medellin (1930s) Darn Fools (1933) Guests for the Evening (1934) An Angry Sky (1947) The Sit-In (1948) Thunder Road (1951) John the Bus Driver (1956) A Chance Encounter (1970) Acknowledgments For Further Reading
Bones of Texas is a stunning photographic journey into lost and abandoned corners of Texas--an extended ghost story in pictures, in which the viewer is invited to traverse a haunted, abandoned landscape still possessed of immense beauty. --Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart An authentic, evocative collection of photos and stories that should send adventuresome souls onto the backroads of Texas, newly engaged with its forgotten tales and rarely told history. --Peter Brown, coauthor of Hometown Texas The commonly told history of Texas is defined by the stories of the Alamo, XIT Ranch, and names such as Houston and Crockett. Bones of Texas is a fascinating journey across the great state of Texas in search of the lesser-known names and stories and the traces they've left behind. --Jay B. Sauceda, host, Texas Country Reporter This book will take you down Texas roads to places you could easily miss. Arresting photos accompany first-person reflections on these marginalized spaces, relaying testimonies and family tales that bring buried histories to life. What remains are the bones, what's left--giving us a reason to pull over while they are still here. --Martha Rosler, recipient, Spectrum International Prize in Photography
