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History & heritage desk
Texas Defined's History & Heritage Desk covers Texas history, historic people and places, cultural heritage, preservation and archival context using primary records and accountable institutional sources whenever practical.
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Editorial archive
42 published stories currently carry this desk byline.
Then & Now
A practical and historical guide to three of Texas' major VA national cemeteries—where they are, when visitors can enter, what makes each landscape distinctive and how their veteran stories connect to Texas military history.
August 21, 2026 · About 12 minutes
Then & Now
From aircraft carriers and battlefields to frontier forts, WASP hangars, glider training and Pacific War collections, this statewide guide turns Texas military history into places you can actually visit.
August 20, 2026 · About 19 minutes
Then & Now
Audie Murphy, Macario Garcia and Roy Benavidez connect World War II and Vietnam to Texas communities, civil-rights struggles, the National Guard and the country's highest military decoration.
August 20, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
Texas military history is full of women whose service was once treated as auxiliary, temporary or invisible. From Army nurses and Oveta Culp Hobby to the Women Airforce Service Pilots at Avenger Field, their work reshaped who could serve and what military service looked like.
August 20, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Since the Cold War, Texas installations and Texas National Guard units have supported Desert Storm, Balkan peacekeeping, Afghanistan, Iraq and continuing global missions while BRAC closures and force restructuring reshaped the state's military map.
August 20, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Texas was already militarized by the Mexican Revolution before U.S. entry into World War I. Then nearly 200,000 Texans served, new camps and airfields reshaped cities, and the 36th and 90th Divisions went overseas.
August 20, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
The 1898 war with Spain marked a turning point for Texas military life. San Antonio helped organize the Rough Riders, Texas volunteer regiments mobilized, and Texans served in Cuba, the Philippines and an expanding overseas military.
August 20, 2026 · About 16 minutes
Then & Now
Between Mexican independence in 1821 and the Texas Revolution in 1835, military power in Texas shifted from thin presidio garrisons to settler militias and larger Mexican deployments.
August 20, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Long before the Alamo, Spanish soldiers, presidios, Indigenous alliances, imperial rivalry and independence movements shaped Texas. The 1813 Battle of Medina was the violent climax of that earlier military world.
August 20, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
A practical guide to Texas flag position, vertical display, half-staff, the U.S. flag, the state pledge, folding and retirement—grounded in the Texas Flag Code rather than folklore.
August 19, 2026 · About 8 minutes
Then & Now
Texas did not begin with the familiar blue, white and red Lone Star flag. Its path runs through revolution-era proposals, the Burnet flag, a Republic-era redesign, annexation, a decades-long legal gap and the modern Texas Flag Code.
August 19, 2026 · About 11 minutes
Then & Now
From B-36 bombers at Fort Worth and Atlas missile silos around Abilene to U-2 missions from Laughlin and nuclear-warhead work at Pantex, Texas became one of the country's most important Cold War military landscapes.
August 19, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
World War II turned Texas into a giant military training ground. Camps, airfields, depots and prisoner-of-war facilities reshaped towns, transportation, labor markets and postwar growth across the state.
August 19, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Kelly Field, Brooks Field, Randolph, Lackland and Fort Sam Houston turned San Antonio into one of the most important military training and aviation centers in the United States.
August 19, 2026 · About 15 minutes
Then & Now
Texas citizen-soldier traditions stretch from colonial-era militia and the Republic through Camp Mabry, the 36th Infantry Division, border mobilizations, world wars, disaster response and post-9/11 deployments.
August 19, 2026 · About 15 minutes
Then & Now
The 1874–1875 Red River War was the U.S. Army campaign that forced Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples from the Texas Panhandle onto reservations. Adobe Walls, Palo Duro Canyon and bison destruction explain how the Southern Plains changed so quickly.
August 19, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
After the Civil War, African American soldiers served across Texas in the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. Fort Davis, Fort Concho, Fort McKavett and Fort Lancaster preserve parts of that complicated frontier story.
August 19, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Texas maintained two small navies between the Revolution and annexation. From Liberty, Invincible and Independence to Austin, Wharton and the Battle of Campeche, the fleet protected supply lines, challenged Mexican blockades and became entangled in the political feud between Sam Houston and Edwin Ward Moore.
August 19, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
The first major battles of the U.S.–Mexican War were fought near Brownsville. This guide connects annexation, the disputed border, Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Texas Rangers, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the war's lasting consequences.
August 19, 2026 · About 16 minutes
Then & Now
Use Fanthorp Inn, Landmark Inn and the Slaton Harvey House to follow Texas travel from stage roads and wagon freight to the railroad networks that transformed distance, lodging and food on the road.
August 19, 2026 · About 13 minutes
Then & Now
Connect the Official State Longhorn Herd, Fort Griffin and Goodnight Ranch to the cattle drives, ranch businesses, trail towns and conservation stories that turned cattle into one of Texas' defining symbols.
August 19, 2026 · About 14 minutes
Then & Now
Follow Texas government from Austin's colonial capital and the provisional government through the independence convention, the Republic's first Congress, international diplomacy and the final years before statehood.
August 19, 2026 · About 15 minutes
Then & Now
Follow Texas from secession and Gulf Coast fighting through Palmito Ranch, Juneteenth, emancipation, Reconstruction and the later places where Texans preserved—and reshaped—the war's memory.
August 19, 2026 · About 16 minutes
Then & Now
A chronological guide to the battles, frontier posts, state forces, naval history, border mobilizations and global wars that shaped Texas from 1835 into the modern era.
August 19, 2026 · About 17 minutes
Then & Now
Commissioned in 1914, Battleship Texas served in both World Wars, fired on Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, became a museum ship in 1948 and is now being restored for a new permanent home at Pier 15 in Galveston.
August 19, 2026 · About 16 minutes
Then & Now
Battleship Texas, Eisenhower's Denison birthplace, the National Museum of the Pacific War, Harlingen's Iwo Jima monument and Slaton's Harvey House connect Texas to combat, command, memory and wartime mobility.
August 19, 2026 · About 16 minutes
Then & Now
Connect Old Socorro Mission, Magoffin Home, Casa Navarro, Lipantitlán and Mission Dolores to the Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, Tejano and American histories that overlap across Texas borderlands.
August 19, 2026 · About 13 minutes
Then & Now
Levi Jordan and Varner-Hogg preserve two difficult, essential Texas landscapes where enslaved labor, emancipation, Reconstruction, sharecropping, ranching and archaeology can be read together.
August 19, 2026 · About 15 minutes
Then & Now
Three modest Texas homes reveal how national political careers grew from railroad towns, oil-boom neighborhoods and rural North Texas rather than monumental settings.
August 19, 2026 · About 13 minutes
Then & Now
Fort Martin Scott, Fort Griffin, Fort McKavett and Fort Lancaster reveal how soldiers, settlers, travelers, ranchers and Native nations collided across the Texas frontier.
August 19, 2026 · About 14 minutes
Then & Now
Follow the Texas Revolution through the places where colonists organized, delegates declared independence, armies surrendered and the campaign ended at San Jacinto.
August 19, 2026 · About 14 minutes
Then & Now
Many Texas towns existed before the railroad, but rail lines changed which communities grew, where business moved and how farm and ranch products reached distant markets. The modern highway map still carries that history.
August 16, 2026 · About 9 minutes
Then & Now
Courthouse squares were only one part of the traditional Texas town. Main streets, storefront blocks, depots and civic buildings created walkable commercial centers that still reveal how communities grew.
August 16, 2026 · About 8 minutes
Then & Now
Texas communities did not appear randomly. Water, trails, missions, rivers, farming soils, ranching country, county seats, railroads and highways layered one settlement map on top of another.
August 16, 2026 · About 9 minutes
Then & Now
Texas courthouses share a civic purpose but not a single look. Their towers, domes, stone, brick and symmetry reflect different eras, budgets, architects and ideas about what public buildings should say about a county.
August 16, 2026 · About 8 minutes
Then & Now
Across Texas, county courthouses still anchor town squares built for a different age. Their architecture, politics and geography explain how local communities grew around public life—and why the old center of town still matters.
August 13, 2026 · About 12 minutes
Then & Now
Texas has one border on the map and many cultural borders on the ground. Indigenous homelands, Spanish and Tejano settlement, Southern migration, slavery and freedom, European immigration, ranching, railroads, oil and modern global migration all created places that can feel distinctly Texan and distinctly different from one another.
August 13, 2026 · About 18 minutes
Then & Now
The six flags are more than a theme-park name. They trace the governments that claimed Texas across centuries—and explain why the phrase still carries so much weight here.
August 7, 2026 · About 10 minutes
Then & Now
Texas towns carry layers of migration in their churches, dance halls, bakeries, plazas, festivals and family names. German, Czech, Mexican and Tejano traditions did not sit outside Texas culture—they helped build it.
August 7, 2026 · About 11 minutes
Then & Now
Texas has more counties than any other state. The reason is written into the state's size, settlement patterns and an old practical idea: local government had to be close enough for people to reach it.
August 7, 2026 · About 10 minutes
Then & Now
Why 'stock tank' became ordinary Texas ranch language for small man-made ponds built to water livestock—and why the term now gets used far beyond cattle country.
June 29, 2026 · About 8 minutes
Then & Now
Why historic Texas dance halls survive only when communities can keep roofs dry, floors sound, events active and old buildings useful enough to earn another generation of care.
January 28, 2026 · About 10 minutes
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