JOHN GRAVES:
"While doing some research on your region, I came across the September/October 1998
issue of your magazine containing Part Two of Glenn Hadeler's "Terror in
the Hills" about the Mason County Hoodoo War by far the best thing I've come across
on that subject. I would very much like to get hold ofPart One if possible, and since
I liked the other articles too I want a year's subscription
A.C. GREENE
"I appreciate your sending me Enchanted Rock Magazine and
have enjoyed every issue that I have seen...I think Gary Brown’s Cold Trail Hounds in
your magazine was the best Texas tall tale I have read since Bill Brett at his best
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 A
Cowhand from Click
by Cora Melton Cross.
"I can't think of anything that gives me more pleasure
today than I used to get rounding up longhorns in the spring with everything green and
pretty. Or following the trail in the fall when the leaves were most as bright as flowers.
A brazen sky with a sun like clanging brass
and the earth cracked and glowing like tiles of beaten copper. Miles of dust,
heat-tortured air; a sky white as bleaching bones and rocky ridges where gnarled oaks
spread their branches low along the ground to hoard the cool root soil and lift their
leaves for light and strength."
 When
The Nickle Was King by Bill Bridges.
"New York newspaperman Ed Wallace—an avid chili lover—claimed that during
the Depression, "the five cent bowl of chili saved more lives than the Red
Cross". He might have added, that free saltine crackers and tomato ketchup also
played their nutritious parts. Not those anemic cellophane-wrapped packets of crackers
universally used in food establishments these days, but the generous bowlsful that used to
sit along the counters and on the tables of diners, chili parlors and hamburger joints all
over the country."
 The
Bloody Hand Prints of Alice Todd Part
2 of 2 Parts
by Lemon Squeezer Published
in San Saba, Texas 1900
"Away back in the early sixties
when a Redskin lurked in every brushy hollow and when men and women went horseback to
church, often times fifteen miles away, when everybody knew everybody else, and when
everyone was a true neighbor -- it was then our story began."
Save the image (left) as wallpaper: click
on the image and follow instructions. (From the private collection of Ira Kennedy.)
 The
Second Battle of the Alamo
by Charlie Eckhardt.
"A young woman named Clara Driscoll, whose grandfather, Daniel
Driscoll, was a San Jacinto veteran, returned to Texas after having spent seven years in
school in Europe. Clarawas impressed with the way Europeans preserved and protected their
historical sites, and when she saw the condition of the Alamo chapel and the land on which
the Alamo battle was fought, she was furious...
"KRIEWITZ AND THE COMANCHES,
by Glenn Hadeler
The history of Texas’ frontier settlement is filled with tragic stories of whites who
had the misfortune of being held captive by the Comanche Indians, but so far as can be
determined there is only one episode where a person willingly gave himself into their
hands. This was the peculiar case of Emil von Kriewitz.
 Wallpaper by Ira Kennedy
Here are two new Wallpaper photos taken on ranches I once lived on. On the left is a
pic on the stock tank on the Whitman Ranch in Burnet County; and on the right a scene of
the stock tank on the XLN Ranch near Enchanted Rock. Click on the image to download.
 Conan the Barbarian
by Cork Morris
On a journey to Cimmeria,
described by Homer as a region of perpetual mist and darkness, the author seeks the
birthplace of his childhood literary hero, Robert E. Howard, author of Conan the
Barbarian. Naturally, being a legend and all, Howard was a native Texan who lived his
entire but brief life in Cross Plains on the northern edge of the Hill Country.
History's
Longest Train Ride
by C.F. Eckhardt
What’s the longest train ride in the
world? There are a lot of answers, of course—the Red Express on the trans-Siberian
railway that goes from what used to be Leningrad and is now, mercifully, once more
Petrograd (St. Petersburg) near the Baltic to Port Arthur on the Pacific, is probably the
best one.
 Bigfoot
Wallace
by Steve Goodson
As I watched Mel Gibson’s production of Braveheart, I
remembered the Texas connection to that story of Scotland’s struggle for freedom. If any of you have ever been to Mount Bonnell
outside Austin, you’ll recall an historical marker that relates how an early
frontiersman, Bigfoot Wallace, spent several weeks in a cave on the mountain, recuperating
from an illness he contracted in what was the early frontier settlement of Austin. This pioneer whose given name was William Wallace
was a descendant of a Scottish Clansman, William Wallace.
  Wallpaper by Ira Kennedy
Here are two new Wallpaper photos taken along Hwy 281 between Blanco and Johnson City on
the same morning. I found these photos and hundreds of others after cleaning out a
storage shed I steered clear of for over a decade. Click on the images to download.
 A
Pony, A Map & San Saba
by Peru
It is now twelve years since the writer of this, broken in health
and fortune, caught the first glimpse of San Saba town.
Coming from Louisiana to Marshall, the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad,
he bought a pony and a map, made for San Saba, some four hundred miles distant, his
objective point; traveled roads when he found them and a south-westerly course when he
couldn’t, till at length, worn out with sickness and fatigue he reached San Saba.
The Camels of Camp
Verde
by Kenn Knopp
Secretary Davis and his military advisers concluded that if camels were the
answer to the caravans of the deserts of the Sahara and other continents, why not in the
arid semitropical regions of Texas, and the far west of America? Thus Congress passed one of its most curious
legislative proposals, “The Camel Appropriation Bill”. It would be the task of the US Navy to get the
camels from the far off continents to Texas; and the US Army to carry out the experiment.
 The
Storyteller
by Ira Kennedy
From a rock shelter halfway
up the north face of the bald granite mountain the old Kiowa saw them as they rode in from
the northwest. He determined they were four loud and careless young Comanche warriors. He
had observed them for the better part of a day as they followed the Pinta Trail to a
landmark called Cerro de Santiago, Hill of the Sacred One.
The old
man was a Kiowa-Apache shaman and he knew better than to disturb Gahe, the mountain
spirit, without great cause. Yet the young Comanches with their horses and their wild
nature approached the sacred spot mindless and ignorant of the consequences.
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GARY P. NUNN
"I have discovered a gem of a publication that I want to share with you called Enchanted
Rock Magazine. This little jewel is chocked full of Texas history, lore and culture,
mined from letters, newspapers and first hand accounts of early Texas settlers. Published
by Ira Kennedy, I can highly recommend it! BUY IT!" MARCYS HUFF
Editor, True West Magazine
"Enchanted Rock is truly a fine publication. I don’t often brag on things
from Texas, (Okie pride, ya know) but your mag is doing a great job of keeping the West
alive. Plus it looks great on the newsstand next to True West. Don’t squat
with your spurs on."
GERALD McLEOD
Austin Chronicle
"Ira Kennedy and Enchanted Rock are two defining symbols of the Texas
Hill Country. The pink granite mount's rugged beauth has endured for centuries,
while Kennedy left a career in the city to pursue a dream in the hills like the
pioneer's"
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