Name: Uvalde, Texas
Address: Uvalde, TX

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Uvalde. The name conjures so much these days, but for those of us who know the town, it's layered with more than just recent tragedy. The spirit here runs deep, rooted in the land. Ranching and farming—that's the lifeblood. You can smell it in the air, especially as you come in off Highway 90, a mix of dry earth and distant cattle. And while honey production isn't what it used to be, you still see roadside stands selling local wildflower honey, a sweet reminder of Uvalde's "Honey Capital" days. Evenings here have a certain crispness, a blessing thanks to our elevation. It's a welcome change from the heavy humidity further east. But what truly defines Uvalde is the people. There's a grit, a quiet determination that's been tested, no doubt. Folks are pulling together, leaning on each other. You see it in the Friday night football games, in the way neighbors check in on one another, and in the renewed focus on community events. It’s a long road ahead, but Uvalde is walking it, one step at a time, holding onto hope under the Texas sun.

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Uvalde sits at that sweet spot elevation where the nights offer a bit of relief from the Texas heat. You can feel the land here, a sort of quiet strength drawn from the soil. Agriculture is in its bones. For generations, families have worked the land, raising cattle and coaxing crops from the earth. There was a time when Uvalde was known far and wide for its honey, the “Honey Capital of the World,” they called it. That industry might not be what it once was, but the spirit of ingenuity and hard work that fueled it remains. That spirit has seen Uvalde through a lot. It's a place that knows both boom and bust. You can see echoes of its history in the architecture, in the stories passed down through families. Even something as simple as the local love for brisket nachos hints at its unique blend of cultures. It's a town that produced a Vice President, John Nance Garner, a testament to the ambition and character that can be found here. And though a shadow has recently fallen across it, a palpable sense of community and resilience still shines through, a deep-seated hope that’s as much a part of Uvalde as the Texas sun.

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Uvalde sits at that sweet spot where the South Texas plains begin to rise. Not mountains, mind you, but just enough elevation to catch a breeze and offer some relief from the coastal humidity. That subtle change in elevation made all the difference. The land was good for grazing, and the slightly cooler nights were perfect for bee-keeping. For a long time, folks called Uvalde the "Honey Capital of the World." That era is mostly gone, but you can still find local honey at the farmer's market. Ranching and farming are still the heartbeat of the place. Today, people pass through to visit the Garner Museum, the home of FDR's Vice President. Some are drawn by Matthew McConaughey's connection to the town. But if you ask a local why people stay, they'll tell you it’s the community. There's a deep-rooted sense of looking out for each other, a quiet resilience forged in the face of hardship. And if you happen to be here around lunchtime, be sure to try the brisket nachos. Rumor has it, they were invented right here in Uvalde.

Newton Boys - Uvalde

1919

The four Newton brothers from Uvalde robbed more banks than any outlaws in American history, hitting over 80 banks and 6 trains between 1919 and 1924 without killing anyone.

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Fisher, King

1876

Celebrated outlaw who became a peace officer. Once undisputed ruler of a 5,000-square-mile area of Southwest Texas, centered in Eagle Pass and known as King Fisher's Territory. Son of Jobe and Lucinda Fisher, at age 17 Fisher settled on Pendencia Creek in Dimmit County, hired by ranchmen to guard their herds from bandits who frequently raided from Mexico, across Rio Grande. A complex and forceful individual, he imposed order in lawless border area. His henchmen rustled cattle and terrorized resisting settlers but also protected them from outside intruders. Near his ranch was sign reading: "This is King Fisher's Road. Take the other". Many prominent men, including Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, counted him a friend. Tall, charming, and quite handsome, Fisher wore fine clothes and tiger skin chaps. An expert shot-- with either hand-- he was indicted on six murder charges and 15 lesser counts but was never convicted. Devoted to wife and daughters, he reformed after being arrested in 1876 by Ranger Capt. L. H. McNelly. He was acting Uvalde County sheriff, when, on March 11, 1884, he and the notorious Ben Thompson were killed from ambush at a vaudeville theater in San Antonio. 1973

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Garrett, Pat

1881

Pioneer law officer Patrick F. Garrett, renowned for killing outlaw Billy the Kid in 1881, lived in a house at this site during his residence in Uvalde. He had come from Alabama to Texas in 1869; here he worked as a farmer, cowboy, and buffalo hunter. He served as sheriff in several cities and also dealt in ranching operations. He owned property here from 1891 to 1900. In 1908 he was killed in New Mexico after an argument over land, but many people assumed that the quarrel was merely a ruse to force Garrett to fight or be murdered from ambush. 1970

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Black, Reading Wood

1852

Reading Wood Black, merchant, county commissioner, Indian commissioner, and legislator, was born on September 23, 1830, in Springfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, the son of Thomas and Mary Grey (Wood) Black. At Springfield he attended the Upper Friends' School. In 1847 he became owner and manager of the 144-acre Clover Hill farm in nearby Northampton Township. Influenced by his cousin, Capt. William Reading Montgomery of the Eighth United States Infantry, who was then assigned to Fort Gates, Black moved to Texas in the spring of 1852. On April 14, in partnership with Nathan L. Stratton, who had accompanied him from New Jersey, Black purchased an undivided half league and labor of land near the head of the Leona River at the site of present-day Uvalde. One of his nearest neighbors was William Washington Arnett . Black entered into stock raising and acquired a thousand head of sheep. He erected a substantial stone building. With the aid of San Antonio lithographer William C. A. Thielepape , he then laid out a town that he called Encina (now Uvalde). Black also opened a store, cleared a garden, and operated a limekiln and two rock quarries. On June 12, 1854, he purchased an additional 640 acres in order to accommodate more stock and expand his town. In 1858 he built a gristmill, and by 1860 he owned a wagon train that freighted between San Antonio and Piedras Negras. As Uvalde's population grew between 1856 and 1861, Black prospered, and on January 6, 1859, he married Permilia Jane McKinney. Black was a Quaker. He was remarkably friendly to local Indians, especially the Tonkawas, and on several occasions helped to formulate treaties with the various groups living on or near the Rio Grande. He was not entirely a pacifist, however, but helped to organize and commanded a militia company for protection against marauding Comanches in 1856. In June of that year his company and one from the Sabinal area defeated a Comanche war party some thirty miles below Uvalde, thus effectively stopping Indian raids for two years. In September 1855 he established the first school in what is now Uvalde County, and in November he successfully lobbied the state legislature to organize Uvalde County and have his town named the county seat. On April 21, 1856, he was elected county commissioner. On May 12 he and his fellow commissioners completed formal organization and on June 14 named Encina county seat. Black was reelected county commissioner in 1858 and elected county judge in 1860. Although opposed to secession , he took the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America and continued doing business as usual until the murder of a number of prisoners by Confederate militiamen after the battle of the Nueces , on August 10, 1862. Repulsed by the anti-Unionist activities of Confederate home guards, Black moved to Mexico and remained there until the end of the Civil War . By then he had amassed $50,000 worth of property in Coahuila. In June 1866 he was the Unionist nominee for Congress from the Seventy-first District. He easily defeated Samuel A. Maverick and S. C. Thompson, then returned to Uvalde in July 1866 in anticipation of the opening of the legislature in August. In the legislature he strongly supported ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguing that the Texas failure to support the amendment would be interpreted by the Radical Republicans as a sign of disloyalty to the Union. Black did not stand for reelection when his term expired in November 1866. In September 1867 he attempted to form a Union League in Uvalde. This "act of disloyalty" to Texas and the South so incensed his former friend G. W. (Tom) Wall that on the morning of October 3 Wall murdered Black in his own store in the presence of several witnesses. Wall fled to Mexico and never returned to Texas. Black's papers, preserved in the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas, were edited in 1933 by Ike Moore and published as The Life and Diary of

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Briscoe, Dolph, Jr.

1973

Dolph Briscoe, Jr., rancher, businessman, legislator, and the forty-first governor of Texas, was born on April 23, 1923, in Uvalde. He was the only child of Dolph Briscoe, Sr. , and Georgie Briscoe. He grew up in Uvalde and graduated from Uvalde High School as valedictorian. While a student at the University of Texas at Austin, he met and married Betty Jane Slaughter (known informally as Janey) of Austin in 1942. Briscoe earned his degree in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II before returning to ranching in South Texas. The elder Briscoe was a business partner of Ross Sterling , who was elected governor in 1930. Following Sterling's defeat in the 1932 Democratic gubernatorial primary, the younger Briscoe wrote: Governor and Mrs. Sterling insisted that we travel to Austin and spend the weekend in the Governor's Mansion before he left office....Governor and Mrs. Sterling let me sleep in the bed of my hero Sam Houston . It was quite a thrill for a young man to know that he was sleeping in the same bed that the great Sam Houston had slept in. From that day forward, I had a burning ambition to get back to the mansion. It was a formative experience. Briscoe's own family had historic Texas connections-their ancestor Andrew Briscoe had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence . Ranching came before politics, however. After returning from the war, Briscoe enjoyed a successful ranching career. In 1960 Briscoe was elected president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association . During his tenure he focused the association's efforts on eradicating screwworms, which were a scourge of the ranching industry because they killed cattle, goats, and sheep. Politically, Briscoe was a conservative Democrat and a protege of his Uvalde neighbor, Vice President John Nance Garner , who had left politics following an unsuccessful bid for the 1940 Democratic presidential nomination. Through Garner, Briscoe met many leading Democratic leaders of the day, including President Harry S. Truman, Senator (later President) Lyndon B. Johnson , and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn . In 1948 Briscoe was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, where he promoted the implementation of the state's farm-to-market road system. He continued as a representative until 1957, declining to seek reelection so he could focus on managing the family ranching business. Briscoe remained in touch with Texas politics during his time away from Austin, and in 1968 he sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, losing to eventual winner Preston Smith . However, Briscoe made a strong showing in the primary and was encouraged to seek the governorship when the time was right. The Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal set the stage for a successful Briscoe candidacy. The scandal, which initially focused on charges that state officials profited from certain business deals in exchange for the passage of legislation favored by Houston developer Frank Sharp, grew to such proportions that Texas voters were in an anti-incumbent mood. Briscoe won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against a field including both incumbent Governor Smith and incumbent Lieutenant Governor Barnes and Sissy Farenthold, a state representative. Briscoe went on to win the general election in November 1972. Upon taking office in 1973, Briscoe said his two major goals were to restore public confidence in state government following the Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal and to ensure that state government service could be provided without tax increases. He focused on highway improvement, additional new state funding for education, and later advocated and achieved passage of the Texas Open Roads Act-a measure granting public access to the records of state government agencies. He also served as chairman of the Southern Governors Association, headed the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, and served on the National Petroleum Council. Briscoe's tenure would also be remembered for his closing

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Evans, Dale

1912

Dale Evans, actress, singer, and wife of Roy Rogers, was born Frances Octavia Smith in Uvalde, Texas, on October 31, 1912, the first child of Walter and Betty Sue Smith, who farmed in Italy, Texas. She discovered in 1954 that her original name was Lucille Wood Smith, according to her birth certificate, but her mother insisted this was a mistake. The same document indicated that she was born on October 30, not October 31, but Dale Evans chose to accept the latter date as her birthday. The Smith family moved to Osceola, Arkansas, when Frances was seven, and she entered high school at the age of twelve. At the age of fourteen she eloped with Thomas Frederick Fox, two years older, who left her twice within the first six months of their marriage. After the birth of their son, Tom Jr., the following year, she moved back in with her parents, who had relocated to Memphis, Tennessee. She divorced Fox, who had left a third and final time, in 1929, and married August Wayne Johns. The two divorced in 1935. Her show-business career began in Memphis while she was working as a secretary for an insurance company. Her boss overheard her singing to herself in the office and suggested she appear on a local radio show the company sponsored. The station that aired the show then asked her to become a regular. Evans's efforts to pursue a career as a singer took her from Memphis to Chicago, Louisville, and Dallas over the next few years, but she achieved only marginal success. In Louisville, where she had found work with radio station WHAS using the name Marian Lee, the station manager reportedly suggested she change her name to the more euphonious Dale Evans. She then moved to Dallas to be near her parents, who had moved back to Italy, Texas, and found a job as a singer on radio station WFAA 's Early Birds program. In 1937 she married a third time, to Robert Dale Butts, a pianist and bandleader whom she had dated in Louisville. Butts had moved to Dallas and got a job with WFAA as well. The couple moved back to Chicago, where Butts was hired as a composer-arranger with NBC and Evans joined the Anson Weeks Orchestra for a tour of the Midwest and West Coast. After the tour she returned to Chicago, where she worked for local CBS affiliate WBBS during the day and sang in clubs at night. Hollywood agent Joe Rivkin heard her on the radio and persuaded her to try out for the female lead in the movie Holiday Inn , starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. She failed to land the part, supposedly because she wasn't a good enough dancer (it went to Marjorie Reynolds instead), but executives at Twentieth Century Fox saw her screen test and signed her to a one-year contract. She had small parts in Girl Trouble and Orchestra Wives in 1942. When her contract with Fox expired, she got a job as a vocalist on the Chase and Sanborn Hour radio show, starring Don Ameche, Jimmy Durante, and Edgar Bergen, but her option was not renewed in the fall of 1943. She signed a one-year contract with Republic and landed a singing part in the country musical Swing Your Partner . During the next year she appeared in several films, including Here Comes Elmer , Hoosier Holiday , and In Old Oklahoma (which starred John Wayne), while performing in numerous USO and Hollywood Victory Committee shows. In 1943 Republic proclaimed its singing Western star Roy Rogers–born Leonard Slye in Duck Run, Ohio–the "King of the Cowboys." Republic head Herbert Yates, inspired by the success of the stage musical Oklahoma! , decided that Rogers's next Western should feature a more prominent role for a female costar. The film was The Cowboy and the Señorita , and Evans won the role despite her lack of experience riding horses. The movie was an immediate success, and Rogers and Evans were paired in four more movies in 1944: Yellow Rose of Texas, Lights of Old Santa Fe, Song of Nevada, and San Fernando Valley. Evans's marriage to Butts ended in divorce in 1945, and Rogers's wife Arline died of an embolism short

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Uvalde, Texas

Music in Uvalde

Songs About Uvalde

Artists From Uvalde

Rivers & Roads in Song near Uvalde

History of Uvalde

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Uvalde, TX RoadyGoat

Newton Boys - Uvalde

Fisher, King

Garrett, Pat

Black, Reading Wood

Briscoe, Dolph, Jr.

Evans, Dale

Things to Do in Uvalde

Everything Near Uvalde