Texas history from the Texas State Historical Association
9/24/1903: G&I train arrives in Port Bolivar–three years late!
On this day in 1903, a Gulf and Inter-State Railway passenger train from Beaumont pulled into Port Bolivar slightly more than three years behind schedule. The Galveston hurricane of September 8, 1900, had destroyed the G&I’s tracks and trapped a G&I train near Port Bolivar; damage from the storm forced the company into receivership, though it was subsequently returned to its owners. It took three years, however, for the company to finance and complete the repairs to its track. The G&I had been chartered in 1894 and acquired in 1898 by two contractors interested in developing a new port on the upper Texas coast. In conjunction with their plan, the Santa Fe Railway organized the Santa Fe Dock and Channel Company to build docks and rail arteries at Port Bolivar. The railroad operated daily passenger service until 1930, when operations were reduced to a tri-weekly train between Port Bolivar and Beaumont. A number of cattle-shipping pens and flag stops made the train’s schedule “highly irregular.” By 1994, the line’s last remaining track had been absorbed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
9/25/1922: Radio broadcasting comes to South Texas
On this day in 1922, WOAI-San Antonio, the first radio station in South Texas, began broadcasting. The station, founded by G. A. C. Halff, had an initial power of 500 watts. It grew to 5,000 watts by 1925–considered powerful at that time. On February 6, 1928, WOAI joined the world’s first communication network, the National Broadcasting Company. It eventually became a clear channel operating with 50,000 watts. WOAI was one of the first stations to employ a local news staff. One of its greatest achievements was a regular Sunday broadcast of “Musical Interpretations,” featuring Max Reiter, conductor of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.
9/27/1948: First TV station in Texas goes on the air
On this day in 1948, WBAP-Fort Worth became the first television station in Texas–and indeed in the whole South–to go on the air, carrying a speech by President Harry Truman. The station grew out of Fort Worth’s first radio station, also called WBAP, established in 1922 by Amon Carter, owner of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. By 1950 six TV stations were operating in Texas, including three in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In the early 1950s stations in San Antonio and Fort Worth began broadcasting live programs by use of coaxial cable. In 1953 four major television networks served Texas: the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and Dumont. In that year network broadcasting was made possible across the state via Bell Telephone System facilities.
9/27/1956: Babe Zaharias dies of cancer
On this day in 1956, Mildred Ella (Babe) Zaharias died at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. She was born in Port Arthur and played semi-pro basketball with the Golden Cyclones while employed by Employers Casualty Company of Dallas. She was an all-around track and field star in the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union Championships, where she broke four world records. In the 1932 Olympics she set three world records. After turning to golf in 1933, she won the Texas Women’s Amateur Golf Championship before being ruled ineligible as an amateur. In 1948 she helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Babe was the LPGA’s leading money winner between 1949 and 1951. After a cancer operation in 1953 she went on to win five more tournaments, and also played for cancer benefit tournaments. In 1955 she established the Babe Zaharias Trophy to honor outstanding women athletes. She was forty-five when she died. She is buried in Beaumont.
9/30/1972: Guadalupe Mountains National Park established
On this day in 1972, Guadalupe Mountains National Park was established. The 76,293-acre park in Hudspeth and Culberson counties includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at over 8,700 feet. Indian rock art sites indicate Native American occupation as far back as 12,000 years, and the Apaches lived in the Guadalupe Mountains as late as the 1880s. In the 1920s J. C. Hunter purchased the Guadalupe Mountain Ranch and raised Angora goats there. Efforts to preserve the land as a park date to the 1930s when Hunter’s son offered to donate 300 acres of scenic McKittrick Canyon to the state of Texas. By the 1960s land donations and sales to the National Park Service paved the way for the establishment of a national park. Guadalupe Mountains National Park contains eighty miles of trails, and the maple and hardwood trees of McKittrick Canyon offer brilliant fiery hues for hikers in the autumn.
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