Okay, for the Texas surveyors: who was the writer of this letter and what did Oklahoma ultimately lose?
Here's one tiny little clue showing what they did when they got to Van Horn:
Colonel A.A. Stiles developed and applied the gradient boundary that the US Supreme court adopted to settle the boundary dispute along the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma.
Since Oklahoma was Indian Territory and administered by the federal government the line was set along the south side of the river, not the middle.
My guess is that it was correspondence of the U. S. Geological Survey's outfit who had established an early vertical datum at Marfa known as the "MARFA Datum", and then moved to Van Horn where the "VAN HN Datum" was established.
As a bit of trivia, the writer was the same Arthur Stiles, employed as a topographer by the US Geological Survey who in 1897 or 1898 mapped parts of Deadwood quadrangle in South Dakota shown at the link below:
The name appears in the lower left corner of both 'Quad sheets' posted.
Yes, Arthur Stiles worked for more than ten years for the US Geological Survey as a topographer, mapping in Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, and likely a few other places. Then he left the USGS to run the State Reclamation Department that was organized in 1913.
If you read the qualifications written into the act by which the Texas legislature created the role of State Reclamation Engineer, it appears that the law was written with Mr. Stiles in mind:
Stiles hired several very good surveyors from the Austin City Engineer's staff in about 1913, notably Assistant City Engineers James P. Murray and R.G. Tyler, and set them to work making geodetic control and leveling surveys along various creeks and rivers that had been identified as targets for the work of the Reclamation Department. The whole effort resembled a Texas version of the US Geological Survey in some respects.
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
My grandfather, Hezekiah Cash, worked on Colonel Stiles' surveying crews in the Marfa area back in the day.
One of their 'camp pastimes' after a good amount of imbiberance was stealing the switching lanterns from nearby railroads. After a few months of collecting the lanterns they had way too many to actually travel with, soooo....
Near the Paisano Mountains, by the pass, they corralled a small herd of pronghorn antelope one night and tied the lit signal lanterns to several pronghorns and sent them to run along the foothills with the lit lanterns tied to their horns....
Apparently the locals enjoyed the show and it provided a much needed draw for the tourists. A few discreet locals have carried on the tradition to this day...;-)
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
> My grandfather, Hezekiah Cash, worked on Colonel Stiles' surveying crews in the Marfa area back in the day.
It's a great story, but all it took was seeing the Marfa Lights one cold evening in November to recognize that they were from an artificial source over the horizon that terrestrial refraction was making visible. The lights were refracted into a couple of different colors which wandered around and remerged into a single white source as the atmospheric refraction along the lightpath varied. What was obviously going on was the discontinuous spectrum of the artificial source was being split into its pieces by the refraction effect.
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
ssshhhhhh....
In most a large flat desert areas when the sun goes down the temps and the air really get to work. In Victorville, CA. I've seen headlights that were well over 20 miles away.
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
Did you guys know that a big part of the movie "no country for old men" was filmed in Marfa?
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
> Did you guys know that a big part of the movie "no country for old men" was filmed in Marfa?
Well, some of it was filmed around Van Horn, but I thought most of the filming was in New Mexico. The opening scenes of the aftermath of the shootout that were supposed to be in Terrell County certainly didn't look like Terrell County.
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
I did read that.
Another good "taco" western, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" was filmed around Van Horn and the Big Bend area.
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
That is a great "story." I was in Alpine several years ago and a bunch of us went out to watch the Marfa lights dance in the sky. Unlike Kent, I wasn't certain, and still aren't, as to what the source was. My dad grew up in Alpine and he talks about seeing the lights many times back in the late 30's through the 40's and his sisters having some other strange encounters out there between Alpine and Marfa. We have driven from El Paso to Alpine a few times (flew out from California for family reunions) and my daughters will always refer to the stretch between Van Horn and Marfa as the most desolate highway they have ever been on. It was also where I drove through one of the most intense thunder storms I have ever witnessed. The only one worse was at the Indian Lodge in the Davis Mountains that lasted several hours with constant lightening strikes on the mountains on either side of the lodge and a torrential downpour. I remember thinking that I was glad I wasn't out surveying or hiking when one of those moved in on a warm summer day.
I wonder if Mr. Penick
was related to the famous golf pro Harvey Penick, teacher of Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw?
Little known facts about Marfa, Texas
> The only one worse was at the Indian Lodge in the Davis Mountains that lasted several hours with constant lightening strikes on the mountains on either side of the lodge and a torrential downpour. I remember thinking that I was glad I wasn't out surveying or hiking when one of those moved in on a warm summer day.
Yes, I've been out surveying in the Davis Mountains when one of those thunderstorms arrived and it is something you don't forget anytime soon. All it took was one.
