The Father of the Big Bend

Lem Londos Railsback, Texas A&M International University
William Hugh Brown, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Origin and Purpose of This Memorial
     In our post-industrial, technological complex of the current American Dream, we operate in fast modes. We eat fast foods fastly. We devour up-to-the-minutes “news”—both relevant and irrelevant sound bytes. We pay fast prices for our latest styles and trends in clothing. We drive fast. We talk fast over our cell phones and our land lines. We watch fast presentations of television merchandisers whose presentations fill up more and more of the shows that we happen to be watching at any given moment. Some of us are said to live “fast lives” with all of those “fast girls” and/or “fast guys,” depending on one’s preference.¹ And, too often, we think so fast that we really don’t think at all. For example, while we are talking fast over the cell phone in the left hand, barely steering with the right hand to make it through the yellow light before it changes, cuddling the baby in the lap, and looking at the prices of the new clothes in the shop windows, we do not always seem to be aware of all of the potential threats to life and limb and baby. For another example, our “best representatives of our culture”--the Members of Congress²--apparently pass laws so fast that they leave out certain safeguards and sanctions that are required to perpetuate the notion that we are a land under a common law. For example, a few years ago, our Congress passed legislation that required any new toilet tanks to be manufactured at a smaller size so that we would use less water with every flush. When the new tanks were put into operation, it turned out that to properly flush everything down the toilet, two flushes were necessary. The chief consequent of that new law was to use more water than ever before. For a recent example, I refer you to the new legislation on the approved size and type of light bulbs that are filled with mercury; by the way, those light bulbs are imported from the People’s Republic of China. Finally, look at the favoritism shown by our Congress and our Administration for the Wall Street Gang and Related Operators in the very recent “bailout” for nearly a trillion dollars!  Perhaps most sadly, we fashion our family life in a fast factory mode, and we fashion our schools in the same fast factory modes. Over time, quantitative “accountability” takes precedence over qualitative accountability. With luck, we can eventually—in fact, probably very soon--literally run our culture and ourselves and our American Dream and our children “into the ground” at a very fast speed
     In the culture that I grew up in, certain customs were taken for granted, principally because just about everybody followed those customs, generation after generation. I grew up in a village, and we were all very customary. For example, “I never worked for anybody who had less money than I did!”³ As far as I can tell, that custom holds true across the entire United States. Well, if that custom is still being honored, and if we are already a “service-rendering work force,” then who are we going to be working for in the next twenty years? Mainland China already heads the list of nations to whom we already owe vast sums of money; Japan closely follows; and—Believe it or not!!!—Mexico occupies fifth place on that list! If the United States of Mexico enjoys the fifth place on the list of nations to whom we already own vast sums of money, and if we are a highly trained work force of service providers, then just who do you think is going to pay for all of those services in twenty years? Do we need to begin sharpening up our language skills with “Nijou,”⁴ with “O-HI-O,”⁵ with “Buenas Dias,”⁶ or with some other greeting of the language of yet another nation to whom we already owe vast sums of money? We have been consuming so fast that we have moved into a fastly deteriorating economic, social, and ethical quality of life.
     Of course, our current dilemma is our own fault, both individually and jointly. We have moved so fast that we seem to have lost—or, at least, to have ignored—our much slower and thoughtful past. Do any of you all remember what reflective thought is? Do any of you all remember how critical thinking skills are constructed with the close and competent assistance from parents, siblings, grandparents, and schools?
     As we have been told by thoughtful and truthful individuals, as far back as 25,000 years ago in the West⁷, we were still sitting around the fires, eating and drinking and telling stories. And we took the time to eat well, to drink well, and to tell the best stories with the most flair that we could muster with our imaginations. Of course, to do all that takes a lot of time. You know that you can enjoy a really good and plentiful meal only if you have enough time to thoroughly enjoy it. You know that you can enjoy a really good and plentiful series of drinks only if you have enough time to thoroughly enjoy them, one by one. And, most certainly, you can tell the biggest, most bodacious, and heroic story only if you have enough time to put in all of the really important details.
     From those stories around the fires come our culture. From our culture comes the daily customs or routines of our daily lives. But if we rush headlong through our daily lives, never taking the time to reflect, to make significant ethical choices, to help one another, then we simply end up as consuming pawns of the corporate merchandisers. As soon as our consuming skills run out, the merchandisers simply re-direct their attentions to another mob of consumers.  
     Today, I want to direct your attention to another time--“a  slower time,” if you will, that held a very different context of hope, reflection, commitment, and action. And, within that different context, I want to sketch a genuine hero “of the old school.” This hero probably would never be considered to be “a good consumer” in today’s markets or a “fast man” in today’s social arenas. But his contribution added yet another opportunity for each of your lives and for all other Americans, living and dead. That man was Everett Ewing Townsend.
The Man
     On October 20, 1871, in Colorado County, Texas, Wallace and Margaret Long Townsend had a son whom they named Everett Ewing Townsend. Growing up in a harsh frontier, Everett learned the skills to survive in the stringent cattle ranching culture and the backbone to stand up for what he believed in. When he was ten, his family moved to Wharton and later to Eagle Pass, Texas. When his father got too sick to support his family, Everett quit school in order to keep his family going; he was thirteen years of age. When he reached nineteen, Everett used a “white lie” about his age in order to join Company E, Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers, a rather famous legendary law enforcement organization in early Texas. Three years of hard work and his good reputation earned him, when he was only twenty-two years old, an appointment to the post of deputy United States Marshall.⁸ By May 1894, Everett had earned an appointment as a United States Customs mounted inspector for the Presidio County region. As a mounted inspector, Everett traversed the entire region lying within the meandering Big Bend of the Rio Grande.⁹ And he was immensely impressed with the majestic mountains, the desert areas,¹⁰ and and steep river channels—for example, the Santa Elena Canyon. While tracking some mules that had been stolen from a Mexican citizen, Everett rode into the Chisos (“Ghosts”) Mountains, heart of the modern national park. From the South Rim of those Chisos Mountains, he viewed the enormous expanse. As one later biographer has noted, Everett felt that day as if he was finally able to “see God as he had never seen Him before and so overpoweringly impressed him that he made note of its awesomeness…”¹¹ On that day—August 31, 1894—Townsend determined to somehow save that corner of the world for posterity.
     Throughout his journeys through the Big Bend during all those years, Everett pursued his sworn duties and made friends wherever he went on both side of the Big River. In 1918, he was elected sheriff of Brewster County. After serving three terms and turning down a fourth, Everett was elected in 1932 as Representative to the Texas Legislature. He co-authored the bill to establish Texas Canyons State Park in March 1933. Later, in the same year, he and his colleagues succeeded in expanding the boundaries of the park and in re-naming it Big Bend State Park. His intent was clear, as he stressed in his letter to a U.S. Army Officer friend.
     I wish you would take a map of the State showing the counties, put your pencil point on the   Rio Grande, just were the Brewster and Presidio County line hit that stream; then draw a line due East and at a distance of sixty miles it will again strike the River. My dream is to make the area South of this line into a park and I shall live to see it done.”¹²
Over the next decade, Everett worked tirelessly with state officials, with officials in the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, with the U.S. Army, with members of the Texas legislature, with government officials from both the United States of America and the United States of Mexico, with his good neighbors and long-time friends on both sides of the Big River, and with the general public to publicize and promote the benefits of an international effort to transform the majestic site into a national treasure. With J.O. Langford—owner of the Hot Springs health spa in the Big Bend, Amon Carter—owner of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and others, Everett envisioned an international park with free access on the north for citizens of the United States of America and with free access on the south for citizens of the United States of Mexico.¹³
     Exactly square with President Roosevelt’s new “Good Neighbor Policy,” Everett proudly proclaimed in 1934 the benefits of his envisioned international cooperation.
     Undoubtedly such a great recreational area would go far toward bringing the two races  closer together. [It] would tend to solidify more securely the friendship that has been forming for some years. [Big Bend would provide] a zona libre, in which the tourist upon entering the gate of the Park on either side would find himself free from all customs and immigration regulations so long as he stayed within its bounds. [Big Bend] would create ties of kindly sentiment that would multiply and become stronger between the Mexican and American peoples, now almost unknown to each other, as the future years roll by.¹⁴
Momentum of the enthusiasm for a national park on the Big River grew until, finally, the State of Texas paid $ 1.5 million to private owners for an additional 600,000 acres. In light of his tireless personal promotion and his massive media campaigning for the park, Amon Carter was given the honor of delivering the deed for the national park to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a June 6, 1944, ceremony at the White House.¹⁵ Everett’s dedication, tenacity, energy, and his reputation and good name finally brought his lifelong dream into fruition.  President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, but his successor President Harry Truman appointed Everett as the first Commissioner of Big Bend National Park.  After working so tenaciously for, after achieving, and, finally, after living a dream come true, Everett died in 1948.
The Legacy
     The national park of the big bend in the river encompasses 1,252 square miles (The size of the Park approximates that of our state of Rhode Island.). It holds “the largest protected area of Chihuahuan Desert topography and ecology in the United States,” special “geologic and paleontologic resources” for study (Several astronauts “trained” in the Big Bend because the topography resembled that of the moon.), “Cretaceous and Tertiary fossil organisms,” and artifacts over 9,000 years old.¹⁶ Big Bend is home for “over 1,000 species of plants, 78 mammals, 56 reptiles, 10 amphibians, 35 fish, and 434 birds (more than any other United States park and more than half the species of birds in North America.) Endangered species found at Big Bend are the peregrine falcon, black-capped vireo, Mexican long-nosed bat, and Big Bend gambusia (a tiny fish found only in the park). There are several species in the United States that can only be found in Big Bend: Del Carmen white-tail deer, Colima warbler, Mexican drooping juniper. The Chisos agave lives nowhere else in the world. In 1976 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization designed Big Bend a “Man and the Biosphere” international reserve, one of only twenty-eight in the United States.”¹⁷ In short, a wide variety of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, and plants live and thrive in the Park.¹⁸ In addition, “about 3600 insect species” share the park. According to Wikipedia, “Given its harsh environment, Big Bend has an amazing variety and number of plants and animal species…The diversity of life is largely due to the diverse ecology and changes in elevation, ranging from the dry, hot desert to the cool mountains to the fertile river valley.”¹⁹
     Its vastness, its steep peaks, its deep canyons, its natural inhabitants, and its majestic sunrises and sunsets make the Park a wonderful experience to behold. ²⁰ A different slant was provided in the nineteenth century, according to John Jameson²¹ by a scientific visitor to the area who published his impression in the Century Magazine in 1901.
    In 1899 geologist-explorer Robert T. Hill offered a different perspective, this time from the depths of one of the canyons. Here he spent three days blocked by the rock slide within Santa Elena Canyon. ‘The scene within this canon [Spanish “n” is pronounced as English “ny” to produce English word “canyon.”] is of unusual beauty,’ he wrote. ‘The austerity of the cliffs is softened by colors which camera or pen cannot reproduce. These rich tints are like the yellow marble of Portugal and Algiers, warmed by reddening tones which become golden in the sunlight.’
     Hill could not always find fitting similes for what he saw. ‘Every other aspect of the Big Bend Country—landscape configuration, rocks, and vegetation—is weird and strange,’ he wrote, ‘and of a type unfamiliar to the inhabitants of civilized lands.’ The Terlingua Desert, according to Hill, was ‘one of the most bizarre pieces of landscape that can be imagined,’ and the Chisoso Mountains (los Chisos = the ghosts) were ‘weird forms…appropriately named.’ From painful firsthand experience he described the ‘spiteful vegetation’ which ‘wounded, caught, held, or anchored…at every step away from the beaten trails.’ Climbing out of a canyon’s depths, he observed the contrast between ‘the green ribbon of river’ and the ‘stony, soiless hills,’ noting that the ‘sight of this aridity almost within reach of the torrent of life-giving waters below…was shocking and repulsive to the harsh desert.
And other visions are offered by later visitors, according to John Jameson,²²
     According to local folklore, an old forgotten cowboy at the turn of the century gave directions to the Big Bend by telling travelers to ‘go south from Fort Davis until you come to the place where rainbows wait for rain, and the big river is kept in a stone box, and water runs uphill. And the mountains float in the air, except at night when they go away to play with other mountains.’ Decades later, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall described the ‘awesome, silent splendor of Big Bend’ with its ‘spectacular mountain and desert scenery, the myriad of wildly improbable geological structures, all enclosed in the great bend of the Rio Grande,’ all of which ‘combine to provide an unearthly sense of visiting another world.’
In 1966,Secretary Udall, his wife, First Lady Ladybird Johnson, Liz Carpenter, and others toured the Big Bend together to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. Park Service and to promote Ladybird’s SEE AMERICA FIRST Campaign. After a jostling and literally wild trip throughout the Park, they took a splashing journey down the Big River on inflatable rafts. In her remarks at the National Park Foundation’s Inaugural Founders Award Dinner in October 2007,²³ First Lady Bush alluded to Ladybird’s trip down the Rio and to Ladybird’s cleaning up of the nation’s highways, national monuments, and some neighborhoods. The recent United States House of Representatives resolution—passed on July 10, 2007--celebrated the 63rd anniversary of the Big Bend: in that resolution, Everett Ewing Townsend is clearly recognized as “the father of Big Bend National Park.”²⁴
Ancestors/Roots
     Everett Ewing Townsend was descended from a long line of hardy, persevering, and adventurous souls. The Juneaus, the earliest ancestors of Everett that we have record of, participated in the Norman Conquest of England. Over several centuries, the Norman influence waned, and the Juneaus changed their family name to Jaynes. Eventually, several of them migrated to Texas. One of them, Judge Jaynes owned and worked land where the new Mental Health Hospital in Austin, Texas, now stands. He was so respected in the frontier that he had planned to run for president of the new nation of Texas. But one afternoon, a band of Tankawa Indians rode up to his house. Believing that the Tankawas were friendly, Judge Jaynes walked out, carrying an infant son, to greet them. One of the indicans shot an arrow through the heart of Judge Jaynes, narrowly missing the infant. Another one of the Judge’s sons was taken by the Indians and never seen again. ²⁵ Another Jaynes descendants married a Captain McFarland who carried, along with other cargo, African slaves.²⁶ In time, the Townsend family joined the Jaynes lineage. The following is Dr. W.H. Brown’s delineation of that.
     Since the 18th Century, the Townsends have lived variously in Virginia, Alabama, Florida, and Texas. William Wallace Townsend was the last of the Townsends to own slaves. He was born in 1833 in Madison, Florida. His first wife died shortly after their marriage. Eventually, he and other Townsends migrated to Columbus, Texas. When the War Between the States came, Confederate Captain W.W. Townsend led some Texas cavalry to fight the Yankees. He was wounded by a rifle ball in the leg, but, somehow, he avoided almost mandatory amputation.  After the war, he and other “rebel” soldiers went to Mexico to fight as mercenary troops. His second wife died while in Mexico and is buried in Tuxpan, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He brought back to the United States on horseback an infant son Addie Web Townsend. His third wife is buried in Alpine, Texas. She is my great grandmother. William Wallace Townsend’s children that I knew were Olive Townsend—my grandmother—and her two brothers Everett Ewing Townsend and William Henry Townsend—my great uncles.  
     “Uncle Everett,” as he was known to all who were younger than he, was a family hero. He led an adventurous life and was always a leader. I have a photograph of him with a group of now called “Texas  Rangers; then called “State Rangers.” The photo was taken in 1892  during his first service with the Rangers. His Ranger company chased “Tequileros” from Mexico to prohibit the importation of illegal tequila. When he left the Rangers to work as a Mounted Custom Inspector, he patrolled an area from Presidio all the way to the frontage with Boquillas, Coahulla, Mexico. He married Alice Jones in Valentine, Texas, and the couple rode the distance from Presidio to Boquillas many times on horseback, camping along the way. Later, Everett began managing a huge ranch near Pecos, Texas: he enlarged and improved the ranch and increased cattle production significantly.
     In about 1920, Everett ran for and was elected Sheriff of Brewster County: he held that post for three terms. During his first term, he shot and killed, in a “John Wayne-style gun fight” an individual intent on robbing the local movie house in Alpine. The would-be robber shot first, hitting Everett over his heart, but the would-be robber’s small .32-20 caliber bullet struck a small notebook in Everett’s vest pocket that stopped the bullet’s penetration. (The notebook is in—or should be²⁷—in the “E.E. Townsend Papers” of the Museum of the Big Bend at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.)
     After he refused a fourth term as Sheriff of Brewster County, Uncle Everett ran for and was elected State Representative of Brewster County. While he served as State Representative, he was very instrumental in the creation of the Big Bend National Park. United State President Harry S. Truman appointed Uncle Everett as the Park’s first Commissioner. Collier’s Magazine did a story on the event that included a two-page photograph of him and all his relatives, including my parents. The photo was taken in front of the Museum of the Big Bend on the Sul Ross State University campus.
     My other great uncle was William Henry Townsend from Eagle Pass, Texas. One day, a rancher from Maverick County near the El Indio village rode into close-by Eagle Pass to alert the townspeople that some Mexican bandits had chased him out of his house and moved into it. A band of armed men from Eagle Pass then rode downriver on horseback to chase the bandits of the rancher’s home. On their way, they picked up a recently immigrated Englishman who worked a small ranch on the way to El Indio. Most of the men didn’t want to take the Englishman because they didn’t think he would be able to help; however, he insisted and they took him with them. Upon reaching the occupied ranch house, which was close to the Rio Grande, they took up positions around the house called for the intruders to surrender. The intruders began shooting and wounded one of the men from Eagle Pass. The Eagle Pass band decided to leave the scene so that they could take the wounded man back to Eagle Pass. As they arrived back in town, they realized that they had forgot the Englishman. So they rode back the next day to retrieve him, if he were still alive. They found him where he had been originally positioned. He was O.K., but six dead bandits were found on the trail that they had attempted to use to reach the river and Mexico.²⁸
Truly, the Jaynes, the McFarland, and Townsend families together produced a long line of hardy, persevering, and adventurous souls.  And, very likely, the brightest stars of that centuries-old saga was Everett Ewing Townsend. Rather fittingly, “the second highest point in the Chisos Mountains is named Townsend Point in honor of Everett.”²⁹
Postscript by First Author
     I originally grew interested in Mr. Townsend from listening to family stories told by his nephew, Dr. William Hugh Brown. There were more heroic stories than I could include here; however, I did want to offer here to you a glimpse of a true Western hero.³⁰
     I wish to pass on Dr. Brown’s apology for his not being here today to share the presentation. As it turns out, recently, Dr. Brown, a veterinarian, was already in the “cow squeeze pen” and about to draw the blood from the particular cow. However, in some mysterious fashion, the cow got loose and effectively trampled Dr. Brown. Dr. Brown is now recovering from a hip replacement and can walk slowly with a cane. 
     Dr. Brown works as a licensed veterinarian for the United States Department of Agriculture in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Estados  Unidos  de Mexico. He works in the bi-national program for preventing the export into the commercial meat market of the United States of brucellosis-infected cattle. Brucellosis can be found in many parts of our world; it can affect cattle, goats, camels, dogs, pigs, and other animals. The disease in infected humans is called “undulant fever.” After the hired crew places a cow into a “squeeze chute,” Dr. Brown and a licensed veterinarian from Mexico draw blood from the cow. Then the blood is examined under a microscope and otherwise to determine whether or not the cow is infected with the “brucellosis” disease. If the cow/herd has/have brucellosis, the cow or herd is quarantined and, therefore, prevented from being exported.³¹
     Obviously, William Hugh Brown and his living kin continue living in the Jaynes, McFarland, and Townsend tradition as hardy, persevering, and adventurous souls.

SOURCES

Brown, William Hugh, Personal Interviews and Correspondences via E-Mail, Telephone Calls, and U.S. Postal Service from March through October 2008.

Bush, Laura, “Remarks  at  the National  Park  Foundation  Inaugural  Founders  Award Dinner,”  from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/new/releases/2007/1016.hrml.

Jameson, John (1996), “Prologue: A ‘Fabulous Corner of the World’: An Introduction to Big Bend,” The Story of Big Bend National Park,” pp. 1-7, from
http://www.utexas.edu/tupress/excerpts/exjamsto.html.

 Wilbarger, J.W. Indian Depredations in Texas, from
http://www.amazon.com/Indian-Depredations-Texas-J-Wilbarger/dp/o938349759
and  from  personal  interviews  with  William  Hugh  Brown,  a descendant who re-told the story with much more flair and detail.

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Big Bend National Park: Everett Townsend,” from
http://www.nps.gov/bibe/historyculture.eetiwnsend.htm.

“Amphibian  and  Reptile  Checklists  of  the  United  States : Big  Bend National Park,” USGS Science for a Changing World of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center from
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resources/birds/chekbird/r2/bendrep.htm.

“Big Bend National Park,” Wikipedia, from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bend_National_Park.

“Big Bend National Park,” The Handbook of Texas Online from
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/gkb2.html.

“Bird Checklists of the United States: Big Bend National Park,” USGS Science for a Changing  World  of   the  Northern  Prairie  Wildlife  Research  Center  from
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resources/birds/chekbird/r2/bendrep.htm.

“Brucellosis,” from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brucellosis.

“Chapter Two.  Saving  the  Last Frontier: Texas, Mexico, and the Big Bend National
Park Initiative, 1930-1935, p. 40, from   
 http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:iLlxHFVGeOEJ:www.nps.gov.

“Mammal  Checklists of the United States: Big Bend National Park,” USGS Science for a Changing World of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center from
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resources/birds/chekbird/r2/bendrep.htm.

1. Although I have no personal knowledge about the subject, I understand from some of the male office hands that some of us even mate fast.
2. I already know that some of you are going to argue with this depiction. I would, too. However, please remembers that I am just trying to make a point by using an obvious exaggeration.
3. Shades of former Senator Phil Gram!!!
4. Mandarin Chinese for a respectful “Good Day!”
5. A lose translation of an ancient Japanese greeting as “I salute the gods that are within you!”
6. Spanish for “Good Day!”
7. I am sure that closely similar events and processes occurred also in the East; however, because I am not familiar with that part of the world, I cannot vouch for that supposition; in other words, I refrain from reporting on things about which I do not know. In such case, then, I will draw my suppositions here only about the West.
8. Where were you, career-wise, at the age of 22?
9. Outsiders often say “Rio Grande River,” but since the first Spanish word means “river” and the other Spanish word means “big,” to say “Rio Grande River” is to be conspicuously redundant.
10. Northern reaches of the Mexican Chihuahuan Desert  intrude into the Big Bend area.
11. As cited in “Big Bend National Park: EVERETT TOWNSEND from http://www.nps.gov/bibe/historyculture/eetownsend.htm.
12. Ibid, p. 2.
13. Apparently, not all of Everett’s neighbors agreed with all of that free access.
14. “Chapter Two. Saving the Last Frontier: Texas, Mexico, and the Big Bend National Park Initiative, 1930-1935, p. 40,  from http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:iLIxHFVGeOEJ:www.nps.gov.
15. http://www.nps.gov/bibe/historyculture/tgttn.htm
16. “Big Ben National Park,” from http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Big_Bend_National_Park.
17. “Big Bend National Park,” The Handbook of Texas Online from
    http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/gkb2.html. 
18. For an exhaustive list of inhabitants, see “Amphibian and Reptile Checklists of the United States: Big Bend National Park,” USGS: Science for a Changing World of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center from http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resources/birds/chekbird/r2/bendrep.htm. From the same Center, also see “Bird Checklists of the United States: Big Bend National Park,” http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/chekbird/r2/bendinfo.htm. Finally, see “Mammal Checklists of the United States: Big Bend National Park,” http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/checkbird/r2/bendmam.htm .
19. “Big Bend National Park,” p. 5, Wikipedia, from http://enk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bend_National_Park.
20. Of course, such beholding should be performed with safety and attention to basics. Back in 1955, two of us Sul Ross freshmen heard the beckoning of the Park, and we answered the call. We drove a 1955 Chevrolet to the dirt ends of the road all the way to the only general store around. The owner and his son wore guns while waiting on the customers. After we stocked up on essentials—beer (At $ 1.00 per bottle, and this was 1955!) and chips and canned potted meat, we proceeded to the river where the natives on the other side used dugouts to cross back and forth across the river.  (They also used their tortillas, in the absence of forks and knives and spoons, to “pick up” the food from their plates.) We even attempted to mount the mountain rising from the Santa Elena Canyon (even though there was no road). At about mid-way, we burned out the transmission. We spent the night on the edge of Santa Elena Canyon. We finally finished the beer and the chips and the canned potted meat. We heard animal cries—jaquar, coyote, screaming panthers, and ourselves—all night. As soon as dawn hit us, we walked back down the mountain next to Santa Elena Canyon, we walked back to the general store, we make arrangements with the owner for him to “flag” any departing guest with our story and our need for a ride out of the Park. The we began a long trek. Occasionally, we rested along the way. Finally, at about 2:00 in the afternoon, a Ford pickup began honking, and we broke into a hard run back to the road. They saw us, they laughed at us and with us as we explained what had happened, and they picked us up, and gave us a ride in the bed of the pickup. The man and his wife and his young teenage daughter sat in the cab; the daughter was holding a baby. My partner and I sat in the bed with three young children and a dog. They were going to a quincinera in Marathon, Texas. When we got to Marathon, we called a friend, another freshman, at Sul Ross to come to Marathon to pick us up. We were SOOOO HAPPY to be home!!! The next week, the three of us drove back to the Park and, with very strong cables, brought the Chevrolet back to Alpine. Needless to say, we never attempted to mountain that Santa Elena Canyon mountain again. (I understand that now they have build a paved road up and over that mountain.)   
21. John Jameson (1996), “Table of Contents and Excerpt,” The Story of Big Bend National Park, pp. 1-7, from http://www,utexas.edu/tupress/excerpts/exjamsto.html. 
22. Ibid.
23. Mrs. Bush’s Remarks at the National Park Foundation’s Inaugural Founders Award Dinner,” from
    http://www.whitehourse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071016,html.
24. “RECOGNIZING 63RD ANNIVERSARY OF BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK,” Congressional Record, Section 19, July 10, 2007 from
    http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=110-h20070710-19.
25. A larger rendition of this story can be found in J.W. Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Texas from http://www.amazon.com/Indian-Depredations-Texas-J-Wilbarger/dp/o938349759.
26. Dr. Brown, the co-author of this sketch and the great, great grandson of this McFarland, still holds the Captain’s telescope and gold watch.
27. Years ago, several descendants of Everett Ewing Townsend journeyed to this Museum of the Big Bend particularly to view the Townsend Collection and to perform some family history research. When they asked the young “curator” where the Townsend Collection was located in the Museum, the young and, apparently, untrained “curator” replied that he did not only not know the location of the Townsend Collection but that, as far as he knew, there was no such thing as the “Townsend Collection” anywhere in the Museum. This, in spite of the fact that Everett Ewing Townsend was one of the founders of the Museum and served for awhile as one of its earliest curators. Hopefully, some day the Museum will probably need to either organize its resources better or to hire better-equipped curators or both. Toward such end, a copy of this published article will be forwarded to said museum for said purposes.
28. Personal interviews, telephone calls, and e-mails between William Hugh Brown and Lem Londos Railsback from March through October 2008.
29. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Big Bend National Park: Everett Townsend,” p. 2, from http://www.nps.gov/bibe/historyculture/eetownsend.htm.
30. In different ways, Dr. Brown is also a hero. As a veterinarian, he has worked all over South Texas and Northern Mexico. He currently serves in the federal program that prohibits Mexican cattle infected with the “brucellosis” disease from entering the United States. 
31. An extended definition and history of this disease can be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brucellosis, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture links on the disease, in the technical links from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the disease, and in the additional 13,699,997 links on the disease. In short, brucellosis is a very serious threat, and undulant fever is terrible. We are lucky and skilled in the United States to have such an effective program being implemented daily by our U.S. Department of Agriculture!