1874 Red River view. Early immigrants make their way in an overcrowded boat down the swollen Texas river. Source: http:/

1. Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a fresh start, and Texas seemed to be the best place to find it.

2. 1874 Red River view. Early immigrants make their way in an overcrowded boat down the swollen Texas river. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

4. Kiowa and Cheyenne leaders pose in the White House conservatory with Mary Todd Lincoln (standing far right) on March 27, 1863, during meetings with President Abraham Lincoln, who hoped to prevent their lending aid to Confederate forces. The two Cheyenne chiefs seated at the left front, War Bonnet and Standing In the Water, would be killed the next year in the Sand Creek Massacre.

5. Southern Plains Indian tribes during the Red River War and location of reservations. Map courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.

6. The threat of Indian raids was a constant source of anxiety for settlers on the Texas frontier, particularly after U.S. troops left Texas during the Civil War years. Painting by Nola Davis, courtesy of Fort Richardson SHS, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

8. U.S. Army columns of the Red River War. Courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.

9. A Kiowa ledger drawing possibly depicting the Buffalo Wallow battle in 1874, one of several clashes between Southern Plains Indians and the U.S. Army during the Red River War.

12. Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000 buffalo hides baled for shipment. Dodge City, Kansas, 1878.

14. Kiowa brave. Tow-An-Kee, son of Lone Wolf. Killed in Texas in 1873. Photo, ca. 1867-1874, courtesy of the Center for American History, Caldwell Collection (#03962), The University of Texas at Austin. Kiowa camp, ca. 1867-1874. Photograph courtesy of the Center for American History, Frank Caldwell Collection (#10187), The University of Texas at Austin.

15. Topin Tone-oneo, daughter of Kicking Bird. The only one of the great Kiowa chief's children to survive him, she was with the first group sent to Carlisle Indian School in 1879. Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html Indians at Fort Marion. Indians of various tribes who were captured in the Texas Red River Wars and other Indian battles of the late 19th century were imprisoned at this Florida military fort. Photo ca. 1860s-1930s, courtesy the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (Lot 90-1 INV 09854500). Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html

16. Pupils at Carlisle Indian school, Pennsylvania. Established in 1879 by Richard Pratt, the school attempted to assimilate Indian children into the "white man's world" through education and financial support. Among its students were four of Comanche chief Quanah Parker's children and those of others involved in the Texas Indian Wars. Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html

18. Texas Cattle Trails Before the Civil War, the Shawnee Trail (far right) led Texas cattlemen to markets in Kansas City and St. Louis. Following the war, increased settlement closed that route, and in 1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blazed a trail west to the New Mexico and Colorado markets, called the Goodnight-Loving Trail (far left). Soon, however, railheads in Kansas led cowboys up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, and up the Western Trail to Dodge City and points north.

20. Roundup on Texas Ranch

21. Cover of The Beef Bonanza: How to Get Rich on the Plains, by Gen. James. S. Brisbin, one of the books that helped fuel the cattle boom of the early 1880's. (Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.)

22. Bucking Broncos

24. Cowboys branding mavericks in the 1880's

25. "Second Guard." A cowboy camp at night in the 1880's, with some cowboys bedding down while others prepare to head out for night duty watching over the herd. Photograph by F. M. Steele.

26. Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880's. This cowboy name for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's." Photograph by F. M. Steele.

27. Cowboys eating dinner on the range. A typical chuckwagon, like the one shown here, carried potatoes, beans, bacon, dried fruit, cornmeal, coffee and canned goods. (Library of Congress)

28. "Where we shine." Cowboys at the end of an 1897 roundup in Ward County, Texas, pose with their herd of almost 2,000 cattle. By this time, barbed wire had closed down the long cattle trails for nearly two decades. Photographed by F. M. Steele.

29. 1871 Kansas-Transport of Texas Beef on the Kansas-Pacific Railway-Scene at a Cattle-shoot in Abilene, Kansas. This beautiful, hand colored engraving is from the August 19, 1871 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

30. 1882 Picture of a capture of a Texas Town by cowboys. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

31. 1882 Texas-Herders Driving Their Sheep, Menaced by a Prairie Fire, To a Place of Safety. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas

32. Dignitaries and railworkers gather to drive the "golden spike" and join the tracks of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869. The Central Pacific's wood-burning locomotive, Jupiter, stands to the left, the Union Pacific's coal-burning No. 119 to the right.

33. The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889.

34. Homesteaders photographed in the 1880's by Solomon Butcher in Custer County, Nebraska.

35. Exodusters waiting for a steamboat to carry them westward in the late 1870's. (Library of Congress.)

36. Homesteader Omer Yern and family photographed by Solomon Butcher in Custer Country, Nebraska, 1886. (Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society.)

37. David Hilton and family pose for homestead photographer Solomon Butcher, showing off their prize possession, a pump organ. Butcher noted that Mrs. Hilton insisted on having the organ hauled into the yard, so her family portrait would not reveal that the Hilton's still lived in a sod house.

38. While preserving some traditions of their homeland, settlers on the Texas frontier were transformed by their experiences, becoming "westerners."

39. Fenced in Ranch

40. A winter cattle drive photographed by Charles Belden. (Library of Congress.)

43. Theodore Roosevelt on horseback in the Dakota Territory in the 1880's, when he had moved west to live as a cattle rancher. (Library of Congress.)

45. “The Land Grant Law of 1876 authorized the granting of sixteen sections of land to railroad companies for every mile of main-line track they completed.” p. 206. Coming of the Steam Train in 1873 put Reagan, Texas on the Map! The old Reagan Depot stood next to the Train tracks until the 1960's.

47. This photo shows a "land train," bringing prospective investors to Texas, circa 1915. African-American porters stand on the far right. "Separate but equal" segregation was the law in Texas and other Southern states from the 1880s until segregation was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1950s.. Many jobs were also segregated. The job of porter was considered a black man's job. Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives.

49. From 1875 to 1900, lumber led all other freight in tonnage transported by Texas railroads.

50. The first multi million-dollar firm in Texas was a lumber company owned by John Henry Kirby. John Henry Kirby, the "Prince of the Pines," shown in a 1925 photo. With East Coast investors, Kirby established land companies with vast timber holdings in the Pineywoods. In 1893, he built the Gulf, Beaumont, and Kansas City Railroad and used proceeds from its sale to finance more land purchases. In 1901, he organized the Houston Oil Company of Texas and the Kirby Lumber Company. Although at one point the lumber company controlled more than 300,000 acres of land and operated 13 sawmills, business reversals during the depression forced Kirby into bankruptcy.