Texas Highways

2 days ago | texashighways.com | Tyson Bird

Vintage train rides offer a window into Texas’ locomotive history and a family’s legacy on the tracks By Dina Gachman As I step up into the 55-passenger McKeever train, volunteer David Cenova offers some advice: “Don’t let the mannequins startle you.” It’s a tip I come to deeply appreciate about six seconds into our tour, when I peek into the first section of the 83-foot McKeever and encounter a mannequin outfitted with a long blonde wig, a blue-and-white polka-dot dress, blood red lipstick,...

6 days ago | texashighways.com | Tyson Bird

Bestselling author Katherine Center is practically Houston royalty. Her mother’s maiden name, Detering, graces a street in the Rice Military neighborhood; her younger sister, Lizzie Fletcher, is a U.S. Representative for southwestern Houston and Harris County; and her uncle Herman owned and operated Detering Book Gallery for 30 years. Center knew from a young age the literary life was for her.

1 week ago | texashighways.com | Tyson Bird

Days before Día de los Muertos, an ultramarine ofrenda hugs the concrete blocks and a riot of marigold streamers flutters over the yard of Austin’s Mercado Sin Nombre. The modest café doesn’t yet have the budget for a proper sign—and only the buzzing line of customers snaking down the alley announces this is a place of business—but inside, chef Julian Maltby is quietly producing some of the city’s most innovative fare.

1 week ago | texashighways.com | Tyson Bird

Occupying the eastern edge of the Big Country—the section of Texas extending from Eastland County to the Permian Basin and north to the Panhandle—the 2,000-person town of Albany sits in a land of wide horizons and undulating hills, mesquite, and prickly pear. On the surface, it’s small town Texas as Larry McMurtry would have written it: a courthouse square, a main street, and one stoplight. But don’t let the apparent sleepiness of this community fool you.

1 week ago | texashighways.com | Tyson Bird

Dave Link lifts the binoculars from his patio table and scans the deep blue sky eastward over his Canyon neighborhood in the Panhandle. Two Eurasian collared doves alight on a nearby utility line. In the gusty wind, a red-tailed hawk soars over the backyard. Link is looking for something else, though—his racing pigeons. “The key question is, ‘Will mine break from the group?’” Link wonders. “If they go to Amarillo, I’m screwed.