Beneath the Window: Early Ranch Life in the Big Bend Country - Softcover

Clothier, Patricia Wilson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0974504823 ISBN 13: 9780974504827

Publisher: Iron Mountain Press, 2017

Synopsis

Before it became a national park, the Big Bend was home to a number of ranches and mining operations. On the Wilson ranch, which stood at the center of the current park, Patricia Wilson Clothier spent her youth exploring the wonders of ranch life in the Chisos. Patricia´s richly detailed memories, coupled with a backdrop of Depression era hardships, bring the Big Bend to life in this original and vivid description of a childhood spent Beneath the Window.

Big Bend has been a National Park since the mid 1940´s. Thus it is preserved for visitors to enjoy, however almost all signs of earlier ranches and homes have disappeared. It is difficult today to imagine crops growing, peach trees bearing fruit and fenced pastures and shearing sheds. The Wilson ranch alone had some 40 miles of fence with careful attention paid to preserving water sources and using them carefully. Being a stone´s throw from the Rio Grande made Mexico and its people close and friendly neighbors to the American community in Big Bend. If you ever have a chance to visit Big Bend National Park, this memoir is a must."

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Wilson Clothier spent the first fourteen years of her life (through 1944)on the Wilson Ranch in Big Bend, Texas. In these years she experienced the Big Bend as her own backyard. After formation of Big Bend National Park, she and her family lived in Alpine, Texas, and then moved to Del Rio, Texas, where she graduated from high school.Patricia, an artist and teacher, now lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. She and her husband, Grant, built and operated a camp for disadvantaged children in the Missouri Ozarks.

From the Inside Flap

This is Patricia Clothier's story of growing up in the 1930s and 1940s on a vast ranch in the mountains and desert hugging the Mexican border in the Big Bend country of Texas, before it became a park. Her family weathered rattlesnakes and drought, accidents, loneliness, and financial hardships of the Great Depression with fortitude, ingenuity, and grace. Like their scattered neighbors - miles away over rugged roads - it was the love of the land that gripped and held them there. Clothier paints a picture of the vast and glorious territory with words as vivid as any artist with a pallet of paints. A joy to read - an adventure of Western life you'll not forget.Jean Bradfisch, writer and editor.

Edition details

• Publisher: Iron Mountain Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0974504823
• ISBN 13: 9780974504827
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192