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A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier Paperback – December 1, 2004

by Frederick Law Olmsted (Author), Witold Rybczynski (Introduction)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 49 ratings
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Before he became America's foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was by turns a surveyor, merchant seaman, farmer, magazine publisher, and traveling newspaper correspondent. In 1856–57 he took a saddle trip through Texas to see the country and report on its lands and peoples. His description of the Lone Star State on the eve of the Civil War remains one of the best accounts of the American West ever published. Unvarnished by sentiment or myth making, based on firsthand observations, and backed with statistical research, Olmsted's narrative captures the manners, foods, entertainments, and conversations of the Texans, as well as their housing, agriculture, business, exotic animals, changeable weather, and the pervasive influence of slavery.

 

Back and forth from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, through San Augustine, Nacogdoches, San Marcos, San Antonio, Neu-Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Lavaca, Indianola, Goliad, Castroville, La Grange, Houston, Harrisburg, and Beaumont, Olmsted rode and questioned and listened and reported. Texas was then already a multiethnic and multiracial state, where Americans, Germans, Mexicans, Africans, and Indians of numerous tribes mixed uneasily. Olmsted interviewed planters, scouts, innkeepers, bartenders, housewives, drovers, loafers, Indian chiefs, priests, runaway slaves, and emigrants and refugees from every part of the known world—most of whom had "gone to Texas" looking for a fresh start. He also observed the breathtaking arrival of spring on the prairie and the starry nights that seemed to prove the truth of the German saying “The sky seems nearer in Texas.”
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    539 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Bison Books
  4. Publication date
    December 1, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.5 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0803286201
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0803286207
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“One of the 50 best books of all time on the American West.”—True West

“Olmstead’s appeal was attributable to his readable and unvarnished reportage of places and events to which few Easterners had direct access. . . . [It] provides a credible glimpse of life in Texas in the mid-1850s, as well as insights into the contemporary debate over the institution of slavery. . . . The late A.C. Green found Olmstead’s account sufficiently engaging to include it in his original 50 Best Books on Texas in 1982, and it remains a basic source for historians of the region and the period.”—Southwest Book Views

“The peculiar institution was more peculiar in Texas than in other states, and Olmsted’s eye for the weirdness makes Journey, a page turner. So does his use of sprightly travelogue to make the serious argument that slavery was ruining Texas. . . . Olmsted’s word portraits of mid-19th-century Texas are as good as the best modern travelogues.”—Debbie Nathan, Texas Observer

From the Inside Flap

"One of the 50 best books of all time on the American West." True West Magazine

Before he became America's foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 1903) was by turns a surveyor, merchant seaman, farmer, magazine publisher, and traveling newspaper correspondent. In 1856 57 he took a saddle trip through Texas to see the country and report on its lands and peoples. His description of the Lone Star State on the eve of the Civil War remains one of the best accounts of the American West ever published. Unvarnished by sentiment or myth making, based on firsthand observations, and backed with statistical research, Olmsted's narrative captures the manners, foods, entertainments, and conversations of the Texans, as well as their housing, agriculture, business, exotic animals, changeable weather, and the pervasive influence of slavery.

Back and forth from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, through San Augustine, Nacogdoches, San Marcos, San Antonio, Neu-Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Lavaca, Indianola, Goliad, Castroville, La Grange, Houston, Harrisburg, and Beaumont, Olmsted rode and questioned and listened and reported. Texas was then already a multiethnic and multiracial state, where Americans, Germans, Mexicans, Africans, and Indians of numerous tribes mixed uneasily. Olmsted interviewed planters, scouts, innkeepers, bartenders, housewives, drovers, loafers, Indian chiefs, priests, runaway slaves, and emigrants and refugees from every part of the known world most of whom had "gone to Texas" looking for a fresh start. He also observed the breathtaking arrival of spring on the prairie and the starry nights that seemed to prove the truth of the German saying "The sky seems nearer in Texas."

Witold Rybczynski is the Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include the J. Anthony Lukas Prize winner A Clearing in The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century and The Perfect House.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bison Books; First Thus edition (December 1, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 539 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0803286201
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0803286207
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.5 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 49 ratings

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
49 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

James Denny
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting! Authentic!
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2012
Verified Purchase
Take a journey through Texas in the early years of statehood with famed reporter, biodynamic farmer and future landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted traveled on horseback across Texas in the mid-1850's as a reporter for the New York Times just ten years after Texas attained statehood. Texas was big, wild and untamed.

There were three trips taken: east Texas; west Texas; and along the Gulf coast. The three journals have been combined into a book, a first-person travel narrative. With Olmsted's keen eye for culture, landscape, crops, farming practices, diet, persona and folkways, your reading chair is transformed into a horse named "Mr. Brown." Several times, "Mr Brown" nearly drowns in fording Texas rivers. However, most evenings after each day's travel, "Mr. Brown" collapses into deep slumber in a rough camp or next to a settler's cabin, utterly spent.

Described as one of the best books ever written about the American West, "A Journey through Texas" does not disappoint. Olmsted's predictions correctly point to where Texas would stand when the Civil War became reality just a few short years later.

His observations about the last of the free-roaming American Indian tribes, German settlers in the Texas hill country, Mexicans who had settled in Texas long before it was occupied and absorbed by Americans, slaves, escaping slaves and free Negroes, the Cajuns from Louisiana who settled in east Texas and American settlers from played-out farms in the old South, states like Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky are rich with detail. In the 1850's people knew what GTT stood for: Gone To Texas.

Observations of Texas character and culture described by Olmsted stand to this day. His narrative is full of intrigue, danger, charm and insight.

This is a great work that brings history alive in a way that few textbooks could ever hope to match. Five stars!
16 people found this helpful
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Jeannene Przyblyski
4.0 out of 5 stars This is an amazing book. The attention to the landscape is profound
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is an amazing book. The attention to the landscape is profound. The description of the conditions of slavery are devastating. The antics of Mr. Brown the mule could be their own book. But the amount of typographical and proofreading errors in a digital book that costs as much as this one are disturbing and sometimes make the gist of it difficult to follow. Digital file should be fixed.
One person found this helpful
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Jack
5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book of history about Texas and the Southwestern Frontier written in the first person.
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019
Verified Purchase
A very interesting book and easy to read. I recommend it highly. It is written in the first person and by an eye witness the whole way through the book. A MUST read book of history of Texas in about 1852, just before the Civil War. If you live in Texas in the Hill Country or in Bastrop or San Antonio, or on the Coast of Texas or any points in between this book is for you if you like history.
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D. L. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A Texas History Essential
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2011
Verified Purchase
The writer's descriptions of places, things and people are so good that it is the closest thing to being there. People, like me, who tend to look at the Peculiar Institution through rose colored glasses will have to struggle through his continuious comments on it's all too apparent evils, but it is well worth the struggle and the stark lesson. He makes it easy to also see how the feelings, North and South, had obviously chrystalized to a point where the Civil War was bound to happen. Texas in the 1850's, with all it's raw beauty, was no place for the faint hearted. If you love animals you will want to buy a mule and name it Mr. Brown! This is 1850's Texas with the bark stripped off.
13 people found this helpful
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Barrett Doherty
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great accounts of the American Frontier
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2013
Verified Purchase
Olmsted before designing Central Park was commissioned by the soon-to-be NY Times to travel across the South and report about slavery. In 1856-57 he spent 6 months with his brother taking a saddle trip across the frontier of Texas. With a studied farmers eye he rides throughout the territory noting the farming habits, cultures, mores, landscape, weather, food and entertainment of the young State. Olmsted is an excellent writer and reports on what he sees with extremely little myth-making or eulogizing. It is an excellent first hand account of the American frontier and its attendant collision of cultures, slavery, racism, bigotry, triumphs, treachery, and possibility. A notable book for anyone who is interested in the daily reality of the young American frontier.
3 people found this helpful
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Beverly Hall
4.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Through Texas
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2013
Verified Purchase
slammin with "tales from the past"! Also tells you about the "saddle tack" those poor early pioneers had to eat. Lots of "you felt you were there with them" moments. Beverly Hall
2 people found this helpful
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brent nelson
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insight to the real Texas 164 years ago
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2019
Verified Purchase
View back in time of the Americans, Mexicans, Germans and negro slaves that occupied Texas in the 1850’s. All the hardships of travel, lodging and meals are well described. Landscapes, climates and vegetation are covered in depth. Educational read that was fun.
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Patsy
5.0 out of 5 stars If you really want to know what it was like to travel through Texas prior to the Civil War
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2015
Verified Purchase
If you really want to know what it was like to travel through Texas prior to the Civil War, you will receive exactly that by reading this book. You will also become very well acquainted with the individuals met along the way. Mr. Olmsted provided detailed and a complete description of the entire journey. A visual and thought provoking book. One you will continue to think on long after it has been read.
2 people found this helpful
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