This Day In Texas History - July 3

[joe817]

1863 - On this date in 1863, Hood's Texas Unit retreated at Gettsyburg after suffering 597 casualties in the bloody three-day battle that turned the tide of the Civil War. The Texas Brigade was involved in heavy fighting on the slopes of Little Round Top and fell back to south side of Devil's Den before leaving the battlefield on the evening of July 3. Hood's Texas Brigade included three Texas infantry regiments -- the 1st, 4th and 5th -- and the 3rd Arkansas. Its commander, Brig. General Jerome Bonaparte Robertson, was among the wounded. Today, there is a monument at the spot where the Texans retreated at the close of the disastrous battle.

1884 - The City-County Hospital, the oldest public hospital in Texas, opened in Austin. The hospital was owned jointly by the city of Austin and Travis County until 1907, when the county withdrew its support. It was known as City Hospital until 1929, when the city council renamed it in honor of Dr. Robert J. Brackenridge, who had served as chairman of the hospital board and worked for many years toward improving medical care in Austin. Brackenridge also housed the area's first nursing school, which was established in 1915 and operated by the hospital until 1984, when Austin Community College assumed responsibility for the program. After beginning an education program for interns and residents after World War II, Brackenridge became a fully accredited teaching hospital in the mid-1950s.

1897 - Blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson is born near Wortham.

1931- The Red River Bridge controversy between Texas and Oklahoma (sometimes called the Red River War) occurred in July 1931 over the opening of a newly completed free bridge, built jointly by the two states, across the Red River between Denison, Texas, and Durant, Oklahoma. On July 3, 1931, the Red River Bridge Company, a private firm operating an old toll bridge that paralleled the free span, filed a petition in the United States district court in Houston asking for an injunction preventing the Texas Highway Commission from opening the bridge.

The company claimed that the commission had agreed in July 1930 to purchase the toll bridge for $60,000 and to pay the company for its unexpired contract an additional $10,000 for each month of a specified fourteen-month period in which the free bridge might be opened, and that the commission had not fulfilled this obligation. A temporary injunction was issued on July 10, 1931, and Texas governor Ross S. Sterling ordered barricades erected across the Texas approaches to the new bridge. However, on July 16 Governor William (Alfalfa Bill) Murray of Oklahoma opened the bridge by executive order, claiming that Oklahoma's "half" of the bridge ran lengthwise north and south across the Red River, that Oklahoma held title to both sides of the river from the Louisiana Purchase treaty of 1803, and that the state of Oklahoma was not named in the injunction. Oklahoma highway crews crossed the bridge and demolished the barricades. Governor Sterling responded by ordering a detachment of three Texas Rangers, accompanied by Adjutant General William Warren Sterling, to rebuild the barricades and protect Texas Highway Department employees charged with enforcing the injunction. [There's more to the story: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/onli" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... /mgr2.html ]

1964 - Natural Bridge Caverns, the largest known cavern in Texas, was opened to the public. The cavern was discovered on March 27, 1960, by four spelunkers who were students at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. It is located off Farm Road 1863 in the hill country of Comal County midway between New Braunfels and San Antonio.