This Day In Texas History - July 29

[joe817]

1867 – Fort Griffin, now a Texas State Historic Site, was a US Cavalry fort established 29 July 1867 by four companies of the Sixth Cavalry, U.S.Army under the command of Lt. Col. S.D. Sturgis,in the northern part of western Texas, specifically northwestern Shackelford County, to give settlers protection from early Comanche and Kiowa raids. Originally called Camp Wilson, it was later named for Charles Griffin, a former Civil War Union general who had commanded, as de facto military governor, the Department of Texas during the early years of Reconstruction. Fort Griffin is located in North Texas, 40 miles northeast of Abilene and 150 miles west of Fort Worth, near Albany. The site is part of the Texas Forts Trail.
[ http://www.thc.texas.gov/historic-sites ... in-history ]

1878 - On this date in 1878, Leonard Waldo from Harvard Observatory and W.H.Pulsifer of Washington University in St Louis and other scientists from around the nation set up their equipment in Fort Worth to study the total solar eclipse which fell upon the metro area. Among the experiments being conducted was a spectroscopic observations of the changing light from the solar chromosphere. Many observers produced sketches of their observations (see below). One study estimated the height of the suns chromosphere at 524 miles. These were the first scientific studies of the sun ever conducted in Texas, and one of the first serious studies of the solar eclipse in the United States.

1891 - The Velasco Terminal Railway Company was chartered on July 29, 1891, as part of a plan to develop a deep water channel and port near the mouth of the Brazos River at Velasco. Three related companies were organized or acquired. The channel and docks were constructed by the Brazos River Channel and Dock Company, and the Texas Land and Immigration Company supplied the funds for the construction of the railroad. Although chartered to run between Velasco in Brazoria County and Arcola Junction in Fort Bend County, a distance of forty miles, only the twenty miles between Chenango Junction (later Anchor) and Velasco were constructed in 1891 and 1892. The Velasco Terminal later amended its charter to authorize construction of a branch line from Angleton to Alvin, but no additional track was built. The Velasco Terminal entered receivership on July 27, 1899, and was sold at a foreclosure sale to Harry Masterson on May 7, 1901. Masterson transferred the property to The Velasco, Brazos and Northern Railway Company on July 10, 1901.

1899 - Wichita Falls was officially incorporated on July 29, 1889, and the first meeting of the town council occurred on August 21, with Mayor Otis T. Bacon presiding.

1926 - J. Frank Norris, the controversial minister of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, was indicted for murder. He had been zealous in promoting prohibition, condemning gambling, and attacking the alleged teaching of evolution at Baylor University. Though he had begun the first regular radio ministry in the United States in 1920, he also openly supported the Ku Klux Klan and attacked the Catholic Church. His unrelenting criticism of Baylor, Baptist leaders, and state Baptist policies caused the Baptist General Convention to deny seats to Norris’s congregation at the meetings of 1922 and 1923. In a quarrel with Mayor H.C. Meacham, Norris shot and killed Meacham’s friend D.C. Chipps. The fiery fundamentalist was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fno07 ]

1926 - Fredericksburg's original Nimitz Hotel was built on Main Street in the late 1840s or early 1850s and acquired by Charles H. Nimitz in 1855. The hotel had four rooms and a large central fireplace. The Nimitz soon gained a reputation for comfort and convenience. A number of families from Houston and Galveston spent their summers there, and among the more notable guests of the hotel were President Rutherford B. Hayes, Robert E. Lee (whose furniture Nimitz bought when Lee left Texas), Philip H. Sheridan, Horace Greeley, William Sydney Porter, the explorer Adolphus W. Greely, Ulysses S. Grant, William Rufus Shafter, Fitzhugh Lee, Earl Van Dorn and James T. Longstreet. Nimitz added the hotel's famous steamboat-shaped superstructure sometime after 1888 and finally deeded the hotel to his son, Charles, Jr., on June 6, 1906. His son and daughter-in-law sold the hotel on July 29, 1926, to a group of local men who remodeled it extensively at a cost of $125,000; they removed the ship-like superstructure and deeded the hotel to the Hotel Nimitz Company on October 13, 1926. Ownership of the hotel was transferred to the Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum Commission on June 15, 1970. The hotel is now the headquarters of the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Park and administered by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

1942 - On this date in 1942, Tarrant Field, later named Carswell Air Force Base opened in Fort Worth. The site of the base was originally selected in 1941 as a Consolidated Vultee factory for the production of B-24 bombers. A separate contract was let for a landing field, Tarrant Field, to be built to support the aircraft factory. The construction of an air force base on the east side of Tarrant Field was authorized after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Tarrant Field Airdrome was assigned to the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command in July 1942. The base became one of the first B-24 transition schools to begin operation. After more than 4,000 students were trained in B-24s at the base, its mission was changed to B-32 transition because of the nearness to the Consolidated factory. As part of the Strategic Air Command, Carswell AFB became home to several squadrons of America's B-52 bomber fleet during the Cold War. Carswell AFB, and its successor, Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, have played a major roll in the development of Fort Worth, and in the defense of the United States.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qbn06 ]

1958 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The national commitment to a broad program of space exploration, including manned space flight, came in response to the Soviet Union's successful space launches, begun in 1957. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy set as a national goal the achievement of a manned landing on the moon by the end of the decade. Central to the agency's new future was the construction of a manned-space-development aggregation, including facilities in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. NASA also elected to build a new space-management, crew-training, and flight-control center on Clear Lake in southeastern Harris County, Texas, thanks to the efforts of Texas Congressman Albert Thomas. The Manned Space Center opened in 1963 and was officially renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center ten years later.

1961 - Oscar Fox, cowboy songwriter and hill country native, dies at age 82.