Texas State Historical Association

On this day in 1946, the Dallas Health Museum opened its first exhibit to the public. The museum was founded by a group of doctors, dentists, and lay people "to provide a common channel of enthusiastic effort for all the forces of health in Dallas and the Southwest." Dallas doctors Oscar Marchman and Milford Rouse were among the founders. The museum, which was the first to be devoted entirely to health in the Southwest and the second of its type in the nation, held its first exhibit at the State Fair of Texas. The Dallas Park Department supplied the building for this first exhibit, which borrowed items from area organizations and museums throughout the nation. During this first exhibition, held on October 5-20, 1946, 40,000 visitors attended the displays. On February 1, 1947, the museum opened full-time in a 10,000-square-foot space leased from the Dallas Park Department at Fair Park. In 1981 the museum was renamed the Science Place, and in 2006 it merged with the Dallas Museum of Natural History and the Dallas Children's Museum to form the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science. In 2012 a new primary campus, named in honor of philanthropists Ross and Margot Perot, opened in Victory Park. The original Fair Park location was consolidated and retained as a secondary campus.

Five hundred years of Texas history, one day at a time. Texas On This Day gives you stories from Texas history for every date on the calendar. Order it by tomorrow and we'll include the 2026–2027 Texas Almanac, the Official State Book of Texas, for free. Both books for $39.99. The offer ends October 2.

https://www.legacyoftexas.com/product/totd-and-texas-almanac-bundle

On this day in 1837, John P. Borden opened the General Land Office in Houston. John, with his brother Gail Borden Jr., had surveyed and laid out the town of Houston in 1836. As first commissioner of the new land office, John Borden faced the monumental job of compiling and preserving the many Spanish and Mexican land titles issued before the republic. He began with no funds or employees to assist him, yet by the end of 1837 he had successfully acquired documents from all over Texas. He also registered and surveyed new grants. In 1839 he moved the General Land Office to Austin and transported almost 5,000 pounds of documents by wagon. The military bounties, veteran donations, headrights, and homestead preemptions issued by Borden and successive commissioners amounted to more than 75 million acres granted to individuals.

Anybody want to go hiking? On this day in 1972, Guadalupe Mountains National Park was established. The 76,293-acre park in Hudspeth and Culberson counties includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at over 8,700 feet. Indian rock art sites indicate Native American occupation as far back as 12,000 years, and the Apaches lived in the Guadalupe Mountains as late as the 1880s. In the 1920s J. C. Hunter purchased the Guadalupe Mountain Ranch and raised Angora goats there. Efforts to preserve the land as a park date to the 1930s when Hunter’s son offered to donate 300 acres of scenic McKittrick Canyon to the state of Texas. By the 1960s land donations and sales to the National Park Service paved the way for the establishment of a national park. Guadalupe Mountains National Park contains eighty miles of trails, and the maple and hardwood trees of McKittrick Canyon offer brilliant fiery hues for hikers in the autumn.

On this day in 1864, Milton Holland, of the Fifth United States Colored Troops, earned the Medal of Honor for action at Chaffin's Farm and New Market Heights, Virginia. He was born a slave in either Carthage or Austin, Texas, in 1844. After enlisting in the United States Army in 1863, he rose to the rank of regimental sergeant major and led his regiment after all its white officers were either wounded or killed. He received the Medal of Honor on April 6, 1865, and was mustered out of the service on September 20 of that year.

Tonight in Austin: Gaylon Finklea Hecker and Marianne Odom present Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods, featuring interviews with Lady Bird Johnson, Dan Rather, Nolan Ryan, Tommy Tune and more.

The talk is the fall kick-off of the Austin Club's new Curated Book Collection & Speaker Series at the historic Millett's Opera House, 110 E. 9th Street. Light bites and punch at 5:30, program at 6:00. Signed copies will be available for purchase afterward.

RSVP to the Austin Club at 512-477-9496.

On this day in 1848, Sam Houston and other notable Texans gathered a mile south of La Grange at Monument Hill, the chosen site for a military cemetery. Those to be buried there had died in the Dawson Massacre and other conflicts that beset the Republic of Texas as Mexico continued to contest the fact of Texas independence. Six years earlier, on September 18, 1842, while an army of Texans under Mathew Caldwell defeated the much larger forces of Mexican general Adrián Woll on Salado Creek near San Antonio, Capt. Nicholas Dawson and his fifty-eight volunteers fought a losing battle against 500 irregular Mexican cavalrymen and their two cannons. The Texans were slaughtered. A few escaped, and fifteen were carted off to Perote Prison, from where only nine survivors were eventually released. The dead were buried in shallow graves and, in 1848, moved to Monument Hill. The day was again solemnly commemorated ninety-one years after the massacre. On September 18, 1933, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas dedicated a new vault at the site, which had fallen into disrepair and abuse before they moved to rescue it.

Today is Mexican Independence Day! On this day in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's grito de Dolores ("cry of Dolores") at the village of Dolores, near Guanajuato, called for the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. On September 16, 1825, the Republic of Mexico officially declared September 16 its national Independence Day. In Texas, Diez y Seis de Septiembre has been celebrated in San Antonio for more than 167 years and in Goliad for 160 years. Along with Cinco de Mayo, the holiday is one of the Fiestas Patrias celebrated by Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest. Depicted is a painting, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla by Antonio Fabres.

Three Legged Willie is back in print! First published by TSHA in 1948, this is the only book-length biography of Robert McAlpin Williamson, lawyer, editor of early San Felipe newspapers, first major of the Texas Rangers, "Liberty or Death" orator, present at Gonzales, and a soldier at San Jacinto who went on to serve as Supreme Court Justice for the Republic of Texas. The book fell out of print decades ago. Today it is available again as it opens our new reprint series.

Order your copy today!

Robert McAlpin Williamson: Texas' Three Legged Willie | Legacy of Texas In 1948, TSHA published the first and only book-length biography of Robert McAlpin Williamson, a.k.a. Three Legged Willie, 1948. In time, it fell out of

On this day in 1896, the celebrated "Crash at Crush" occurred 15 miles north of Waco in McLennan County. As a publicity stunt for the Katy Railroad, two railroad engines were deliberately crashed head-on at the non-existent "town" of Crush. Elaborate preparations and extensive publicity brought a crowd of more than 40,000 to witness the event. After a two-mile run the two engines, the bright green No. 999 and the brilliant red No. 1001, met in a fiery crash. Flying debris killed three people and injured six more. By nightfall the site was abandoned. In the early twentieth century Scott Joplin commemorated the event in his march "Great Crush Collision."