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Books About Moore County Texas People and Places
What's Your Favorite Book about a Moore County Texas Person, Place or Event? Here are some of our favorites about Dumas, Cactus and Sunray Texas.

 

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Black Knights of the PanhandleBlack Knights of the Panhandle: Dumas Demons

Black Knights of the Panhandle is a memoir about life, seen through eyes of youngsters growing up in the panhandle town of Dumas, Texas during the 1950s and early 1960s. It captures lifestyles shortly after soldiers returned home at the end of World War II, as they wanted to forget about war and begin a new life. The story provides an historic account of the times and how the entire town came together during the glory days when sports ruled ... Read more Look inside

Dust BowlDust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

Found inside: In Moore County, Texas for example, the welfare director, on behalf of the Dumas Chamber of Commerce, reported to federal officials in March 1935 that it was “an impossible task to describe the utter destruction”: roads obliterated, the crops ... Read more Look inside

The Real Singing Cowboys

The Real Singing Cowboys profiles contemporary cowboy--and cowgirl--singers and musicians who are, or have been, authentic working cowboys or ranchers, or involved in related occupations tied to ranching and cowboy culture.

Found inside: "By the time he was in high school, Buck Ramsey was singing with a local band called the Sandy Swingsters, performing pop and jazz standards. Buck received his early education in a two-room schoolhouse in Middlewell, Texas, and graduated from Amarillo High School in 1956 ... Read more Look inside

Riding the Winds of Time: The Omajean and Gladys Trainer Story

by Omajean Trainer Lewis

"In Riding the Winds of Time, my mother reminisces about the joys and challenges of growing up in the Texas Panhandle town of Dumas after migrating from Oklahoma. Her parents left Oklahoma and joined a large portion of her mother’s Dowling clan in Texas. With cousins everywhere and a new place in which to explore and to grow, my mother and sister Gladys never felt alone and to this day cherish the memories they made. Seen through the resilient eyes of a child, the autobiographical stories are poignant against a background of poverty, loss, and war. Within ten years the winds of time had carried them from childhood to preteens in yet another place in a post war world" . . . Read more

My First Five Husbands...And the Ones Who Got Away: A Memoir

Rue McClanahan, best known for her portrayal of Blanche Devereaux on the Emmy-award winning series, The Golden Girls, reveals her life in and out of the spotlight in a laugh-out-loud funny memoir about love, marriage, men, and getting older that is every bit as colorful as the characters she played.
Found inside: " The play is set in the godforsaken town of Sunray, Texas, where a boisterous, irascible butcher, Horse, is carrying on an affair with Faye, a dumb but good-hearted waitress ... " Read more Look inside

Who's Happy Now?

Found inside: And ... our family in Sunray, Texas . She warned me a long time ago she'd kill me if I ever told it the way it really was . Look at her down there right now — frowning . My mother means business . When I first admitted I was going to do this play, "Don't," she begged me. "none of the neighbors ever knew a thing, Richard. I never told anybody anything. They would've loved to know-- but they never did ... Read more

Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of "The Little White Slaver"

by Cassandra Tate

Found inside: "My mother was a smart woman. As a high school student in Dumas, Texas, she set a record on a statewide math test and held it until the test was discontinued some thirty years later. She graduated at age fifteen (one year after she first experimented with cigarettes) ... "  Read more Look inside

Shot But Taking 40 Years to Die: The Audacious Malcom McWilliams

by Bev Melban

The life of Malcom McWilliams had to be written in a book. Shot But Taking 40 Years to Die will only describe part of what this Man lived through. Malcom went to school in Finny and Paducah Texas. Then his parents, Maurine and Ollis, moved to Dumas Texas when Malcom was about 10 and he went to school there until about age 17 . . . Read more Look inside

Alone and Afraid of the Dark

This book follows one person's struggle to grow up in a house of violence and abuse. It chronicles all those decisions when we are at the crossroads of life and fail to make the right choices.

Found inside: "I thought there might be merit to our having a future. He asked me to come to a job location in Dumas, Texas and I did, it was a whirlwind and it was feeling right. He spoke to his mother on the phone and asked me to talk to her, I didn't think the ... "  Read more Look inside

Living Side by Side: Serving the People of Cactus, Texas

Cactus, Texas, is a community of 4,000 people and 40 languages. Many Cactus residents are refugees who have fled war, persecution, or natural disasters. Others are immigrants, documented and undocumented. Most are grappling with a new culture, a new language, and what life in America means for them ... Read more Look inside

Death Among Friends

Set in the Texas Panhandle town of Dumas Texas

In the midst of being the only reliable witness to a fight in a diner, Bat Garrett goes to the funeral of a friend from high school. At the funeral Bat and his wife Jody discover that there are some family members of the deceased who think the death wasn’t accidental. Bat begins to look into the death and is confronted by old memories, some ex-girlfriends, and the disturbing idea that, if it was murder, it was committed by someone Bat knew . . . Read more Look inside

Haskins: The Bear Facts

A Sports milestone Don Haskins is one of the greatest coaches in the history of college Basketball. Found inside: "Meanwhile, the boys basketball position at Dumas, Texas opened up. The coach there was Rex Fox, who became a good friend of mine. He was a very intelligent man and a great teacher. Ironically, he left Dumas to become a professor at Texas Western ... "  Read more Look inside

All Music Guide to Country: The Experts' Guide to the Best Country Recordings

Found inside: Jennings waxes nostalgic for small-town life in "Cactus Texas," and mixes bitter sentiments with a snap-crackle wit on "Kissing You Goodbye." Never shy about his feelings, Waylon again comments (as he has on recent albums) on the "new hats" in ... Read more Look inside

The Dimension Weaver

A college student who lives in Cactus, Texas, is in a dimension trap, but her family has reported that she’s fine and with her mother in another state. The local police has closed the case. But a mysterious ... Read more Look inside

A Taste of Texas Ranching: Cooks and Cowboys

A Taste of Texas Ranching takes readers to more than thirty ranches in the Lone Star State and introduces them to the cook at each one. A cookbook, history book, geography book, story book, and a book about western America, A Taste of Texas Ranching serves up a slice of life along with a piece of the pie ...

"Barber Ranch, Channing, Texas. Dale and Mary Ann Barber showing for fun and profit. Driving around the Channing / Dumas area after dark leaves you with the impression that someone forgot to turn out all the . . . Read more Look inside

Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change

"You can see that when you pull into the little town of Guthrie, 50 miles south of Dumas, across some of the most drought-stricken land in all of Texas. If you had driven through these parched lands just a few years ago, you would have seen something very different ... Read more Look inside

Threshold

Short stories by the author of the cult favorite "Border Town Blood."

Found inside: He was driving north on US 287, his hometown of Dumas, Texas barely a glow in the rearview mirror of his pick-up. His hands were still shaking and the blood on his knuckles had yet to dry. Sammi Smith was on the radio – Bill Mack's US-1 ... Read more

Fixing the Moon

Hank Myers appeared on the aerospace scene at a pivotal point in aviation history--at a time before there was a branch of service called the Air Force, before planes routinely crossed oceans and continents. Found inside: Dr. and Mrs. Dennis Plunk of Dumas, Texas, you have my deepest appreciation and gratitude. For after learning that you had purchased from a military dealer, pictures, letters, and other memorabilia once belonging to Hank Myers, I, a total ... Read more

The Great Plains during World War II

Emphasizing the region’s social and economic history, The Great Plains during World War II is the first book to examine the effects of the war on the region and the responses of its residents.

"... Male employees, such as those working at the zinc smelters in Amarillo and Dumas, Texas could not quit without the permission of the U.S. Employment Service. Workers who failed to acquire a certificate of separation from the agency could not be rehired by another employer." . . . Read more Look inside

The Windswept Land. a History of Moore County , Texas

by Myrna Tryon Thomas

Family names in addition to county history. 163 pages

Taming the Land: The Lost Postcard Photographs of the Texas High Plains

A postcard craze gripped the nation from 1905 to 1920, as the rise of outdoor photography coincided with a wave of settlement and prosperity in Texas ...

Found Inside: "Ben Wilkes from Dumas, Moore County, Texas 1915 " ... Read more Look inside

Making New Mexico: Then and Now

The state of New Mexico, in the United States was originally part of Texas and the land included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Found inside: Levi settled near present day Dumas, Texas which was founded by and named after Louis Dumas in 1891. The Moore county town site company was established and a town was platted some five miles South of Palo Duro Creek. The first ... Read more Look inside

The System Safety Skeptic: Lessons Learned in Safety Management and Engineering

Found inside: On February 16, 2007, a fire erupted at Valero Energy Corporation 's McKee refinery near Sunray, Texas. The fire caused extensive damage to the facility and led to the facility being shut down for months. Four people were ... Read more

NO CITY LIMITS, The Story of Masterson, Texas

Story of Masterson, Texas by Louise George

The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve

Found inside: "... derives to the production and storage of crude helium and to the purification, liquefaction, and final transportation of pure helium. The BLM extraction operations and purification and liquefaction facilities are all located in Masterson, Texas ... " Read more Look inside

Resources:

West Texas History & Memories (Face Book Group)

Early Life in Texas County by County

Books about Texas People and Places

Famous People from Texas County by County

Texas History in the 19th Century (Amazon)

Texas History by Category and Event

Remember in Dumas, TX when... (Facebook)

Post Cards From The Panhandle (Facebook)

Life in Moore County Texas 1850 - 1950

Life in Moore County Texas 1850 -1950Early Life in Moore County Texas

 

What's your Favorite Book about a Texas County, Town, Person or Place? Here's our best reads list County by County

 

Mysterious TexasTrue Stories of Amazing People and Places in Texcas
 Loneliest, Least Populated Counties in Texas
Texas Cowboy HistoryBooks about Texas People 

County by County