Sotol was a yucca-like plant used to construct early homes, one of which is on display at National Ranching Heritage Center
The interior of the El Capote Cabin at National Ranching Heritage Center.
Street and Crickets Avenue, right by the Buddy Holly Center (where you’ll also find his statue). Holly and later his parents were laid to rest in a local cemetery at 31st Street and Teak Avenue where fans still pay their respects. Inside the gate to the right is a road that leads to his grave (left side of the road). National Ranching Heritage Center Walk the history of life on the Texas range at the National Ranching Heritage Center (NRHC). Run by the Texas Historical Society and Texas Tech University, 19- acre Proctor Historical Park tells the story of the intrepid families who settled frontier Texas through the buildings they constructed and the houses in which they lived. The loop road takes you past almost 50 buildings, each an example of how early settlers met the challenges of living on the range. A railroad depot and train underscore the importance of the railway system. Windmills scattered throughout the rolling landscape highlight the importance of water to keep the steam engines running and the animals watered. Barns, carriage houses, a schoolhouse, milk and meat houses all represent the difficulties and solutions to maintaining life on the frontier.
Walk past a half dugout home built into the earth for shelter and to save on the need for wood, and a dogtrot cottage built with an open area to stay cooler in the hot, humid Texas summers. There’s a structure built of sotol—a yucca-like plant— whose stalks were used to construct the first two rooms of one of the cabins. A Queen Anne confection of a residence reminds visitors that there was also gracious living. The NRHC offers 30-minute trolley tours of the historical park at 10:30 a.m. every Thursday, April to October, for $5 per person. But the walk is easy and allows visitors to spend plenty of time at each of the fascinating sites. American Windmill Museum Today giant turbines reach into the sky to grab the power of the wind transforming it into electricity, but long before these sleek white structures there were windmills that used the energy of the wind to pull water from deep out of the ground. The American Windmill Museum celebrates this sustainable form of energy—wind power still thrives. Intrepid settlers certainly used wagons to bring them to the new frontier, but it was the railroads that opened the area to commerce and trade, a form of travel made possible by windmills. The steam engines that pulled
DISCOVER LUBBOCK, TEXAS
COAST TO COAST FALL MAGAZINE 2018
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