Miriam McFate Travel Journal - 1926

Thu, Nov 11, 1926

Pretty frosty here again this morning. Left here 7:30. Drove on over pavement. This country is so level you can see a city long before you get to it. We could see the city of Greenville when we were out 7 or 8 miles, it did not look more than 2 miles away. This country is chuck full of cotton. The soil here is better than soil in Ark. Lots of Prairie grass. People here travel in covered wagons. Have seen a great number of these. We passed one today where they had 3 horses hitched to the wagon. One horse hitched ahead of the train. Driving with rope lines. It sure did look funny. The men folks all have long mustaches and wear the real Texas hats we often see in pictures. Greenville is a nice city. Population is. The cities are a greater distance apart but are larger. You can see smoke around the horizon in different directions of the cities in the distance. Every piece of ground that is available is put to cotton. I think the famous Texas steers have turned to cotton.

We haven’t seen a one since we came into Texas. This is all newly settled. Almost every house is a new one. Most of them look like modern ones. Drove onto Rockwall. Here there is a rock wall supposed to have been built by prehistoric man. After leaving here we dropped down on to what is known as the Trinity river bottom. The crops thro here are real good. We are 21 miles from Dallas.

On and on we go. Country about the same all along. Drove on till we were 8 miles from Dallas, here the boys stopped to get a little wood. Kenneth found a little rat terrier pup in a gunny sack. So we have another member to our family now. Have christened it Dallas. All the kids are happy now. Drove on into Dallas. This is a big old city. It population is 177,000. Had to go right thro the heart of it. Had quite a time finding our way out of it. Very poor markings in all these Texas towns. Drove on out of the city. We tried to find a camp. Could not so we pulled to the road side and eat our dinner.

Started on at 2:00. Drove on for 5 or 6 miles. Beautiful homes, filling stations and stores all this distance. Passed the Trinity Cement plant. This is a very large quarry. They make both cement and lime. One place the road was cut thro rocks 40 feet deep for a short way. You can get gas here most any place. Price ranges from 13 cents to 21 cents. Lots of competition. Houses and buildings of every description all the way from Dallas to Fort Worth. Fort Worth is a very large city. Population Had a dickens of a time finding our way out of this place. Stopped one place to inquire, this fellow told us to go to the 4th street then to the right then to the left. Guess he thot we knew the city real well.

Next Grover cornered a cop. But he never heard tell of the highway we were looking for. So we stopped at another filling station and inquired again, and finally got out of town. Drove on about 2 miles out. Had to stop here on account of a flat tire. Had run a nail in it. Got this fixed and drove on. Drove on for another mile, here we stopped at a tourist camp 5:22. This sure is out on the prairie. They also have an aviation fields here, so the kids had quite a time watching the air planes light. We traveled on pavement all day. Awfully windy here tonight.