Why would an Army fort on the Texas frontier be built without a wall? In episode 156 of Wise About Texas, recorded live at the Young County Museum of History and Culture in Graham, Texas, host Ken Wise talks with Jim Hammond, director of Fort Belknap near Newcastle, about the 1851 post that became a crossroads of North Texas on the Butterfield trail and the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Hammond describes a soldier’s life that was far more monotonous than the movies suggest—until it wasn’t. He then takes listeners through the Elm Creek Raid of October 1864, when Comanche and Kiowa warriors crossed the Red River into a Young County emptied of most of its men by the Civil War, and the story of Britt Johnson, the man he calls his “hero of the frontier.” Listen to the full episode to hear how one small fort shaped the Texas frontier.

Episode 155: Young County Museum of History and Culture, Graham, Texas
Ken Wise records live at the Young County Museum of History and Culture in Graham, Texas, during its first-anniversary celebration. Curator and board president Tony Widner and founder Shannon Potts explain how they turned a 1937 Piggly Wiggly into a museum, why Young County holds so much Texas history, and the stories behind their most prized artifacts, from a Marlow brothers pistol to a James Monroe peace medal from the Elm Creek Raid.
In This Episode
• [00:47] Meet Shannon Potts and Tony Widner
• [01:11] How the Warren Wagon Train Raid site and a retired police chief started a museum
• [03:31] Building a museum with no museum experience
• [05:04] The building's history: Piggly Wiggly, Goodyear and church storage
• [07:02] Choosing which Young County stories to tell
• [09:43] Why Young County is a center of Texas frontier history
• [11:16] The first artifacts: a cavalry spur from Cox Mountain and a Marlow brothers pistol
• [12:23] The Marlow brothers story, from horse-theft arrest to the U.S. Supreme Court
• [16:14] The 1817 James Monroe peace medal from the 1864 Elm Creek Raid
• [18:34] Oil and gas history and Shannon's father's petroleum collection
• [18:58] The oak tree where cattle raisers organized in 1877
• [20:53] Oral histories and Hispanic, Native American and immigrant stories
• [22:45] Becoming a hub for North Texas history museums
• [23:55] The research library of more than 2,000 books
• [25:30] The Satanta portrait and the museum's murals
• [28:14] Charles Goodnight and the chuck wagon in Young County
• [30:11] Artifacts the museum is seeking, and Young County's Apollo 11 connection
• [31:23] Location, hours and group tours
Guests
• Tony Widner, curator and board president, Young County Museum of History and Culture; retired Graham chief of police
• Shannon Potts, founder, Young County Museum of History and Culture
Mentioned in This Episode
• Fort Belknap and historian Jim Hammond
• Warren Wagon Train Raid (1871), Satanta and Satank
• Marlow brothers and Sheriff Marion Wallace
• Elm Creek Raid (1864) and Little Buffalo
• Cox Mountain
• Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association
• Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving and Cynthia Ann Parker
• Wildcatter Ranch
• Frontier Texas! in Abilene and museums in Wichita Falls and Fort Worth
• Hexcel and the Apollo 11 lunar module
Visit the Museum
Young County Museum of History and Culture, 609 4th Street, Graham, TX 76450. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call ahead for group tours.
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In This Episode
• The origins of polo in sixth-century B.C. Persia — and why it was war training, not sport
• How the British found the game in India, and the first formal English rules in 1875
• James Gordon Bennett brings polo to America — and immediately sends to Texas for horses
• Vanderbilts and Belmonts buying Hill Country mustangs
• San Antonio as the polo pony capital of the United States by 1885
• The Texas breeders: O. W. Cardwell of Junction, “Doc” Weir of Georgetown, Jay Floyd of Midland
• What these horses actually were — Spanish mustang stock with Thoroughbred blood, long before the American Quarter Horse existed as a breed
• Captain Glynn Turquand, the Balcones Ranch, and the Texas Polo Club at Boerne in 1883
• The first public polo game in Texas at San Pedro Springs Park — and the collision that opened it
• The Cowboys Polo Club challenge and the “Texas Championship” of July 14, 1883
• Military polo at Fort Sam Houston, and why the usual 1896 Fort Riley date does not hold up
• The Broadmoor Cup trophy in Colorado that inspired this episode
• Playing polo in a western saddle, and the separate sport of cowboy polo
• The Polo Association in 1890, the first U.S. Open in 1904, and how handicaps work
• Cecil Smith’s Llano County childhood and his apprenticeship under horse trader George Miller
• Polo in Hollywood — Will Rogers, Walt Disney and Reginald Denny
• How the Chicago Blackhawks logo came from a polo club crest
• The 1933 East-West “World Series of Polo” against Tommy Hitchcock
• The knockout, the ambulance Smith waved off, and the comeback that made him famous
• The all-Texas team that swept England in 1938 and won the King’s Coronation Cup
• Smith’s horses in the Hall of Fame, and the groom who won polo’s lifetime achievement award
• Five U.S. Open titles, twenty-five straight years at ten goals, a last match at age 83
• Getting There: where to watch polo in Texas today
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