In this second episode of The Range, we talk to the McAllen family, owners of the McAllen Ranch north of Edinburg, Texas. The family shares stories about their history, ranching culture, and the challenges of ranching in the changing borderland areas of Texas. For more information about the McAllen Ranch please visit http://www.mcallenranch.com/. This episode was produced using oral history interviews taken in July 2017. Those interviews will be archived in the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin and will be made available online in the coming months. This episode of The Range is made possible with a grant from The Humanities Media Project at the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. Foodways Texas is a community-supported program in the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.
In our inaugural episode, we use the humble and ubiquitous bean to explore historical and current topics in Texas food. Beans here tell stories of belonging, from a nineteenth century border dispute to a recent trip to Terlingua.