After Walter Prescott Webb's death in 1963, Governor John Connally of Texas observed that Webb had been "the foremost interpreter of the State of Texas to the nation and to the world." Governor Connally noted that while Webb was renowned as a scholar and writer, he also lived as the embodiment of his beloved Great Plains, "tended cattle, drank coffee from a can with the Texas Rangers as he went on their manhunts, shot the rapids of Santa Elena Canyon to focus national attention on the natural wonders of Texas." After Webb had risen to prominence as a historian, interviewers would question him as to when he had begun research on his famous book The Great Plains (1931). "When I was four." Webb would reply.

The answer was not without elements of truth. In the 1880s, Casner Webb had brought his wife and small daughter from the cottonlands of Monroe...