Photo courtesy Texas Ranger Hall of FaBetween "Walker, Texas Ranger" and "Lonesome Dove," the Texas Rangers have inspired their fair share of tales, but the truth about the storied law enforcement outfit is far more dramatic than anything that could fit on a screen—silver or otherwise.
The agency began in 1823 as a group of 10 men who collected land rights from the Mexican government in exchange for patrolling the Texas range and warding off Comanche raids.
"We had a lot of Native American allies because we were fighting against their main enemy," said Amanda Crowley, research librarian at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. "Everyone was against the Comanche. They were like the New York Yankees. They were tough and good at what they did, but nobody liked them."
The Rangers were still a relatively new outfit when a prisoner exchange gone wrong led to one of the bloodiest conflicts in the organization's history: the Battle of Plum Creek on Aug. 12, 1840, near present-day Lockhart. The Comanche and Rangers exchanged gunfire on horseback, but the Native Americans were so heavily laden with plunder—cattle, horses, dry goods and whatever else they could carry—that the Rangers were easily able to defeat the retreating fighters.
The battle reportedly claimed the lives of 80 Comanche and 11 Rangers. It is memorialized with a historical marker at the intersection of Hwy. 142 and US 183 in Lockhart.
After the Civil War, the agency's ranks ballooned to include close to 1,000 men by Crowley's estimation. A 1911 Texas House bill trimmed the Rangers' ranks to 80 men, and raised their pay to $90 per month for privates, $100 per month for sergeants and $150 per month for captains.
Boom and busted
The oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s brought industrialization and population growth to cities throughout Texas—along with it came all sorts of people.
"Down south during this time, shanty towns were popping up overnight in Texas, and they would have prostitution, gambling and all those things," Crowley said.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow began their infamous crime spree throughout the Midwest in 1932. Barrow and Parker robbed a dozen banks and killed nine police officers. Law enforcement seemed always two steps behind the duo.
In 1934, former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer was put on the case after Barrow orchestrated a jailbreak for members of his gang that left Texas' law enforcement agencies with a collective black eye.
The chase took Hamer across Texas and into Louisiana, but on May 23, 1934, on a dirt road in Louisiana, Hamer accomplished what no other law enforcement agency had been able to manage in more than two years: he and a posse of three other men ambushed and killed Parker and Barrow. It had taken him 102 days.
The Bonnie and Clyde case, along with a radio show called "The Lone Ranger," which premiered in 1933, further raised the Rangers' profile and added to the Texas-sized myth surrounding it.
The modern Ranger
For all the differences between the first group of Rangers organized by Stephen F. Austin in 1823, and the collection of 150 men and women who patrol the state's highways and investigate its darkest corners today, there are some things that never change.
Rangers are required to don their signature hats for work, and they all still wear the signature five-pointed star badge.
Although the car has replaced the horse and the guns have gotten bigger, the idea is the same: stop the bad guys.
