Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

Every day during the month of July, Goliad State Park will present “Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy,” an exhibition featuring 62 digital carbon prints with bilingual narrative text that reveal the muscle, sweat and drama that went into roping a calf in thick brush or breaking a wild horse in the saddle.

In the early 1970s, noted Texas historian Joe Frantz offered Bill Wittliff a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—to visit a ranch in northern Mexico where the vaqueros still worked cattle in traditional ways. Wittliff captured a way of life that now exists only in memory and in the photographs included in this exhibit. “Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy,” is made possible in park by a We the People grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.