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West Texas is the stuff of Wild West fantasy: parched deserts, ghost towns, looming mesas, and above all a sense of utter isolation. Although the area south from the Panhandle down to Del Rio on the Rio Grande is, for convenience, also known as West Texas, the fantasy really begins west of the River Pecos; you can drive for hours without a sign of life to El Paso , Texas's shabby westernmost city. Most travelers only venture into the desolation to explore Big Bend National Park , nearly three hundred miles southeast of El Paso in the curve of the Rio Grande. Minimal rainfall and harsh land were not the only hindrances to settlement. The Apache and Comanche , though accustomed in the 1820s to trading with Mexican comancheros , were infuriated when hapless white pioneers began to trickle in during the 1830s. With their horsemanship and ability to find scarce water supplies, the Native Americans posed a real threat; upon statehood, a string of cavalry forts was set up with the help of federal money to protect Mexican and Anglo settlers from attack. As trading posts and cattle ranges began to spring up after the Civil War, the paramilitary Texas Rangers were sent out on violent vigilante missions. Eventually, as in the Panhandle, a brutal program of buffalo slaughter, supported by the US Army, starved the natives out. Not long afterwards, oil was discovered in West Texas and boom towns appeared, with all the attendant lawlessness, gunslinging and brawling.
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