All photos courtesy Archive of the Big Bend, Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas
The Alpine Central School, built in 1910, inspired the first Summer Normal, the predecessor to Sul Ross State Teacher’s
College. It was demolished in 1970 to make room for the current elementary school.
Dr. Horace Morelock, Harvard graduate and
president of Sul Ross for more than 20 years,
promoted the college and Alpine and was intru-
mental in creating the lodge and amphitheater.
ALPINE ~ History and Sense of Place
By David Keller
A
lpine started out as little more
than a boxcar depot rolled off
the tracks in a wide grassland val-
ley. With a strong-running spring and
the new Southern Pacific railroad, it
quickly became a supply post and ship-
ping point for the vast cattle ranches that
spread outward in all directions.
Anchored by low hills and surrounded by
the Davis Mountains, the little town had
a sense of permanence. Like it belonged
to the land. Only five years after its birth,
Alpine was chosen for the county seat.
And with a steadily growing population,
the quicksilver boom in South County
and the new two-story, well-appointed
schoolhouse built in 1910, it seemed that
Alpine was here to stay.
In many ways, Alpine was indistin-
guishable from other railroad towns. As
in those other towns, the depot was the
hub of activity, its nerve center. Beyond
that, the town was little more than a col-
lection of houses, a few saloons, church-
es, general stores, a blacksmith shop –
the standard-issue Western cowtown.
But when Sul Ross State Normal
College opened its doors for the first
summer session in 1920, Alpine gained
a sense of itself as distinct and unique
14
among area communities. It stood a lit-
tle taller.
Had it not been for the accident that
Alpine was centered in a vast and
unpopulated part of the state, or that the
Central School inspired the first Alpine
Summer Normal, it is unlikely Alpine
would have ever been considered as a
site for a college. As important as it was
in serving such a large and sparsely set-
tled region, Sul Ross was not popular
across most of the rest of the state.
Opponents argued that having a college
in this remote hinterland was a waste of
state funds. As a result, from its earliest
days, and intermittently ever since, Sul
Ross has had to fight for its existence.
Fortunately the college found a
champion willing to accept the chal-
lenge. In his efforts to attract students,
college President Horace Morelock
knew he had to focus on the larger assets
of the town and the region. He promot-
ed tirelessly through letters, in speeches
at graduations and in the annual publi-
cation the Rossonion. In a set of foldout
postcards printed in the 1930s that high-
lighted the area, Morelock wrote, “With
its delightful climate, picturesque moun-
tains, its lovely homes, paved streets,
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2011
“No place is a place
until things that have
happened in it are
remembered...”
– Wallace Stegner
pure water, elegant hotel and opportuni-
ties for recreation – (Alpine) is rapidly
becoming a favorite resort for Texas
people who desire rest, recreation and
spiritual uplift.”
Today, those same assets Morelock
championed are perhaps even more rele-
vant than they were in his time, mostly
because they are more precious. As most
of the rest of the state, and small towns
across the nation, succumb to the homog-
enizing effects of our automobile-based
culture, Alpine – largely by accident –
retains much of what is special about it. It
hasn’t been made over into some theme
park like Santa Fe or boomed and
sprawled endlessly outward like Midland
or Lubbock. At least not yet.
Still, like most towns, Alpine has suf-
fered its share of losses. Fires consumed
the first two depots, the first Presbyterian
Church and the Garnett Hotel and rav-
aged the entire downtown district three
separate times. But if such natural catas-
trophes were in some measure inevit able,
the intentional destruction of historic
buildings was certainly not. The demoli-
tion of the old Central School in the
early 1970s was, by most accounts, the
greatest loss. But there have been many
others: the old adobe Catholic Church,
the two-story brick Hancock Building
and a great many homes, especially his-
toric adobes on Alpine’s south side.
It’s a trend that persists even today.
Just six years ago, the stone-cottage vil-
lage on the Sul Ross campus – built dur-
ing the Great Depression by Alpine men
on the relief rolls – was demolished to
make way for a new student-housing
complex.
Meanwhile, development inconsis-
tent with the character of the town con-
tinues to spread. Businesses sprawl out-
ward along the east and west sides of
town, mobile homes invade vacant lots
and tracts along its edges and – most
recently – the east slope of A Mountain
has been carved up for residential devel-