Taming the Nueces Strip

“Durham’s account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.” — American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main ob