3 Famous People with Texas Roots

You’ll be met with a rich history almost anywhere you go in Texas. Some of that history is connected to people you might not have thought would have roots in the Lone Star State. Below are three celebrities and the Texas cities they are connected to from Backroads of Texas.

Georgia O’Keeffe

On your way out of Palo Duro Canyon, take a side trip into the town of Canyon. It’s where famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe lived from 1916 to 1918 while creating a series of watercolor paintings she called “Light Coming on the Plains,” now in the permanent collection at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. O’Keeffe also taught art at West Texas State Normal College, now West Texas A&M University. On the campus of the university, you’ll find the Panhandle-Plains Museum in an art-deco building of the era of the Great Depression. Notice that more than seventy brands from local ranches are carved in stone above the doorway. On the sides of the main entrance are reliefs depicting historic scenes carved in the building blocks. Look up and see stone heads of jackrabbits and other local animals that resemble gargoyles. The interior of the museum is impressive and well worth the time to visit.

Janis Joplin

The 1960s blues and rock singer Janis Joplin (1943–1970) was born and raised in Port Arthur in a middle-class family. A major tourist attraction is the Joplin area on the second floor of the Museum of the Gulf Coast at 700 Procter. An exhibit displays her artwork, music, and a replica of her painted Porsche. Despite her tumultuous and tragic life, she has often been hailed as “the best white blues singer in American musical history.” She was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.  

Lyndon Johnson

Robert Caro’s book Means of Ascent, the second volume in his landmark and meticulously researched biography of the thirty-sixth president, Lyndon Johnson, confirms fraudulent ballot boxes in the senate primary election of 1948 and also confirms such practices were common in the 1940s. Caro argues that Johnson took voting fraud to extremes in 1948. Other historians agree that fraudulent voting tactics were common in Texas at the time but were actually rigged to benefit mostly local office seekers such as county commissioners and county sheriffs and only incidentally benefitted national office seekers such as Lyndon Johnson.

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