Saturday, February 21, 2026

Snakeville: The Wild Kingdom That Once Thrived on Alice Road

In January of 1914, crowds at the Brownsville Mid-Winter Fair gathered around a wooden platform to watch something they had never seen before.

Five live rattlesnakes were dumped onto the boards.

A man stepped forward with a forked stick. His wife held open a flour sack.

The clock started ticking.

This was not a carnival trick. This was a competition — a rattlesnake catching contest — and it would make Brownsville briefly famous across Texas.

The man at the center of it all was W.A. “Snake” King.

But his story began long before that day.

From Lieberman to “Snake” King

W.A. King was born William Abraham Lieberman, the son of Polish immigrants who came to America in the 1870s. After time in New York, the family relocated to California. Young William didn’t stay in school long. Like many restless teenagers of the era, he drifted toward traveling shows and carnivals.

Some boys ran away to join the circus.

William joined a snake exhibit.

He quickly realized something practical: snakes in carnival shows didn’t last long. They were over-handled, mistreated, or poorly housed. Showmen constantly needed replacements.

So instead of simply displaying snakes, he envisioned supplying them.

By the mid-1890s he was already providing snakes to contacts he’d met through carnival circuits. What he needed was a permanent base of operations — somewhere warm, somewhere close to Mexico, somewhere where rattlesnakes were plentiful.

By 1903, he chose Brownsville.

Not Corpus Christi.

Not San Antonio.

Brownsville.

The climate was ideal. The border made importing animals easier. South Texas ranchlands were thick with diamondbacks.

Around 1907 he established what would become known as Snakeville, just outside the city limits near what we now know as Alice Road. (The Palm Village Shopping Center sits roughly where cages once stood.)

He legally changed his name to W.A. “Snake” King.

And the legend began.

Building Snakeville

Snakeville started as a practical operation — a mail-order snake farm supplying carnivals, circuses, collectors, and eventually zoos.

But it grew.

Mexican laborers were hired to catch rattlesnakes across South Texas and northern Mexico. Ranchers began delivering live specimens instead of killing them outright. Other animals were added: bobcats, badgers, armadillos, javelinas.

It became a family business.

King married Manuela Cortez Lambert, and together they raised children among cages, hooks, burlap sacks, and rattles.

Visitors described rows of shallow wooden trays stacked high — thousands upon thousands of rattlesnakes kept in darkened enclosures. At its height, accounts claim Snakeville housed tens of thousands of snakes.

The business letterhead famously boasted:

“Just watch me grow — not in size, but my business.”

And grow it did.

The Snake Catching Contest of 1914

If Snakeville made King prosperous, the Mid-Winter Fair made him famous.

In January 1914, Brownsville hosted what newspapers described as the first rattlesnake catching contest ever held.

There were “singles” and “doubles.”

In doubles, two people worked together. One pinned the snake’s head with a forked stick, grabbed it firmly behind the neck, and handed it off to a partner holding open a sack. Twist. Tie. Next snake.

Five rattlesnakes were dumped onto the platform at once.

No ceremony. No warming up.

Just writhing bodies scattering across wooden boards.

The Brownsville Herald reported it with dramatic flair. Spectators were equal parts fascinated and horrified. One contestant, “Rattlesnake Bill” Rosette, was bitten during competition and calmly walked off to have his wound treated while the contest continued.

W.A. “Snake” King and his wife competed as a team.

Their time: 6 minutes and 24 seconds.

Later contests escalated. Thirty rattlesnakes were caught and bagged in under sixteen minutes. The Kings were awarded silver trophies and officially declared champions.

The event drew statewide attention. Pathé news cameras reportedly filmed the spectacle, meaning audiences across the country may have seen Brownsville’s snake-catching champions flicker across early cinema screens.

It was daring. It was theatrical. It was dangerous.

And it cemented the Snake King’s reputation.

Life Inside the Compound

Snakeville wasn’t just a snake farm.

It was a full menagerie.

Exotic birds imported across the border. Monkeys with reputations. Carnivores and constrictors. Venom extraction demonstrations. Snake skull souvenirs mounted on plaques. Belts, hatbands, handbags fashioned from rattlesnake skin — nothing went to waste.

There were close calls.

Workers were bitten. Children learned early that caution wasn’t optional. Visitors sometimes panicked. Stories circulated about enormous rattlesnakes from Tamaulipas kept in underground cells because their fury rattled day and night.

One visiting reporter in the 1920s described tray after tray of snakes, Mexican handlers tossing new arrivals into cages, and King deftly maneuvering a massive specimen with a handmade hook attached to a six-foot pole.

It was part farm.
Part laboratory.
Part showground.

And entirely South Texas.

A Changing Landscape

As years passed, land was cleared. Mesquite and cactus disappeared. Snakes became less abundant. The wild frontier that had made Snakeville possible slowly receded.

But by then the name was known.

“Snake” King was more than a businessman — he was a character. A promoter. A man who understood spectacle long before public relations firms existed.

He turned rattlesnakes into trophies.
Snake bites into headlines.
And a dusty patch of land off Alice Road into something people still talk about more than a century later.

The Boy Who Grew Up Among Rattles

In 1923, the youngest child of W.A. and Manuela was born.

His name was Manuel.

By the time he could walk, he was walking among cages.

By the time he could talk, he understood hooks and sacks.

Snakeville was not a story to him.

It was home.

And in the decades to come, Manuel King would trade rattlesnakes for lions — carrying the family name from snake pits to steel cages and onto highways beyond Texas.

But that is another chapter.

Friday, February 20, 2026

Boca Chica Before the Rockets

How Col. Sam Robertson Built, Promoted, and Lost Del Mar Beach on the Edge of the Rio Grande

The Rise and Fall of Del Mar Beach Resort, 1926–1942

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Cameron County was still being engineered into modernity. Railroads were expanding. Irrigation systems were transforming agriculture. Roads pushed steadily east toward the Gulf. The lower Rio Grande Valley was not yet finished — it was being built.

Colonel Sam Robertson understood something fundamental about that transformation. He often repeated an axiom that guided his life:

“Civilization follows transportation.”

For Robertson, transportation was not merely about roads or ferries — it was about opportunity.

From Sheriff to Seaside Promoter

By the mid-1920s, Robertson had already served as a civil engineer, infrastructure promoter, and Sheriff of Cameron County. In 1926 he resigned his office and organized the Brazos de Santiago Pass Ferry Company, connecting Padre Island and mainland interests through ferry services and early causeway projects. Telephone lines were stretched across stretches of undeveloped coastline. Ocean drives were proposed. Padre Island real estate was aggressively promoted.

Financial collapse in 1928 forced Robertson and associates to relinquish major holdings on Padre Island. Yet Robertson did not retreat. Instead, he pivoted southward toward Brazos de Santiago Island and Boca Chica.

In 1931, after acquiring the Boca Chica toll bridge and adjacent property through debt settlement, Robertson announced the opening of a new coastal village: Del Mar Beach Resort.

A Village on the Edge of the Gulf

Del Mar was accessible from Brownsville by asphalt road and toll bridge. Though primitive in construction — later described humorously by journalists as “rule-of-thumb engineering” — the route worked. Cars reached the beach.

The resort included approximately twenty day cabins, a bathhouse, a ballroom pavilion, a restaurant, and its own post office. Robertson himself served as postmaster. Granite jetties at Brazos Pass — part of a $3 million federal engineering effort — were decked for fishing. Charter boats carried anglers into the Gulf and Laguna Madre.

Promotional materials emphasized:

• King mackerel, tarpon, redfish, snapper
• Spearing flounder by torchlight
• Shrimp, oysters, and crabs in abundance
• Gulf breezes believed to relieve hay fever and asthma
• “Same latitude as Miami, Florida”

Del Mar was presented as invigorating, modern, and healthful — a seaside alternative for Valley residents and visiting tourists.

But infrastructure alone does not create crowds.

Robertson understood that attention must be cultivated.

Spectacle and Promotion

The early 1930s were competitive years for tourism. Resorts across the Gulf Coast relied on spectacle, contests, and headline attractions to draw visitors. Del Mar was no exception.

Fishing tournaments awarded prize money and were heavily promoted in partnership with local rail interests. Big band music echoed from the pavilion. Beauty pageants crowned regional winners and drew thousands of spectators.

In April 1933, Robertson and his wife Maria sponsored one of the most dramatic promotional events in Del Mar’s history — a skydiving exhibition by William G. Swan, billed in newspapers as the “Human Rocket.” Advertisements described Swan ascending thousands of feet before plunging earthward in a daring aerial display over the Gulf.

The event ended in tragedy when Swan’s parachute failed to deploy properly. He fell to his death over open water.

The incident illustrates both the ambition and the volatility of Depression-era promotion. Resorts sought increasingly bold attractions to distinguish themselves. Del Mar was part of that national pattern — energetic, experimental, and sometimes perilous.

Despite the accident, the resort continued operations.

Then came September 5, 1933.

The Hurricane

The Tampico Hurricane struck near Del Mar with winds estimated at 125 miles per hour. Robertson and several others rode out the storm at the resort. Damage was extensive. Later storytelling exaggerated the destruction, but contemporary reports confirm that Del Mar was battered — not erased.

Robertson rebuilt.

By spring 1934, newspapers reported 26 new cottages constructed stronger than before, positioned above storm tide lines and reinforced against future winds. Back roads were improved. Marketing resumed with renewed vigor.

Winter rate reductions of up to 40 percent were advertised. Mid-week specials targeted Valley residents and occupational groups such as oil workers. Attendance records show thousands visiting during major events in 1937 and 1938.

The post-hurricane years became Del Mar’s most visible cultural phase.

Valley Bathing Beauties

In 1939, Miriam Wilde of Brownsville won the Valley Bathing Beauties competition held at Del Mar. Photographs show her wearing a sash and holding a trophy cup. She was later identified in promotional material as “Miss Del Mar 1939.”

Postcards and brochures featured her image against the Gulf and Rio Grande backdrop. One card proclaimed:

“The water’s fine the year around on the bathing beaches at Brownsville, down on the Rio Grande just across from Old Mexico.”

1940 0314 Brownsville Texas Miss Miriam Wilde Stands at Rio Grande - one foot in each nation

Beauty pageants were not casual diversions. They were organized regional events drawing participants from Brownsville, McAllen, San Benito, and Fort Brown, and attracting crowds numbering in the thousands. During its recovery phase after the hurricane, Del Mar presented itself as youthful, confident, and culturally active.

Miriam Wilde became a face of that optimism.

The End of an Era

On July 4, 1938, Robertson hosted a reunion with his brothers at Del Mar — their first gathering in 42 years. He was already in declining health, suffering from cardiac complications and long-standing diabetes.

He died on August 22, 1938.

His wife Maria, a Viennese-born pianist who had long provided music at the pavilion, continued operating the resort with assistance from family. But the world was changing.

On November 26, 1942, during World War II, Maria announced the closing of Del Mar Beach Resort at the request of the United States Coast Guard. The beach was needed for an observation post. The government leased the property.

Del Mar did not reopen.

Afterward

In later decades, the resort faded into coastal memory. By the early twenty-first century, only remnants could be seen at low tide north of Highway 4.

Today, the same stretch of coastline is associated with an entirely different frontier — aerospace launch facilities at Boca Chica.

Yet Robertson’s phrase still echoes across generations:

“Civilization follows transportation.”

Railroads, ferries, toll bridges, asphalt roads — and now launch pads.

Del Mar Beach Resort existed for little more than a decade as a fully realized seaside village. Within that brief span it reflected the Valley’s ambitions: engineering optimism, promotional daring, regional pageantry, vulnerability to nature, wartime interruption, and eventual transformation.

Its story is not nostalgic — it is structural. It is part of how South Texas was built.

Sources (Blog-Friendly Reference List)

Brownsville Herald, various issues 1932–1940 (Del Mar advertisements, beauty pageants, Human Rocket coverage).
Port Isabel Pilot, April 11, 1934 (rebuilding report).
Hart Stilwell, “The Legendary Col. Sam of Old Padre Island,” Houston Chronicle, Texas Magazine, 1975.
Thomas Allen profile on Col. Sam Robertson (genealogical compilation and archival references).
Valley Morning Star, “Hathcock History: Early Days of Island Resorts.”
Brownsville Herald, Tarpon Rodeo and fishing tournament coverage, 1934–1938.
Brownsville Herald, Nov. 26, 1942 (closure announcement under Coast Guard request).
Brownsville Herald, 2003 articles on Boca Chica and Del Mar historical remnants.

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

When Lindbergh Came to Brownsville

1929 Airport Dedication - Charles Lindbergh and Wayne Wood (L-1)

And Why It Meant More Than a Visit

There are moments in local history that feel ceremonial — a famous name passing through town, a photograph taken, a handshake exchanged, a newspaper headline saved.

And then there are moments that reveal something deeper — moments that expose a city’s position in the larger machinery of history.

When Charles Lindbergh came to Brownsville in 1929, it was not merely a visit.

It was confirmation.

Brownsville Was Not Peripheral

By 1929, Charles Lindbergh was no longer simply the pilot of the Spirit of St. Louis. He was the most recognized aviator in the world — and more importantly, he had become a central figure in the expansion of international aviation networks, including Pan American’s growing reach into Mexico and Latin America.

Brownsville was not chosen accidentally.

It sat at the hinge between the United States and Mexico — geographically, politically, and aeronautically. The Rio Grande did not represent an edge. It represented a crossing.

And at that hinge stood Les Mauldin.

1929 0314 Charles Lindbergh on Airport Register - stops in Brownsville on way to Mexico

The Register Signature

One of the most powerful documents preserved in the Lindbergh materials is the airport register entry from March 14, 1929. Lindbergh signs in while stopping in Brownsville en route to Mexico.

That signature is more than ink on paper.

It places Brownsville firmly within the operational path of international aviation at a time when global air routes were still being invented. It shows that Brownsville was not a novelty stop — it was a functioning node in a developing network.

And Les Mauldin was the man managing that node.

The Telegram

1929 0401 Charles Linbergh Western Union telegram to airport manager Les Mauldin

Soon after, a Western Union telegram from Lindbergh to airport manager Les Mauldin reinforces what the photographs already suggest: this was professional contact, not ceremonial tourism.

Lindbergh’s Curtiss Falcon appears in multiple images taken at the Brownsville airport. In one, he checks his parachute. In another, Les Mauldin stands beside him. In others, Etelka Mauldin tries on Lindbergh’s parachute and boots — a strikingly human moment inside an otherwise monumental story.

These are not stiff publicity shots. They are working-field photographs.

They show men in shirtsleeves, a plane being inspected, equipment handled, relationships formed.

The Falcon did not land in a vacuum.

It landed at a prepared field — one that had been built, advocated for, and maintained by Mauldin and others who believed aviation would define the Valley’s future.

The Dedication and the Crowd

Photographs from the airport dedication show Lindbergh alongside local leaders. These events were framed as civic triumphs — and they were.

But beneath the ceremony was something practical:

Brownsville had infrastructure.

By the early 1930s, the airport would achieve A-1-A designation. It would be lighted with General Electric equipment. It would serve as a western U.S. terminal for Pan American Airways. Customs, immigration, weather, and mail facilities were stationed there.

This did not emerge overnight.

The Lindbergh visit sits at the midpoint of that evolution — a public validation of work already underway.

Les Mauldin’s Position in the Story

It is tempting to see Lindbergh as the center of this chapter. He was the celebrity. The headlines carried his name.

But when the photographs are examined carefully, something else becomes clear:

Lindbergh is passing through.

Mauldin remains.

Lindbergh checks a parachute and departs for Mexico.

Mauldin continues training pilots.

He enters altitude contests.
He promotes youth Air Cadet programs.
He organizes mail routes.
He pushes for resumed service when contracts collapse.
He stands under wings holding mailbags.
He builds continuity.

The Lindbergh moment is a flash of global spotlight.
Mauldin’s career is the steady burn underneath it.

The Human Detail

One of the most extraordinary pieces in the Lindbergh file is the photograph of Etelka Mauldin wearing Lindbergh’s parachute and boots.

It is easy to overlook this as a charming domestic aside.

It is not.

It reflects proximity — not social proximity, but operational proximity. Equipment was not sacred relic. It was functional. It was handled. It was shared.

Aviation in Brownsville was not spectacle. It was work.

And the Mauldin family lived inside that work.

Brownsville as Corridor

The Lindbergh materials also reinforce something larger about the city’s role.

Brownsville was not merely serving domestic air routes. It was serving cross-border air routes. Mexico was not “foreign” in the modern sense — it was integrated into the aviation imagination of the region.

Lindbergh’s stop on the way to Mexico was not exotic.

It was routine.

That routine is perhaps the most important revelation of all.

After the Headlines

By 1930, 1931, 1932 — the glow of the Lindbergh visit had faded from national news. But locally, aviation expanded.

Airmail contracts were fought for and restored.
Commercial service resumed.
Air cadet programs were organized.
Infrastructure improved.
Federal designation solidified Brownsville’s position.

The Lindbergh visit did not create Brownsville aviation.

It confirmed it.

Why This Matters Now

c1930 Les Mauldin beneath wing bow tie holding mail bag

In retelling local aviation history, it is easy to focus on dramatic names and moments. Lindbergh provides both.

But the deeper story — the one embedded in airport registers, telegrams, candid photographs, and later air mail resumption articles — belongs equally to those who built the field and kept it alive after the celebrity departed.

Les Mauldin stands in those photographs not as an extra in Lindbergh’s story.

He stands as a steward of a corridor.

And the evidence preserved in these materials shows that Brownsville’s airport was not peripheral, not accidental, and not minor in the emerging map of American and Mexican aviation.

It was a hinge.

And in 1929, the most famous aviator in the world landed on that hinge — and signed the book.

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Before the Border: Les Mauldin and the Midwest Barnstorming Circuit

Long before municipal airports and international routes, Les Mauldin was working the grandstands.

An undated newspaper clipping describes his participation in a July 3rd and 4th American Legion “Celebration and National Athletic Carnival,” where crowds gathered for aerial exhibitions that included wing walking, rope ladder transfers between wings, and even looping the airplane while standing outside the cockpit.

It was the kind of flying that defined early 1920s America.

The clipping also notes that he held contracts for the Missouri and Illinois State Fairs — two of the major exhibition venues of the Midwest. During this period, state fairs regularly featured war-surplus biplanes performing stunts above packed grandstands. Pilots moved from town to town under seasonal contracts, often appearing at patriotic American Legion events before heading to fairgrounds later in the summer.

This was the same barnstorming world that young Charles Lindbergh passed through in 1922–1923, working as a wing walker, mechanic, and parachutist before achieving national fame. Most names from that circuit never became household words. Yet they were the ones who carried aviation from military surplus fields to rural America.

Les Mauldin appears to have been one of those working pilots — part of the informal network that stitched together state fairs, Legion celebrations, and exhibition circuits across the Midwest.

Before Brownsville.
Before Mexico.
Before international routes.

He was already walking the wings.

Sunday, February 15, 2026

When Rats Owned the Night: Downtown Brownsville’s Long War (1940–1967)

J.P. Stillwater

In the spring of 1940, Brownsville declared war.

Not on a foreign enemy — but on rats.

Across the front pages of the Brownsville Herald and the Valley Evening Monitor, headlines shouted:

“Brownsville Starts War On Rodents”
“Rat Campaign Support Urged”
“Brownsville Rat Campaign Set March 27”
“War On Rats Here Right On Schedule”

The language was deliberate. This was a war. And it centered not just on alleys and riverbanks — but on downtown itself.

The 33,000-Rat Problem

City officials estimated there were 33,000 rats in Brownsville in 1940 — “each a potential carrier of typhus fever.”

The campaign was coordinated with the U.S. Biological Survey. City employees, firemen, health workers, and even Boy Scouts were mobilized to canvass every business and residence. Orders for red squill poison bait were taken at City Hall, schools, fire stations, and the Chamber of Commerce.

The poison cost 30–35 cents per package.

Participation was framed as civic duty.

The stated objectives were threefold:

Prevent the spread of typhus transmitted by fleas.
Eradicate Brownsville’s enormous rat population.
Save families money — each rat was estimated to cost households $2 per year in damage.

The tone of the coverage was urgent, almost apocalyptic. Officials referenced bubonic plague as a possible danger to port cities. Typhus cases in the Valley had reached into the hundreds the previous year.

This was not presented as nuisance control.
It was public health defense.

Downtown Conditions: The Unspoken Context

The newspapers rarely described conditions in graphic detail, but interviews conducted decades later for local theater histories fill in the atmosphere.

Former projectionists, ushers, and patrons consistently mentioned:

Rats running along balcony railings
Scratching inside theater walls
Movement behind curtains
Occasional sightings near concession stands

In older downtown buildings — especially theaters built in the 1910s and 1920s — structural gaps, wooden framing, and food waste created ideal conditions.

Backstage areas were particularly vulnerable:

Stored costumes
Wooden set flats
Dark catwalks
Limited ventilation
Adjacent alley dumpsters

When evening crowds left and lights dimmed, downtown became a different ecosystem.

Theaters as Vulnerable Nodes

Brownsville’s historic downtown theaters — including venues such as the Capitol, Queen, and later neighborhood houses — operated in an era before modern pest control standards.

Consider the context:

Air conditioning was not widespread until later decades.
Buildings were not tightly sealed.
Alleyways behind theaters often contained restaurant waste.
Produce markets and feed stores operated nearby.
The Rio Grande and rail lines were natural rat corridors.

Theaters were warm, dark, and supplied with food debris.

From a rat’s perspective, it was prime real estate.

1948: The Problem Persists

By 1948, headlines again referenced rodent control measures. The war had not been permanently won.

Campaigns were repeated because infestations returned.

Urban ecology does not surrender easily.

Rats reproduce quickly.
Downtown commerce produces waste.
Climate favors survival.

Each eradication drive reduced numbers — temporarily.

1967: Still in the Headlines

Even as late as 1967, rat control stories reappeared in Valley papers. Public health departments continued coordinated efforts. The language softened compared to 1940’s war rhetoric, but the problem endured.

By then:

Some downtown theaters were declining.
Maintenance budgets shrank.
Buildings aged.
Sealing and sanitation standards improved slowly.

Interviewees from this era often described seeing rats less frequently in the audience areas — but still common in alleys and storage rooms.

Why Downtown Was Especially Vulnerable

Several structural factors made downtown Brownsville uniquely prone to infestation in the mid-20th century:

1. Border Commerce

Constant freight movement across the river and rail lines provided rodent transit routes.

2. Produce and Grain Traffic

Warehouses and feed stores attracted rodents.

3. Dense Block Construction

Shared walls allowed rats to travel between buildings unseen.

4. Climate

Warm temperatures allowed year-round breeding.

5. Limited Waste Infrastructure

Garbage containment practices were inconsistent prior to modern regulation.

Memory vs. Records

The newspapers framed the issue as a public health crisis.

Oral histories frame it as everyday reality.

Neither contradicts the other.

The 1940 campaign was a coordinated attempt to confront something residents already knew: rats were not occasional visitors. They were part of downtown’s nightly rhythm.

In interviews, older Brownsvillians rarely expressed shock about seeing rats in theaters. It was more often described with a shrug — unpleasant but unsurprising.

That normalization tells us something powerful about mid-century urban life.

The War That Never Fully Ended

Brownsville’s “war on rats” was not a single battle in March 1940. It was cyclical.

1940: Large-scale mobilization.
1948: Renewed control efforts.
1960s: Continued public health interventions.

Each generation fought its own version of the problem.

And yet downtown survived.

Theaters operated.
Audiences attended matinees.
Stage curtains rose.
Children bought popcorn.

Behind the glamour, behind the neon marquees, behind the orchestra pit — there was a parallel city moving in the dark.

A Different Way to See Downtown History

When we talk about historic theaters, we focus on architecture, film premieres, vaudeville acts, and community gatherings.

But urban history also lives in:

Sanitation drives
Public health campaigns
Insect and rodent control
The infrastructure beneath the romance

The rat headlines of 1940 are not embarrassing footnotes.

They are evidence of a city grappling seriously with modernization, disease prevention, and civic responsibility.

Brownsville’s downtown was not decaying — it was evolving.

And part of that evolution required confronting what lived in the walls.

Les Mauldin - Barnstormer

The Barnstorming Years

Brownsville Herald clippingNovember 9th 1924 (plane pix added)

When the war ended and the surplus planes were sold off by the hundreds, Les Mauldin joined a restless fraternity of young pilots who believed the sky was no longer a battlefield but a stage. Barnstorming was not a career in the formal sense—it was motion, risk, improvisation, and nerve. And Mauldin took to it naturally.

c1921 Les Mauldon at Henderson-Mauldin Aero Service Fulton MO

He flew where there were no airports yet, only pastureland and curiosity. Fields outside towns became runways for a day. Word spread by handbills and newspaper notices: Flying Circus Coming. By afternoon, crowds gathered—farmers, children, shopkeepers—watching biplanes rise where no machine had ever lifted before.

1924 1016 Kindred's Flying Circus 1924 1016 Kindred Flying Circus pilots -Belton Journal

Mauldin flew as part of traveling troupes—sometimes under his own name, sometimes folded into larger outfits like the Kindred Flying Circus—and performed the full repertoire of the era’s aerial daring. Formation flying, looping maneuvers, and precision landings were routine. What drew crowds, though, were the stunts that seemed to flirt openly with disaster: wing walking, rope ladder climbs, parachute drops from thousands of feet, and dead-motor landings that ended in silence broken only by applause.

These were not polished shows. Engines failed. Weather shifted without warning. Repairs were done in barns, sheds, or open fields, with tools carried in cars and pockets. Pilots doubled as mechanics, promoters, and sometimes ticket takers. Mauldin learned every inch of his aircraft—not from manuals, but from necessity.

1924 0707 Kindred Flying Circus - Murphysboro Daily Independent

The barnstorming circuit carried him across the Midwest and South—Illinois, Missouri, Texas—following county fairs, Armistice Day celebrations, and town anniversaries. Each stop added to his reputation as a steady hand and reliable flyer, someone who could be trusted when the motor cut or the wind turned strange.

But barnstorming was also a young man’s life: long roads, roadside hotels, temporary friendships, and the sense that the horizon was always calling. Over time, Mauldin began to move beyond short exhibition hops and toward longer routes and more complex operations. He flew into Mexico—Monterrey, Torreón, Lerdo—where aviation was still raw and full of possibility. There, his skills found new purpose: not just spectacle, but transportation, instruction, and mechanical expertise.

Possibly Les and Etelka's plane after honeymoon crash in Torreon 1925

Les Mauldin photo of unidentified aviatrix and others in Monterrey, Mexico

Those journeys carried him farther still, southward into Central America and beyond—Panama, Venezuela—where hangars replaced barns and airlines began to take shape from the same men who once sold rides for a dollar. The discipline learned in barnstorming—the ability to adapt, repair, judge risk, and fly by instinct—translated directly into this next phase of aviation.

1929 aerial of municipal airport at the time Pan Am expanded runways and services etc.

Eventually, Mauldin’s path bent back north, settling at last in Brownsville, a place where borders met, winds were steady, and aviation was becoming permanent rather than passing. There, he carried with him everything the barnstorming years had taught him. What had begun as daring entertainment matured into legacy.

First Mauldin home in Brownsville, Texas was at the airport.

He arrived not just as a pilot, but as someone who had lived the early sky—who had known aviation when it was still personal, dangerous, and built one landing at a time.

Publication in the works!

photos from the Les Mauldin Aviation Collection

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Maps 1846 - 1853 - 1866-67 - 1853 - 1882

Brazos Island - Brazos Santiago - Ft. Brown to Point Isabel (Main Road) - Palo Alto Battleground - Resaca de la Palma - Point Isabel Fortification (unlabeled - not chronological)