Photo Not
Available

How Come It's Called That?  Place Names in the Big Bend Country

Hallie Crawford Stillwell, pioneer ranchwoman, was born in Waco, Texas, and came to the Big Bend country at the age of twelve with her parents in a covered wagon.  At the tender age of sixteen Hallie Crawford - armed with a high school diploma, a teacher's certificate, and a six-shooter - moved to Presidio, Texas to teach school, just across the Rio Grande from Ojinaga, Mexico, where Pancho Villa and his raiders were on the rampage.  In 1918 she married Roy Stillwell, a cattle rancher from Marathon, Texas, and moved with him to his ranch, located just north of the Mexican border in a region plagued by Villa and bandits.  Hallie rode horseback, by her husband's side, for thirty years.  She learned the cattle business and the country and its people, an education that served her well after Roy's death in 1948.  Her recollections of these years are recorded in her book I'll Gather My Geese (Texas A&M University Press, 1991).

After Roy Stillwell's death, she and her two sons took the family ranch into their own hands.  During the drought of the 1950s, Hallie turned to outside employment to keep the ranch in operation.  She began writing, reporting for Texas newspapers, and lecturing.  Her "Ranch News" column appeared in the Alpine Avalanche for more than thirty years, and she served as Justice of the Peace in Alpine, Texas for twenty years.  Hallie Stillwell has been inducted into both the Texas Women's Hall of Fame and the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  She and sons and a daughter operated the family ranch, an R.V. park and store, and Hallie's Hall of Fame Museum near Big Bend National Park.  Hallie Crawford Stillwell passed away in 1997.

  Links