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Posted: May 4, 2005
The success of Plano’s second annual Blackland Prairie Festival is two-fold in nature. It provides a visual link to our rich farming history, introducing hundreds to our strong pioneering heritage, and it secondly provides precious memories for those persons far removed from childhood days spent “on the farm.”
In the shade of Plano’s historic Haggard Park, the buckskin clad fur trapper carefully explained how trappers would portage up and down Texas’ unsettled waterways, making their living hunting, trapping and trading the furs they collected through the long winter months. “Ewwwwwwwww!,” screamed five-year old Marshall Evans as his sister shoved a rabbit pelt in his face for his closer inspection.
Marshall crinkled his nose at the pelt then turned his attention to the petting zoo and scampered off to eagerly encounter his first calf and other farm livestock.
While hundreds of children, like Marshall, experienced life on the farm for the first time by making rag dolls, grinding corn into cornmeal, petting farm animals, riding in horse-drawn wagons and viewing an authentic stage coach, for many others, the Festival was a trip down memory lane.
“I remember my mother had a grinder just like this one!,” exclaimed 86-year old Mary Stone. “We used to sit and grind the corn into cornmeal every week. My mama had 12 children to feed and she used to make cornbread in huge pans a week at a time. We’d sit out back and grind corn for hours at a time so she could stock up the cornmeal.”
For 73 year old Ken Lindemann, the lye soap maker brought back memories. “My mother had seven children and the only soap we ever had was lye soap. She’d boil up big vats of lard, add lye and sometimes a little bluing if it was going to be used for the laundry. We’d spend an entire day making lye soap and cutting it up into cubes. Just looking at it I can feel those big hard bars of soap and how the sharp edges would cut into your hands when you first used it.”
Silhouette art, popular in the 1800’s, held the attention of many at the Festival, as children eagerly posed for their first silhouette, many to be given as Mother’s Day gifts. Exquisitely detailed quilts flapped in a gentle breeze while a storyteller spun yarns of life on the prairie, while spinning “yarns” on her spinning wheel, reaching into a basket of raw wool. While Plano was largely a farming community, the presence of gunslingers and saloon “gals” added to the air of entertainment and was reminiscent of the enormous cattle drives and cowboys who traveled down portions of what is now Preston Road.
As nomadic tribes of Indians camped along the prairie following still abundant herds of buffalo, Plano’s early settlers were migrating from Kentucky and Tennessee, drawn by Collin County’s rich black prairie soil. In 1846 William Foreman purchased land and erected a grist mill and a saw mill, the beginnings of what would be Plano, Texas. In the 1850’s Mr. Foreman’s home became the site of a United States Post Office, and after turning down the honor of having his settlement named “Foreman,” it was decided to call the growing community “Plano,” which was thought to be the Spanish word meaning “plain.”
With the completion of the Houston and Texas Railroad in 1872, the City was on its way to new growth, with farming and ranching still the major source of “industry” in the surrounding countryside until the 1960’s. Plano’s annual Blackland Prairie Festival serves as an entertaining and educational reminder of our farming past.
For photos of the Blackland Prairie Festival, click here.
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