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[HOST]: History takes on many forms and bears many faces.
Steadfast, triumphant or even lighthearted,
in the Panhandle Plains, days of old come alive.
Visitors are met with a spirited sense of pride and realism, and it all begins in Abilene.
Frontier Texas! is fourteen thousand square feet of the Old West,
located right downtown.
But this is no sleepy Western village.
First-person narratives provide an engaging lesson in the region's past.
And state-of-the-art technology makes you a part of frontier life.
Stampeding buffalo, a card game shootout, wolf attacks, thunderstorms –
the list goes on and on.
[JEFF]: Each person steps up and they tell you their own
personal story and they're kind of weaved together with all of the other stories.
When the characters appear, it really hits people at an emotional level.
[HOST]: At Frontier Texas!, you're in the middle of the action
as technology and history come together to create an unforgettable family experience.
Living history isn't relegated only to Abilene.
[SOLDIER]: Fire!
[HOST]: San Angelo's Fort Concho Buffalo Soldiers don't rely on technology to tell their tales.
Volunteers lend their time to represent what life was really like for black frontier soldiers.
[PAUL]: The Buffalo Soldiers were very important in helping win the West.
They served as escorts for telegraph relocation, stagecoach routes, railroad crews.
They were more or less the police of the West.
[HOST]: The Buffalo Soldiers re-create Company “A” of the Tenth Cavalry,
which was one of two all-black cavalry regiments protecting the Southwest and
Great Plains in the late eighteen hundreds.
From their stoic nature to their equipment and uniforms,
the volunteers provide a stunningly accurate portrayal of the proud Buffalo Soldiers.
Another more surprising pastime of military volunteer groups? Vintage Base Ball.
It originated in San Angelo
when a group of military reenactors donned eighteen hundreds-style baseball uniforms
and hit the field in a game against the Buffalo Gap Chips.
They follow the rules from eighteen sixty – when pitching underhand was the way to play.
[CORY]: Sometimes we actually get visitors to come and play the game with us
and they really enjoy playing baseball from the eighteen sixties to the eighteen eighties.
We have sons playing with their dads, we have a few grandfathers playing, we have husbands and wives on occasion playing.
[HOST]: Half the fun of watching vintage baseball is listening for the old-time slang.
A ground ball is a “daisy-cutter,” fans are known as “cranks”
and throwing the ball? That's called “hurling the apple.”
No matter what method you choose to experience the past, the Panhandle Plains is a ticket back in time.
Whether you favor technology, storytelling or getting down and dirty on the field,
you can do it all in Texas.
It's like a whole other country.