At its recent meeting in San Angelo, the Texas Historical Foundation (THF) approved three new directors whose collective experience in business, law, and preservation will help advance the Foundation’s mission to preserve Texas history: Harold Prasatik of Fair Oaks Ranch, Cynthia Toles of Houston, and Jon Venverloh of Highland Park.

This year's Duda Forum will focus on historic courthouses in Texas, addressing their rehabilitation challenges and highlighting the important role they play in communities across the state.

The 3rd annual Duda Forum will focus on historic courthouses in Texas, addressing their rehabilitation challenges and highlighting the important role they play in communities across the state.

The grant supports Phase 1 of the Preservation Texas Institute Operations and Business Plan, laying the groundwork for a world-class preservation field school in Central Texas. The Institute will serve as a statewide hub for preservation education and training, based at the former Trinity University/Westminster College Campus in Tehuacana.

Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum received funding for its Cowboy Camp, an annual summer youth program. The museum also earned 3rd place at the 2024 Duda Preservation Awards in Dallas for its preservation work in Cuero and South Texas. The funds will go towards renovations to their building.

The Flower Hill Center earned second place in the 2024 Duda Preservation Awards for its work at the Smoot Homestead, a significant site in Austin's history. The award funds will support stabilization efforts for the main house, which will become a historic house museum.

This year for Halloween, we are revisiting one of our past favorites: The Jefferson Historical Society Museum's “Sitting Up with the Dead: A Victorian Mourning Exhibit." The exhibit, which we visited in 2024, explored 19th-century mourning customs, including a few eerie photographic effects and practices.

More than 10,000 years ago, prehistoric peoples in Texas crafted stone spear points to hunt mammoths, bison, and other animals. These finely made tools — known today as projectile points or, colloquially, as “arrowheads” — are among the oldest evidence of human life in North America. The Texas Fluted Point Survey is documenting and mapping these artifacts in Texas to expand our understanding of our state's earliest inhabitants.

In 2024, the inaugural year of the Duda Preservation Awards, the Friends of the Wheelock School House won the top prize for their efforts to restore the 1908 Wheelock School House.