Books by Bill O'Neal

Billy Dixon triggered the most celebrated shot in the history of the West at the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874. A few months later, while serving as an army scout, Billy earned a Medal of Honor during an even more desperate engagement, as one of six men battling for their lives against a band of 125 warriors at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Both of these actions took place in the Texas Panhandle, where Dixon became an icon of heroism.Billy ran away to the West during boyhood, eagerly seeking adventure on the frontier. He worked as a woodchopper, a trapper, a bullwhacker and a muleskinner. Dixon became a buffalo hunter, displaying exceptional skills as a sharpshooter. After almost a decade as an army scout, Dixon returned to Adobe Walls to establish a bachelor home on the sparsely-settled plains.A fellow adventure-seeker, Olive King, came to the Panhandle from back East to visit her cowboy brothers. She became a frontier schoolmarm and she met her famous neighbor, Billy Dixon. Billy and Olive fell in love, married, and had eight children. Olive persuaded Billy to dictate his memoirs to her, and the result was a classic frontier biography, Life of "Billy" Dixon: Plainsman, Scout and Pioneer. During a long widowhood Olive Dixon became a major force in Panhandle history, helping to establish the Panhandle-Plains Museum, writing and speaking about her own pioneer experiences as well as Billy's, and erecting impressive monuments at Adobe Walls and at Buffalo Wallow.

The Pacific Coast League is one of the oldest baseball leagues and has a rich and colorful history. Bill O'Neal's exhaustive research brings back forgotten players and moments in history. The list of players that came up through the ranks of the Pacific League and found fame in the majors reads like a who's who in baseball. Joe DiMaggio. Ted Williams and Gaylord Perry are just a few of the many Pacific League players whose careers led to their induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.O'Neal brings a unique perspective that includes his experiences as a coach, writer, and historian. From the birth of the league in 1903, through the Great Depression and into the modern era, O'Neal tells the stories of the players and the teams. Some failed, some prospered, but all are remembered in The Pacific Coast League 1903-1988.

John Chisum was a legendary figure of the Old West cattle frontier. At thirteen he migrated with his family from Tennessee to the Republic of Texas. During the 1850s Chisum recognized opportunity in the fledgling range cattle industry, and within a few years his herds numbered in the tens of thousands. Chisum soon owned more cattle than any other individual in America, and his Jinglebob herds were the only cattle in the West known by an earmark rather than by a famous brand.Chisum was a true pioneer, seeking open range grass farther and farther and still farther to the west. During three decades on a succession of frontier ranches, Chisum endured Indian raids, stock thievery, drought, financial reverses, and the murderous Lincoln County War. Chisum had courage, a taste for adventure, a shrewd head for business, and he confidently operated his risky frontier profession on an enormous scale.His last ranch was the biggest, stretching for 200 miles along the Pecos River and grazing as many as 80,000 head of Jinglebob cattle. He built a headquarters complex worthy of a cattle king, relishing the role of host to one and all. After thirty spectacular years as a western rancher, Chisum died at sixty, just as his beloved open range was being enclosed by barbed wire. But he was known throughout cow country as the "Jinglebob King," the "Cattle King of the Pecos," and the "Cattle King of the West."

Texas made a remarkable contribution to the American war effort during World War II . Almost 830,000 Texans, including 12,000 women, donned uniforms, and more than 23,000 Texas fighting men died for their country. America's most decorated soldier, Lt. Audie Murphy, and most decorated sailor, submarine commander Sam Dealey, both were Texans. Texas A&M, an all-male military college, placed 20,000 men in the armed forces, of which 14,000 were officers--more than any other school in the nation, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, was born in Denison in northeast Texas. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, was born and raised in Texas. Almost 1.5 million soldiers, sailors, and fliers trained at scores of Texas bases. Texas oil fueled the Allied war effort, while Texas shipyards and defense plants provided a flood of war machines and munitions during the war effort.

Images of America: West Texas Cattle Kingdom relates the frontier saga of cowboys and longhorn cattle, of trail drives and great ranches. Cattle and horses were introduced to the Western Hemisphere by Spanish conquistadores and colonizers while Mexican vaqueros handled cattle from horseback, developing special techniques, equipment, and attire. Half-wild longhorns multiplied into the millions in the unpopulated brush country above the Rio Grande. After the Civil War, a hungry market for beef developed in the north. Texas "cow boys" learned the vaquero skills of roping and branding and adapted heavy-duty Mexican saddles, wide-brimmed hats, high-heeled boots, jingling spurs, leather chaparejos, and colorful bandanas. The adventure of driving large herds of cattle up the Chisholm Trail and other famous trails captivated America. Vast Texas ranches included the fabled King Ranch, the three-million-acre XIT, Charles Goodnight's JA Ranch, and El Rancho Grande of legendary Shanghai Pierce, who described himself as "Webster on cattle, by God."

Pink Higgins was a rugged Texan who lived a life of classic Western adventure. He was a cowboy, Indian fighter, trail driver, stock detective, rancher, and deadly shootist who killed more adversaries than did such noted gunfighters as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson. Pink battled Comanches and rustlers, and led a faction in the murderous Horrell-Higgins feud of Lampasas County (Texas). Yet he was a hard-working family man, devoted to his nine children. His son, Cullen Higgins, as a lawyer and judge, would become entangled in a series of bloody events involving a powerful cattle baron and the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. In this, the first book-length biography of Pink Higgins, the author reveals never before published details about the violence that followed the Higgins family to West Texas.

More than 250 on-site photographs illustrate this tour of homes of many of the Lone Star State's most powerful political leaders. From the Governor's Mansion in Austin to the Texas White House near Johnson City, from Sam Houston's "Wigwam" in Huntsville to the Eisenhower birthplace in Denison, almost a score of homes of Texas governors and presidents are open to the public. Two fine Victorian residences which once were governors' homes now are B&Bs, in Galveston and Weatherford. Another three dozen houses, while privately owned today, may be viewed when driving through hometowns from Lubbock to LaPorte, from Uvalde to Haskell. This travel book provides directions to these houses, as well as photos and stories of the men and women and their families who brought life to these plantation homes, log cabins, ranch houses, and mansions.

In the early 1900s, two families in Scurry and Kent counties in West Texas united in a marriage of fourteen-year-old Gladys Johnson to twenty-one-year-old Ed Sims. Billy Johnson, the father, set up Gladys and Ed on a ranch, and the young couple had two daughters. But Gladys was headstrong and willful, and Ed drank too much, and both sought affection outside their marriage. A nasty divorce ensued.