Альпин, Техас: История и современность горного города

Alpine ('/æ//l//p//aɪ//n/ ALpyne) is a city in and the county seat of Brewster County, Texas, United States. The population was 6,035 at the 2020 census. The town has an elevation of 4462 feet (1360 m), and the surrounding mountain peaks are over above sea level. A university, hospital, library, and retail make Alpine the center of the sprawling 12000 square miles (31,080 km2) but wide open Big Bend area (combined population 12,500) including Brewster, Presidio, and Jeff Davis counties.

The area had been a campsite for cattlemen tending their herds between 1878 and the spring of 1882, when a town of tents was created by railroad workers and their families. Because the section of the railroad was called Osborne, that was the name of the small community for a brief time. The railroad needed access to water from springs owned by brothers named Daniel and Thomas Murphy, so it entered into an agreement with the Murphys to change the name of the section and settlement to Murphyville in exchange for a contract to use the spring. In November 1883, the Murphys registered a plat for the town of Murphyville with the county clerk of Presidio County. The town's name was changed to Alpine on February 3, 1888, following a petition by its residents. At this time, a description of the town mentioned a dozen houses, three saloons, a hotel and rooming house, a livery stable, a butcher shop, and a drugstore, which also housed the post office. Alpine grew very slowly until Sul Ross State Normal College (now Sul Ross State University) was opened in 1920. The development of Big Bend National Park in the 1930s and '40s spurred further growth. The population was estimated at only 396 in 1904, but by 1927, it had risen to 3,000. The 1950 census reported Alpine's population at 5,256, and a high of roughly 6,200 was reached by 1976. In 1990, the population was down to 5,637. In 2000, the population grew modestly to 5,786 and 5,905 by 2010.

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Alpine has a semiarid climate, BSk on climate maps.

As of the 2000 census, The hillside gives fine views of the town below and the surrounding mountain ranges. The Bar SR Bar brand of the college is whitewashed on stones high above. In 1981, students placed a desk on Hancock Hill and today visitors are invited to hike up to "sign the register". Sul Ross ranked number four in affordability among public universities according to U. S. News & World Report. Intercollegiate sports include men's and women's basketball, cross country, track and field, and tennis, along with men's baseball and women's softball, men's football and women's soccer, and women's volleyball. The teams are known as the Lobos, and play in the American Southwest Conference. Sul Ross was the founding home of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association in 1949. The Sul Ross Rodeo Club competes in 10 NIRA rodeos each year. The NIRA rodeo hosted in Alpine is a big event for the school and the community. Brewster County is within the Odessa College District for community college.

Alpine Independent School District serves more than 1,000 local students attending Alpine Elementary School, Alpine Middle School, and Alpine High School, in classes from Pre K, Kindergarten, and first through 12th grades. On the Texas Education Agency report card for 2013–2014, the high school, with 277 students in grades 9–12, reached "Met Standard" overall, while receiving Distinction designations in mathematics, social studies, top 25% closing performance gaps, and postsecondary readiness. Notably, average class sizes in Alpine High are only about two thirds the state average. The Middle School, with 309 students in grades 5–8, also reached "Met Standard", while receiving Distinction designations in mathematics and social Studies. School colors are purple and old gold. The high school is home to the Alpine Fightin' Bucks and Lady Bucks. Sports include football, volleyball, cross country, girls' basketball, boys' basketball, powerlifting, track and field, baseball, softball, golf, athletic training, and tennis. Alpine hosts the Big Bend Mountain Ramble, a "mile high cross country meet, the highest race in Texas", as well as high school and junior high relays. Alpine Montessori School is a private, nonsectarian, nonprofit school which serves grades pre K through sixth. Alpine Christian School is a nondenominational Christian school serving grades pre K through 12.

The Museum of the Big Bend on the Sul Ross campus uses exhibits of Native American artifacts, cultural history, geology, paleontology, and Western art to introduce the visitor to the Big Bend region. Subjects include the area's Indian tribes, the Buffalo soldiers, the mining era, the stagecoach, the railroad, and the history of Big Bend National Park. The overview includes historic photographs and short videos. The building was constructed in 1937 with local stone. Funding came from the Texas Centennial Commission and the Works Progress Administration, a federal make work program during the Depression.

In 1985 KVLF AM, the only radio station licensed in Brewster County, was in Alpine. An individual quoted in a Federal Communications Commission report stated that in daylight hours it was possible to get radio from Fort Stockton. The local daily paper is The Alpine Avalanche which has local news stories and advertisements, and it has almost no coverage of news outside of the area. Additionally Sul Ross students publish the Skyline and there is a resort sale publication called The Lajitas Sun. An FCC report in 1985 stated that while there was readership in the county for the San Angelo Standard Times and the Odessa American, "The two papers seldom carry articles covering the Alpine area." The community institution has a staff, with additional work done by volunteers. Special programs, like a science club and computer learning, are aimed at users from preschoolers and teens to parents and retirees. The Alpine Public Library opened a facility in February, 2012, offering computer use with free Wi Fi and access to online data, as well as traditional books, magazines, and other periodicals, CDs and DVDs, and a used bookstore, Re Reads.

Big Bend Regional Medical Center is a 25 bed facility. Inpatient and outpatient services are provided.

Alpine is home to the Alpine Cowboys independent baseball team. A member of the Pecos League, the Cowboys play their home games at Kokernot Field. Alpine is also home to the high school football team the Alpine Fightin Bucks. The Bucks are a class 3A Division I high school football team.

A mural in the former post office at 109 West E St was painted as part of the New Deal public works programs during the Great Depression. Surviving murals from the project are found in 60 or so Texas cities and towns. Completed in 1940, this mural is by a Spanish born and trained artist, Jose Moya del Pino, who was living and working in San Francisco. In the foreground, three figures recline on a rocky overlook. They are each reading: a book, a magazine, and a tabloid newspaper, celebrating how the post office brings information and education to small towns and cattle ranches. On the horizon, the Twin Sisters Mountain mark the location, with the town in the middle distance, including, at the behest of townspeople, the characteristic red brick buildings of the Sul Ross State campus.

J. Frank Dobie, folklorist, author of Coronado's Children and more than 25 other books, taught at Alpine High School in 1910 and 1911 in his first job after graduating from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. H. Allen Smith, the American humorist, author of Low Man on a Totem Pole, Rhubarb, and other bestsellers, as well as thousands of newspaper columns and magazine articles, retired to Alpine in 1967. Nelson Algren, novelist of The Man with the Golden Arm, wrote his first story while working at a gas station in Alpine during the Depression (after graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign). He was caught stealing a typewriter from a classroom at Sul Ross to continue writing. The months he spent in jail deepened his identification with the losers and outsiders who were the characters of his later fiction. Trackdown, the CBS Western television series had "Alpine, Texas" as the title of its seventh episode. It is the Texan setting of the film Gambit (M. Hoffman, 2012). Boyhood, the 2014 movie starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke, featured places in and around Alpine. It received six Academy Award nominations. Nominated for five Golden Globe awards, it won Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Director for Richard Linklater, and Best Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette. The city is the home of lawyer Rod Ponton, notable for his 2021 widespread appearance, across social media and news outlets, with a Zoom cat face filter. The city of Alpine, its train station, and the Big Bend country of Brewster County, Texas is the setting and film location for the modern Western Horror genre film "Enter the Devil"(1972).

Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport serves general aviation. Amtrak's Sunset Limited long distance train stops three times a week at the Alpine station on the former Southern Pacific Railroad's Sunset Line, the nation's second transcontinental route, now part of Union Pacific. Alpine is a crew change location for Union Pacific freight trains, making for constant activity along the tracks. In the past Alpine was also served by the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway. All Aboard America! operates intercity bus service from the KCS Quick Stop. US Highway 90. In recent years, Alpine has served as an unofficial stop for bicyclists riding across the United States due to its location on the Adventure Cycling Association's Southern Tier Bicycle Route.