South of the Border - 2
Olga Beatriz Torres (1903-1980)
Memorias de mi viaje = Recollections of my trip
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, c1994
“Originally published by El Paso del Norte, El Paso, Texas, 1918.” Letters in both English and Spanish describe a young Mexican woman’s impressions of the U.S. immediately following the Mexican Revolution. Olga’s letters to her aunt depict her observations on her family’s trip from Mexico to Texas. Her trip to the U.S. began when she boarded a train in Villa Olga, Mixcoac, on June 28, 1914.
DeGolyer Library, General Collection, F395 .M5T67 1994
Rosalind A. Hughes
Travels in Mexico
Annotated and dated 1923-1925 photograph album of Mexico documenting the travels of Rosalind A. Hughes. Album includes snapshots and postcards of people and places in Mexico including Mexico City, Mazatlan, Guanajuato, Taxco and Teotehucan. Tourists and natives, street scenes, parks, churches, monastery, harbor, pyramid and architecture are also included. Diego Rivera is noted in a snapshot on a street in Mexcio City. President Obregon is also identified. There are views taken at Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter as well as during summer school in Mexico City.
DeGolyer Library, Prints and Photographs, Ag1999.1258
Purchase, 1998
The Tourists Auto Association
Your guide: automobile guide and directory to Mexico City & surroundings
Mexico City: Tourists Automobile Association, c1924
Tourist guide for travel to Mexico which includes maps, information on hotels and lodging, roads, tools and data for motorists, traffic regulations and first aid. Also includes numerous advertisements for other businesses and automotive vendors. According to the Lubbock Morning Avalanche (July 15, 1948), Mexican authorities were alarmed at an increase in car smuggling and began to crack down with stiff penalties on American tourists who illegally sold their cars in Mexico.
DeGolyer Library, General Collection, F1209.Y68 1924
Felda Davis Shanklin (1880-1962)
Adventures of three young Shanklins, circa 1926
Bound typescript of family travels in Mexico and Puerto Rico, taken from their diaries, compiled by Felda Davis Shanklin. From an early age Felda’s three children, Louise, Harold, and Evelyn, kept diaries. During this time the family lived in Old Mexico and Puerto Rico. The father worked as a superintendent of cultivation for the Rascon Sugar Company. Felda was a teacher in the Salado Public Schools. Told through their eyes, Louise, Harold, and Evelyn recount their travels in and around Mexico, Texas, Cuba, and New York. In the conclusion, written by Harold, readers learn about what happens to each of the characters after their “memorable summer of 1926.”
DeGolyer Library, Manuscript Collection, A1985.1232c
Mary Bigelow Barbour (1914–1978)
Leaves from my diary
Boston: Priv. print, 1932
Mary Barbour recounts her trip to Cuba, Central America, and Mexico with her mother and father. Her diary opens on January 27, 1931 with them boarding the Havana Special at 3:30pm. Their trip starts out with many delays but they finally arrive in Cuba a few days later. Across Central America, Mary’s diary provides an innocent, colloquial account of a young woman’s travels from sights and sounds, to language barriers. “Every attempt I made at answering in their native tongue produced loads of laughter, and I stopped after a while!” (February 22, 1931). By the end of her excursion she shared the sentiment: “I hate to see my closet bare, and my trunks bursting…Never have I had such a wonderful trip as I have this time-and I probably never will again!”
DeGolyer Library, General Collection, F1409 .B373
Associación Nacional Automovilística (Mexico), issuing body
Down to Mexico in your own car
Mexico City: National Automobile Association, 1936
Local advertisement for the newly built Pan American Highway. “Mexico’s new highways will take you through unbelievable regions of exotic beauty. They lead you to archaeological zones and to marvelous ruins of past civilizations, through charming gardens fill of exotic and rate flowers…Finally you arrive to Mexico City…Visit mysterious and romantic Mexico!”
DeGolyer Library, Pamphlet Collection, F1215.D69 1936
Marion K. Fenn (1905-1973)
Mexico automobile trip scrapbook
Marion K. Fenn and her friends began an automobile trip from Long Beach, California to Mexico on October 25, 1941, returning to California on November 13. This scrapbook contains Fenn’s typescript travel notes, postcards, letters to her parents, clippings, maps, and menus. After 6,153 miles Marion writes: “It has been a grand and wonderful experience and I for one returned to the U.S. with grateful thanks that initiative and enterprise are characteristics still encouraged and sponsored in our land.”
DeGolyer Library, Manuscript Collection, A2018.0056c
Gift, David Farmer, 2018