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In December, members of the Texas Standard team had the joy of trekking out to far West Texas for a special live broadcast from the McDonald Observatory.
As we drove up into the mountains beyond Fort Davis, we recalled this story commentator WF Strong told us years ago about how the McDonald Observatory came to be.
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The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
As it is Christmas time, I got to thinking about the great gifts, money, and property given to the state of Texas. Over the years, I’m gonna tell you about three such gifts that led to a priceless fourth. In 1926, a bachelor banker died in Paris, Texas. A rich bachelor banker that is his estate was worth about $1.2 million.
Today, that would be about $17 million. Enough to buy a Whataburger for everybody in Dallas and Houston, with enough leftover to water size the fries in his will. The banker left 90% of his money to the University of Texas to buy a telescope and build an observatory. The B’S name was William Johnson McDonald.
No relation to the McDonald’s hamburger chain. Well, as you might expect, Mr. McDonald’s relatives didn’t like him leaving all that money for a telescope. They believed that anyone who would do such a thing must be, by definition, a bit crazy, so they sued. Fortunately, Mr. McDonald had shared his telescope dream with of all people his barber.
He said that astronomy was a young science of great potential if it had the right funding, and he hoped that one day a telescope would be built that would allow astronomers to see the gold plated streets of heaven. He was also well known as an amateur scientist, so the jury had little trouble believing that his wish was the product of a sane mind.
Upon appeal, his relatives got more than McDonald had left them, but UT ended up with about $800,000, which is still 11 million in today’s money. Once UT had the money, they had to go shopping for a mountain to put the observatory on. That must’ve been fun. Mountain shopping has got to be something that you get to do only once or twice in a lifetime.
Lucky for ut they were located in a state that had West Texas in it with some of the finest stargazing potential in North America. After driving several thousand miles around the region, inspecting various sites for altitude, dark skies, cloudless nights, and poor prospects of rain, they found what they were looking for out by Fort Davis.
It had no official name, but the locals called it Flat Top Mountain. It was part of a ranch perfectly named for that region, the UUP and U Down Ranch. I love that. President Henry Benedict of UT wrote a letter to the owner of that mountain, Mrs. Violet MacGyver. He told her a McDonald’s gift and of the university’s great need for a mountain to put the university on.
Benedict wrote that her mountain was ideally suited for such an observatory. That quote, optical test already made showed that the Davis Mountains region was the best in Texas, perhaps the best in the United States for astronomical purposes. He asked her if she might consider giving her mountain to science.
I think Violet surprised him when she did just that. She wrote back almost immediately and gave UT the entire top of the mountain, 200 acres. She also gave UT the land to build a road to the summit, the resulting highway spur 78 is to this day, the highest highway in Texas. UT built the observatory named it for William Johnson McDonald.
The mountain was officially named Mount Locke after Violet’s grandfather GS Locke, from whom she had inherited it. Violet wrote to UT and said she was delighted to quote, have her grandfather’s name perpetuated in the Davis Mountains. She said he would’ve been pleased to leave his name among the mountains, which he had known and loved so long.
Anyone with scientific leaning can’t see the name Mount Locke without thinking of the British empiricist’s. John Locke, who believed that the best science was one steeped in observation. I asked Mrs. Julie MacGyver, who along with her husband Scott, still live and operate the U up and Uud down ranch. Why her grandmother-in-law, violet would’ve simply given away such a valuable piece of real estate, one that would be worth millions today.
She said that generation was different. They believed in giving back. They were building a great state and a great country. She loved that she could do her part to empower a better future for Texas and America. As gifts inspire gifts. Only five months after Violet gave her mountain to ut the estate of longtime Fort Davis.
Judge Edwin h. Folks donated the adjoining mountain known as Little Flattop. The Folks estate donated a total of 200 acres, and that mountain was formerly named Folks Mountain in his honor. Sherry Auer, who is the granddaughter in-law of judge folks, said that he was a civic-minded man and always did what he thought was best for the people of Fort Davis and the region.
Three gifts for Texas, an observatory and two mountains. These collectively gave us a fourth gift, one of the world’s leading centers of astronomical research. In fact, these gifts gave us the heavens themselves as McDonald predicted. I am WF Strong. These are stories from Texas. Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
