Central Texas top stories for June 26, 2025. State agencies can now develop their own telework plans, after Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law late last week. Austin area nonprofits are trying to re-home pets ahead of the 4th of July holiday. Lionel Messi will play in the Major League Soccer All-Star Game that is set to take place at Q2 Stadium in Austin. The City of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department wants people’s input on its Strategic Plan to Protect Austin’s Creeks and Communities.
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KUT Morning Newscast for June 23, 2025: Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes THC ban
Central Texas top stories for June 23, 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott vetoed a bill to ban products containing THC. Texas’s health system is ranked very low compared to other states. Musicians and music venues are at risk of losing unclaimed grants. Homes in Austin are selling for less but taking longer to sell compared to this time last year. A new pedestrian bridge is coming to East Austin. Today is the last day to give your input on Austin’s 2026 General Obligation Bond.
KUT Morning Newscast for June 20, 2025: AISD cuts central office staff by 20% to reduce budget deficit
Central Texas top stories for June 20, 2025. The Austin Independent School District will cut 20% of its central office staff. The city of Austin is training Austinites so they can issue parking tickets on their own. Advocates are warning that potential cuts to federal financial aid will make it harder for low-income students in Texas to access higher education. There’s still time to submit feedback for the 2026 General Obligation Bonds.
UT System bans drag shows, but students push back
Texans weigh in on everything from artificial intelligence to the economic outlook. What a new poll tells us about the state of the state.
We’ll also dig into consumer spending, and what the latest information from credit card companies does and doesn’t tell us about consumer confidence.
Creeks and watering holes are a beloved aspect of Central Texas, but there’s a challenge in keeping them clean as the population booms.
A new book explores the dark undercurrent of early 1970s Houston. We interview the investigative journalist behind the publication.
Plus, the final week of classes looked a little different at UT on Monday. The message students wanted to send with their “Day of Drag.”
Texas Standard is a listener-supported production of KUT & KUTX Studios in Austin, Texas. You can help make this podcast happen by donating at supportthispodcast.org.
What you should know about polling going into election season
After a prolonged legal back-and-forth that ultimately saw it paused again, Texas Senate Bill 4 returned to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday. We’ll have the latest on where the immigration law stands.
You’ve likely heard the poll numbers in the presidential race. Do you trust them? Some tips on following the many surveys we’ll be hearing as November approaches.
How community colleges are likely to play a growing role in the future of work in Texas.
And: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued to stop a light-rail initiative in Austin.
Texas Standard: February 9, 2022
As more teachers quit, those who remain are taking on more students and more responsibilities; a survey suggests a new Texas public school crisis in the making. Also, efforts to ban certain books from school libraries and how what’s been happening in Hood County may be a harbinger of what’s ahead. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: October 21, 2019
House speaker Dennis Bonnen could be leaving sooner than anyone expected, so says Texas tribune co-founder Ross Ramsey. We’ll have details. Other stories we’re following: a backlog at a major DPS crime lab. The problem: worker turnover. Also, money going up in smoke? What to do about a surplus of natural gas. And is Texas more southern or western? Scholar H.W. Brands invites readers to rethink what they know of the latter, in his epic history of the American west. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: October 11, 2018
Amid a national call for accountability, and after years of silence, Texas clergy now say they will name names of priests accused of child sex abuse. The announcement from the 15 dioceses in Texas is seen as an attempt to rebuild trust with the state’s 8.5 million Catholics… but questions linger over the process, and whether justice can be served. Also, while the Florida panhandle assesses damage in the wake of Hurricane Michael, Texas researchers explore the long term implications of what many regard as the worst industrial catastrophe ever to hit the Gulf of Mexico. Plus, surprise findings in a survey on political polarization. Those stories and more, today on the Texas Standard.
Texas Standard: July 3, 2018
Worried about a second American civil war? If it’s war we’re worried about, we may be facing the wrong direction. As Russia hosts the World Cup, no one seems to be paying attention to what the Kremlin is doing this moment in Syria: a bombing campaign and a fight that could eclipse the battle for Aleppo. Why few seem to care, and is that not Vladmir Putin’s calculus? Also, great expectations among Texans as they consider the promises of Mexico’s president elect. And the scourge of diabetes among hispanics in Texas, we’ll have details. And remembering the long forgotten trains that ferried orphans to America’s west. All that and much more on today’s Texas Standard:
The Worst Land Survey in U.S. History
By W. F. Strong
You can never underestimate the value of a good friendship forged early in life. If not for such a friendship, Texas would be nearly 1,000 square miles smaller.
Before I get to the friendship, come with me up to the northwest corner of the panhandle where Texas meets Oklahoma and New Mexico. If you were looking at a map you would see that the border between Oklahoma and New Mexico doesn’t meet up exactly with the border between Texas and New Mexico. The line makes a jog to the left. It goes 2.3 miles left before heading straight south. That jog is the result of a survey error that some have called the worst survey error in U.S. history. But it isn’t just a two mile error – that error gets bigger as it continues south 310 miles to the bottom Texas-New Mexico corner, where it turns west and heads for El Paso. All total the mistake amounts to a 942 square mile error, a land mass bigger than Houston, though long and skinny, like a gerrymandered voting district.
In truth, that land should have gone to New Mexico. That was what was supposed to happen when Texas sold off its northern and western territories for ten million dollars in 1850. The border between Texas and the New Mexico Territory was to be exactly along the 103rd Meridian. When the official survey was undertaken, almost ten years later, there was a problem with water,, Indians, stars, algebra and math, which all contributed to the error that ended up a blessing for Texas.
Naturally, there’s quite a good long story behind the mistake. It is far too complex for these few minutes. I will give you the “cut to the chase version.”
A man named John H. Clark was hired to do the survey and plant the monuments along the 103rd meridian. He started from the south and surveyed northward until he ran out of access to water. So he stopped and said, “I’ll just go up to the north end of Texas and come down.” So he did.
Clark started again northwest of present day Dalhart and headed south until the native Americans frightened him off. Though he was about 70 miles from connecting his two lines, he figured it was good enough and turned in his work. His two lines wouldn’t have intersected anyway. The problem was his northern starting point was about 2.3 miles west of where it should have been and his southern corner was nearly 3.8 miles west of where it should have been. Consequently, that border slides imperceptibly 1 ½ miles ever so gently southwest over a distance of 310 miles. Pull up a google map on your phone and align the southeastern corner of New Mexico with your left straight-edge phone border. You will see that the border slants off to the right up at the top. That’s the error. It amounts to 603,348 acres. About ¾ the size of the King Ranch.
Well, nobody knew it was wrong and so the bad survey based on poor calculations was certified by the U.S. in 1891 and it became the legal boundary.
By the time New Mexico was about to get statehood with the Enabling Act of 1910, it had become aware of Clark’s error and slipped into the statehood law a clause saying that the eastern boundary would be the true 103rd meridian. New Mexico would get its land back. All was going well and nobody was paying attention to the land grab except for John Farwell, who was an original investor in the XIT ranch. Those were the same investors who essentially built our state capital in Austin. Well, he realized that the XIT would lose hundreds of thousands of acres (and mineral rights) if the New Mexico plan went through as it was.
He couldn’t get any legislators to listen and so he did what we all do in times of trouble: he said, “Who do I know?” Just so happened that he knew President William Howard Taft. They had been good friends during their college years at Yale. So he went to see his old buddy, Howard. He explained the predicament and Taft immediately summoned powerful men to his office and told them that the Clark border would be the legal border when New Mexico was made a state or it wouldn’t be made one. He said that since the boundary had existed for more than fifty years, and had been certified 20 years before, it had to be grandfathered in. Otherwise, people who believed they were Texans would suddenly be in New Mexico and litigation over land titles would never end.
And that is how a survey error, and an old friendship ended up making Texas almost a thousand square miles bigger than it was supposed to be. Once again, it’s all about who you know.
A final note of interest. There is a town out in the Panhandle called Farwell, Texas. It’s just a few feet on the Texas side of the border with New Mexico. It is named after John Farwell. Had he failed to convince Taft to keep the old border line, the town named for him would have become Farwell, New Mexico.
Sources:
Brock, Ralph H. “Perhaps the Most Incorrect of any Land Survey in the United States”
Southern Historical Quarterly, April 2006, pp. 431-462.
Haley, J. Evets. The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.
Hoover, Mike. “The Southeast Corner of New Mexico.” The Texas Surveyor, May, 2015, pp. 16-23.