Mike Cox’s Texas Magazine

“Texas, by God!”

That’s what John Wesley Hardin—Texas’ most prolific Old West killer—said in 1877 when he first spotted the Texas Rangers who’d traveled all the way to Florida to bring him back to the Lone Star State to face a murder charge. The outlaw’s succinct reaction when he realized the Rangers had found him is a good way to describe what Mike Cox’s Texas Magazine is all about: “Texas, by God!”

Texas Magazine first appeared in Austin in 1896, but it lasted only a year. In 1910, a Houston-based incarnation of Texas Magazine hit the newsstands and survived until 1913. One hundred and twenty years later, in the fall of 2023, award-winning Wimberley, Texas writer Mike Cox revived the early-day magazine as an online newsletter for anyone interested in the Lone Star State—past or present. Like its predecessors, Mike Cox’s Texas Magazine will feature tales dealing with Texas’ history, culture, people, places, writers and writing and just about anything else interesting about Texas, from chicken fried steak to humor to fishing and hunting adventures.

Here’s an easy way to describe Mike Cox’s Texas Magazine: It’s scope is Bigger Than Texas.

The newsletter’s Texian Scrapbook section offers vintage newspaper clips discovered over the years by Cox as he did the research for his numerous books and articles. In the Mission to Outer Texas section, given that a truly compelling story knows no geographic boundary, Cox occasionally goes wanders beyond the state line to offer a good tale. An example of that is “Caroline Lockhart’s Ashes: A Western Love Story.”