West Texas A&M University announced Jan. 11 2022 The Forgotten Frontera Project started by Dr. Alex Hunt, Professor of English and Board Director of the Center of Study of the American West. (CSAW) here in West Texas University.

This comes right after the National Endowment for the Humanities announces $24.7 Million for 208 Humanities Projects Nationwide Which is why it was a huge leap in uncovering the forgotten history of the Panhandle. Dr. Hunt wrote the grant “Forgotten Frontera: The Mexican American Southern Plains” and was granted $148,728 to fund it.

“There’s all these place names, Right. Llano Estacado, Pala Duro, Amarillo, and so on. And naturally one would think ‘why and where did it come from?’”(Dr. Alex Hunt, 2025) What Dr. Hunt’s aim with the project is to uncover or even rediscover history related to the Panhandle as it has a predominantly Hispanic/Mexican history.

One of Dr. Hunt’s projects involved a student uncovering a massacre that happened in Quitaque, Texas involving two ranchers burning out a four tribe families. They found bullet fragments and casing, and even discovered Civil War era and issued weapons on the grounds of the massacre. When Dr. Hunt told me that I grew more interested with the Forgotten Frontera even though I was a part of the project back in 2022. I was a part of the course, ENGL 5392: The Llanos. The class opened my eyes to history I was not even aware of and when we got to work on our own projects at first I was nervous until I remembered a folklore tale a long time ago that my uncle told me about the Crying Lady or La Llorona.

Various versions of the story are told, but in the story, La Llorona loses her children in water. There are version of her husband drowning their children out his anger or the version of where she drowns her kids in order to protect them or from grief.

I had interviews with Hispanic people from my community back in my hometown of Kress, Tx and they gave me history that has never been told and shows adaptation of culture here in the panhandle. Hereford was known to have migrant worker camps that families lived in and my two interviewee’s stayed at.

“First time I’ve heard of it, and I’ll never forget about ‘cause I was like six years old, and […] The kids would get together and play outside then all of a sudden—there was a lake in the backyard, and we heard something like crying so we all ran inside and got scared and my grandfather said, ‘it’s the Llorona’.”

The second interviewee was also born in Hereford with her father being a migrant worker as well.

“There used to be a Native American tribe and when the men had gone off to hunt, and soldiers had come in and wiped the whole village out. And when the men came back, they found one woman crying and wailing for all the children and women that had been killed.”

This led me to discover the battle of Yellow House Canyon, which occurred on March 18, 1877, near the site of present Lubbock, ended a brief Indian uprising known as the Staked Plains (Hunters’) War. It also was the last fight with hostile Indians on the High Plains of Texas.

I interviewed an Intern for the Center of Study of the American West (CSAW) named Socorro (Coco) on a project involving a cold case that she discovered here in the Amarillo area back in 1“I had a class with Dr. Amy Von Lintel, and when I heard about it they needed someone who was fluent in Spanish and transcribed audio. I took the job because it would allow me to explore the area (of Texas.)” (Coco 2025)

She has gone to discover more events and conflicts related to the discrimination of the Mexican community that is cropping up even to this day as there has been illegal mass deportations of Mexican American people and it’s important to know that this has been happening and is still happening.

“It’s just important to learn from it and look at the patterns that we are seeing and build community and have compassion for Latin-American people who are here.” (Coco, 2025)

The Forgotten Frontera got an extension on the grant from National Endowment for the Humanities and even have the One West Campaign here at West Texas A&M University raised and secured more than $150 million dollars. Which has been used to further a study and projects for the Center of Study of the American West.

How the project began was through Through Bless me Ultima by Rolando Anaya impacted Dr. Hunt’s in such a way that he wanted to learn more about the Panhandle.

“The novel has a very deep historical memory. He interprets the novel in terms of the history of Comanchero’s, Caballeros, and Pastores. That part of the novel is alluded to throughout, but I think a lot of readers don’t really pick on where its set. It’s not set in the Rio Grande, but the Picos (Mountains).” (Dr. Hunt)

Where the project heads towards a huge step in documenting history that has been long forgotten, but not by everyone.