Ranger Post Office “Dedication” [Cover]
Name/Title
Ranger Post Office “Dedication” [Cover]Description
Hand drawn cover by Texas cover artist Florene Edminston of an American shield "POST OFFICE / DEDICATION / 1937." Postmarked "RANGER / OCT 21 1937 / TEXAS.” Addressed to "636 Rigsby / San Antonio, Tex."Context
The historic federal building in Ranger, Texas was constructed during the Great Depression with Treasury Department funds. The building, which houses New Deal artwork, was constructed as the U.S. Post Office. "The Crossroads Town" mural portrays a peaceful scene in the early days of Ranger as imagined by artist Emil Bisttram. Farmers and ranchers stand to exchange news before the town's storefronts and the post office. The mural scene differs greatly from the scene the artist encountered when he visited Ranger in 1939. He found the shell of a former boom town, remnants of a once-prosperous community that had become full of the gaunt skeletons of empty brick buildings in a downtown that was in disrepair and partly abandoned. The bank had become home to an ice-cream store, and the old post office building had become a peanut storage space. The artist sadly assessed the situation for Rowan: "Before the oil boom of 1918 Ranger was the center of cotton production. This, of course, was shot to hell as soon as oil made it's [sic] appearance. Over night, like so many others, fortunes were made and since lost." A reminder of the town's former oil boom period was the "one lone refinery [that] continues to work spasmodically on a hillside..."Category
Texas Art Gallery
Becoming Texas, Bullock Museum