au texas

Contents

A sketchbook kept over one history: La Réunion, the utopian colony founded in 1855 west of Dallas, whose company failed and whose colonists stayed and built the city. The sketches, newest first; then the archive they are drawn from.

Sketches

  1. No. 13Au Texas!

    The colony as a game: you hold the directorship, from Considérant's arrival to the war.

    revised
    2 daysSep 21–22
  2. No. 12The war, 1861–1865

    What everyone did, the service register read against the witnesses.

  3. No. 11The geology of Texas

    The state's belts by age and the Dallas belt by formation — the Austin Chalk the colony stood on, the lime and cement that came of it.

    revised
    2 daysAug 28 · Sep 22
  4. No. 10Texas counties by population, 1850–2025

    Every county shaded by its census count on one scale across a hundred and seventy-five years.

    revised
    2 daysAug 28 · Sep 22
  5. No. 9Texas, 1850–1900

    The county lines at each census and the fifteen largest towns as the Almanac records them.

    revised
    3 daysAug 27–28 · Sep 22
  6. No. 8The Company Behind the Company

    The colony as a corporation: the parent and the subsidiary, the capital, and the 1855 cession that mattered.

  7. No. 7The Other Myth

    Unattested, off the record, filed here anyway.

  8. No. 6What Ifs

    Counterfactuals, each pinned to something the record says happened.

  9. No. 5The colony on its terrain

    Survey grants, present-day streets and buildings, and five-foot contours: the bluff the colonists chose and the limestone under it.

    revised
    2 daysAug 24 · Sep 22
  10. No. 4The two towns of 1855

    Dallas and La Réunion from the point halfway between them, in 1855 and again in 1875 when the railroads had come.

    revised
    3 daysAug 23, 26 · Sep 22
  11. No. 3Dallas city limits, 1855–2022

    The city annexing its way outward, from the ordinances themselves — including the three that took in the colony land.

    revised
    4 daysAug 13, 23, 26 · Sep 22
  12. No. 2The colony lands

    The 1858 holdings on the modern map and their afterlife in four chapters, with the deed record behind each parcel.

    revised
    7 daysAug 4–5, 12–13, 23–24 · Sep 22
  13. No. 1Shareholders, not Dreamers

    The case in a page: the thesis, the colony lands in four chapters, and the colony in the words of those who were there.

    revised
    8 daysJun 21 · Aug 12, 23, 25–26, 28 · Sep 21–22

The archive

People

Land

Time

Sources

Findings