• Texas Republicans’ Push for a Religious ‘License to Discriminate’ is Depressingly Familiar
   
• Texas House Advances Bill that Could Actually Clear the Rape Kit Backlog
   
• GOP Continues to Stonewall Efforts to Improve Voter Access in Texas

• Invasive Species Have Reshaped Texas. Now What?
   
• Could Hemp be an Economic Lifeline for Rural Texas Towns?
   
• ‘Hurdle’ Is a Gritty Tale of Hope and Survival
   

The Lede
Ghosts of the Baker Hotel 

• Mineral Wells, a small town west of Fort Worth, once boasted a bustling tourism industry — and the Baker Hotel was the main attraction. Opened just a few weeks after the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression, the once-luxurious Baker is a relic of the town’s past as a resort destination. For decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, visitors flocked here for the purported benefits of the mineral-rich waters that gave the town its name.
   
• But the hotel was shuttered in 1972, and the intervening 47 years haven’t been kind. Mineral Wells hasn’t been a tourist draw in decades. Its residents earn significantly lower incomes and are less educated than the state average. Its population has dropped by 11 percent since the 2010 census, a period of explosive growth for much of North Texas.
   
• Unlike many struggling rural Texas towns, Mineral Wells has a tantalizing potential asset with a dominating physical presence. If only the Baker could be brought back, the thinking goes, it might spur a citywide renaissance. What does it take to revive a struggling small town?

From the archives
If These Walls Could Talk

• The pictographs of the Pecos River have lasted millennia in a tempestuous desert, surviving mostly in silence. Now an archaeologist has cracked the code — and they can begin to speak again.
   
• From the 2016 feature by Brad Tyer: “The Pecos River of 2,000 years ago, when the White Shaman mural is thought to have been painted, looked much like the Pecos River of today. Its course marks a transitional zone between the Edwards Plateau, which defines the Texas Hill Country, and the Chihuahuan Desert, which extends southwesterly through Big Bend into northern Mexico. Plateaus are sparsely vegetated with cactus, mesquite, lechuguilla and ocotillo. (Though there were significantly richer grasses in the uplands before ranchers began grazing cattle in the late 1800s.) Three rivers water the region archaeologists call the Lower Pecos Canyonlands: the Rio Grande, the Pecos and the Devils, the latter two largely contained by limestone canyons pocked with ledges and shallow caves.”

What’s Happening at the Observer

• Each year, the Texas Observer honors the best in U.S. journalism at our annual MOLLY gala and fundraiser. This year, we are honored to have Rebecca Traister speak at the event. Individual tickets are on sale now. More information here.
   
• We'll be at the Austin Bookstore Crawl party next Saturday, April 27, at Big Medium in Austin. Stop by to check out Texas Observer merch, our latest mags, and ways to support our work. See you there!
   
• Some of you may have noticed a lag in delivery of your magazine, or a delay in customer service — perhaps you’ve received multiple magazines in the mail. We’re aware of these issues and are making a change in the vendor that provides some of our mailing services this month. We’ve also created a customer service form on our web site that’ll take you directly to us, should you run into any issues about… well, anything. That’s here. Thanks so much for bearing with us as we move to build y’all a better customer service experience.
   
• From the amputation crisis in the Rio Grande Valley to how Texans may be loving their state parks to death — find all of the audio versions of our investigative longform features in one place, via Audm: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-observer-audm-audio-stories/