Texas Day by Day

On this day in 1980, the Dallas Mavericks officially became the twenty-third member of the National Basketball Association, when owner Donald Carter's Dallas National Basketball Association, Inc., was awarded a franchise by NBA commissioner Lawrence O'Brien. Norm Sonju, the club's first and only general manager, had initiated the process of bringing professional basketball to Dallas in 1978, when he contacted Dallas mayor Bob Folsom. Together they put together a group of eight investors, headlined by the Carter family's Home Interiors and Gifts. Mayor Folsom and the city of Dallas also assisted by building the 17,007-seat Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas in 1979. Sonju hired Dick Motta, then the coach with the third highest number of wins in NBA history, as the team's first head coach. That first team had a record of fifteen wins and sixty-seven losses for the 1980-81 season.

On this day in 1718, San Antonio de Valero Mission was founded by Franciscan father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares at the site of present-day San Antonio. Four days later the nearby San Antonio de Béxar Presidio and the civil settlement, Villa de Béxar, were established. The mission, originally located west of San Pedro Springs, survived three moves and numerous setbacks during its early years. After a hurricane destroyed most of the existing buildings in 1724, the mission reached its latest site on the east bank of the San Antonio River. After the mission was secularized in 1793 it became the Alamo. Due to its rudimentary fortifications, the abandoned mission became an objective of military importance in the conflicts of the nineteenth century, and it changed hands at least sixteen times. Portions of the mission's structures have survived as part of the Alamo Battlefield Shrine.

On this day in 1898, the Panhandle community of Mobeetie was devastated by a cyclone. The community, considered the "mother city" of the Panhandle, developed from Charles Rath and Bob Wright's supply store on Sweetwater Creek at a buffalo-hunters' camp called Hidetown in 1874, and grew to 150 residents the following summer as a trading post for nearby Fort Elliott. The village was located at the southern end of the Jones and Plummer Trail and was a center of activity for the buffalo-hide trade. In 1879 the town applied for a post office and the Indian word mobeetie, possibly meaning "sweet water," was chosen for the community. Mobeetie became the seat of Wheeler County that same year. Throughout the 1880s it was the commercial center of much of the Panhandle, but it began a period of decline when Fort Elliott was abandoned in 1890. The town's troubles increased in 1898, when a cyclone took seven lives and leveled many of the buildings, including the Huselby House hotel and the townhouse of pioneer cattleman Robert Masterson. Another blow occurred in 1907 when a controversial election made Wheeler the county seat. In 2000 Mobeetie was a small community with some 107 residents.