Commentary: Traces of Texas – A priceless gift for all Texans

Every holiday season I have enjoyed thanking someone, often someone long gone, for a great gift to Texas. This year, I’d like to thank a man who is still with us – with hopefully many decades ahead of him still – for his extraordinary gift to all Texans.

Jac Darsnek is the much-loved creator and editor of the “Traces of Texas” Facebook page. It has accrued more than a million followers since 2010.

Texas has always been more than a place. It’s a memory, a voice, a photograph tucked into a drawer, a story shared across a kitchen table over coffee and donuts and pan dulce. For well over a decade now, “Traces of Texas” has been quietly, and sometimes with surprising virality, reminding us of that truth.

When Jac Darsnek began posting on social media back in 2010, there was no master plan to reach more than a million people. There was simply an instinct, sharpened by experience, that Texans liked talking about Texas. That instinct turned out to be exactly right.

By late 2012, something clicked – not because of flashy trends or algorithms, but because Jac leaned into history, real history, and let it speak for itself. His breakthrough moment was publishing a black and white photo of the original Whataburger, which went viral.

The photographs became the heartbeat of “Traces of Texas.”

Black and white images, most of them taken long before color film was common, carried with them a gravity that modern photos often lack. These weren’t stylized shots posed to impress; they were working photographs, family photographs, photos of musicians before fame, pilots before legends, farmers before nostalgia softened the edges of real life. This was Texas unfiltered.

What’s remarkable is not just where the photos come from – though Texans are blessed with extraordinary archives like the Portal to Texas History, UT Arlington’s Special Collections archive, the Briscoe Center, and others, which Jac peruses for occasional gold – but what matters most is what happens after they’re posted. The comments section becomes a living classroom, a town square, a reunion hall.

Jac says that he has been regularly amazed by what Texans collectively know.

Someone posted a photograph taken at Dyess Air Force Base in the 1950s, and suddenly readers identified the exact model of the cash register, which had a standard cigarette rack on top, the type of flight suits the pilots were wearing, even the materials that would later replace them.

Jac said that you put all these people together, and you realize Texas has an astonishing depth of collective knowledge and a generosity and passion for sharing it.

That generosity mirrors Jac’s own. Gratitude underpins “Traces of Texas” like a cultural bedrock. Every contributor is thanked. Every artifact is treated as something precious.

Jac once shared that if someone takes time from their “one granted life” to send in a photo or a story, the least you can do is acknowledge it and thank them most sincerely. That attitude may be the secret ingredient. Jac told me that he learned that lesson from Willie Nelson who said, “the more he tried to give away, even more was returned back to him.”

Then there are the people. Centenarians. War veterans. Farmers. River guides. Storytellers like Mel Dart, who flew 35 missions over Europe in WWII and said he was “too dumb to be scared.”

Or Dorothy McQuarry, born on a farm near Thorndale, Texas. Jac walked the property with her when she was 99 and she showed him a still-producing old well and said she had pumped “a kajillion gallons of water out of that thing” during her lifetime.

Jac also remembers Tony Drewry of Terlingua, who somehow manages to be a river guide, plumber, volunteer fireman, musician, photographer, and caretaker of a critically endangered native grass. Tony is Texas personified.

Sometimes, “Traces of Texas” does something even more miraculous: it reconnects people. Long-lost relatives recognize family names under a photograph and reunite.

After the devastating 2013 explosion in West, Texas, a family photo was found and returned to its owners after being posted on “Traces of Texas” hoping the right eyes might see it. They did.

Most followers live in Texas, but not all. Some are far from home, “Texpatriates” I call them, offshore in the North Sea, or living in Kenya or Rhode Island, and they write to say that “Traces of Texas” keeps them emotionally connected to the place they still consider home. That matters.

In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution honoring Jac for “making a significant contribution to the preservation of the history and heritage of the State of Texas.”

In the end, “Traces of Texas” isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about continuity. It’s a reminder that Texas is made of people, past and present, and that our stories and photographs are worth preserving, sharing, and honoring. “Traces of Texas” is our shared digital archives freely provided for us all.

That is a wonderful gift. And Texas is better for it.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.