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"Lone Wolf," Ranger legend, dies
On this day in 1977, the legendary Texas Ranger M. T. (Lone Wolf)
Gonzaullas died in Dallas at the age of eighty-five. Gonzaullas was born
in 1891 to a Spanish father and Canadian mother. He was a major in the
Mexican army by the age of twenty, then a special agent for the U.S.
Treasury Department for five years. He joined the Texas Rangers in 1920
and saw service from the Red River to the Rio Grande and from El Paso to
the Sabine during the 1920s and 1930s. Along the Rio Grande, he later
became known as El Lobo Solo. After Governor Miriam (Ma) Ferguson fired
most of the rangers, including Gonzaullas, the day after she took office
in 1933, the legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety
and made the rangers a division of that agency. Four rangers--the
so-called "Big Four"--had an enormous impact on this change: Gonzaullas,
Frank Hamer, Thomas R. Hickman, and Will Wright. Gonzaullas became the
first American of Spanish descent to achieve the rank of captain in the
force, and his experiences investigating a series of murders in
Texarkana in 1946 became the basis for the motion picture The Town
That Dreaded Sundown (1977). He retired from the rangers in 1951 and
went to Hollywood as a technical consultant for radio, television, and
motion pictures.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- GONZAULLAS, MANUEL TRAZAZAS [LONE WOLF]
- TEXAS RANGERS
- FERGUSON, MIRIAM AMANDA WALLACE [MA]
- HAMER, FRANCIS AUGUSTUS
- HICKMAN, THOMAS R.
- WRIGHT, WILLIAM LEE
- TEXAS RANGER HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- First class of army aerial navigators arrives in San Marcos (1943)
- Spanish language newspaper debuts in San Antonio (1913)
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