Where South Meets West
Approaching the East Texas hamlet of Carthage, I tune the car radio to KGAS-FM, which broadcasts country music, farm shows, and local news. It sets the mood for a spring weekend in the Piney Woods.
“People ask, ‘Is this more of the West than the South, or the other way around?” says Tommie Ritter Smith, president and CEO of Carthage’s Texas Country Music Hall of Fame and the Tex Ritter Museum. “The answer to both is yes.”
That’s not surprising. Carthage is the seat of Panola County, which borders Louisiana. And cotton—the historic crop of the old South—dominated the economy before natural gas displaced it.
