The Texas Hamburger: History of a Lone Star Icon

By Rick Vanderpool

The “Hambassador of Texas” sinks his teeth into the American culinary classic on a road trip with pit stops at the best burger joints in the state.
 
Texans are passionate about this signature sandwich, and photographer/writer Rick Vanderpool has become, in his own right, the Hambassador of Texas. In 2006, Rick undertook a quest to find and photograph the best Texas burgers, traveling over eleven thousand miles and visiting over seven hundred Texas burger joints. Since that time, he has continued his travels, sampling the finest burgers the Lone Star State has to offer. He has also picked up some fellow enthusiasts willing to share their own tasty tales along the way. From Fletcher Davis’s 1885 Athens creation (recipe included) and the Cheeseburger Capital of Texas in Friona to Whataburger #2 in Corpus Christi and Herd’s in Jacksboro, join Rick and his “Hamburger Helpers” on their journey celebrating the history of the original Texas hamburger.
 
“Looking for a place to eat a great hamburger? Rick Vanderpool may have just the place for you—hundreds in fact. The Lubbock resident criss-crossed the state taking hundreds of photographs and visiting more than 700 burger joints for a book on the subject.” —Hockley County News-Press

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 14, 2007
• ISBN: 9781614233497

Book preview

Hamburger History

The Final, Final Chapter

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

It does not require any significant research or out-of-the-box logic to discover the reason behind man’s seemingly genetic predisposition to make smaller pieces of meat out of great big ones. It takes but a brief stroll through a simple timeline of historical events.

Behold our earliest relatives—carnivores all—at their very first kill; say it was a mastodon or mammoth. The situation no doubt inspired Miss Piggy to later declare, Never eat anything heavier than you can lift. Having just killed a beast the size of a house also inspired men to develop edgy instruments with which to reduce the beast to smaller pieces and then to develop the finer techniques for slashing, carving and cutting these smaller pieces of meat, with some cuts being less tender than others.

Fast-forward to the discovery of fire and the invention of strong drink. From that day (pick one) hence, man began his seemingly genetic obsession with meat-cooking techniques while developing a plethora of devices and processes for rendering that meat more easily chewable. And from that day hence, tough meat has been assaulted (or simply salted), as in pounded, slashed, chopped, shredded and ground.

Most accounts of hamburger history are blatantly geographically or politically biased, and nearly all of them contradict each other. Some are outright lies. Here is a version of perhaps the most commonly accepted hamburger history timeline of what I call hamburger creator wannabes, the complete expansion of which is offered by Linda Stradley in her 2004 History and Legends of Hamburgers article for www.WhatsCookingAmerica.net.

Humble beginnings in Athens.

1885: Seymour, Wisconsin—Charlie Nagreen

1885: Hamburg, New York—Frank and Charles Menches (Akron, Ohio natives)

late 1880s: Athens, Texas—Fletcher Short Davis (b. October 6, 1864, Winchester, Illinois, d. March 10, 1940, Athens, Texas)

1891: (west of) Tulsa, Oklahoma—Oscar Weber Bilby

1900: New Haven, Connecticut—Louis Lassen

Read this excerpt of The Henderson County Hamburger from Frank X. Tolbert’s book, Tolbert’s Texas:

The sandwich was named during the fair [the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904]. And both he [Kindree Miller] and Grandpa Murchison said that Fletcher Davis was "interviewed by a fancy dan reporter for the New York Tribune who also asked about the fried potatoes served with thick tomato sauce." Mr. Davis told the reporter that the sandwich was his idea but he learned to cook the potatoes that way from a friend who lived in Paris, Texas.

Clint Murchison, Jr., quoted his grandfather as saying: "Apparently the 1904 reporter thought Old Dave [Fletcher Davis] said Paris, France, in referring to the way the potatoes were cooked. For the New York Tribune story on the hamburger said the sandwich was served with french [sic] fried potatoes."

In Tolbert’s mind, his research debunks all other hamburger origin claims, but if that isn’t enough, let’s just put a steak [sic] through the heart of all those hamburger creator wannabes and close the book on any further discussion of the subject of not only who made the first hamburger but, more specifically, who made the first Texas hamburger, with this:

A buddy dubbed my original mission of meat in 2006 as Texas’s version of the herd shot ’round the world. After a little thought and a bunch of research proving that Texas has been this country’s primary source for beef since just after the Civil War, and given that Hereford, Texas, is the Beef Capital of the World, I am convinced that Texas beef has been and always will be the herd ground ’round the world, by a long shot!

Thanks, Frank.

Therefore, all the other hamburger creator wannabes were almost certainly making them from Texas beef. So, any way you look at it, the first hamburgers anywhere were Texas hamburgers. And that, my dear readers, closes the final, final chapter on the history of the origin of the hamburger.

I’ve just scratched the surface of the web for information on the subject of hamburgers with cheese, and my guess is that there are even more folks claiming to have invented it as claim to have invented the original hamburger. So let’s just close the door as well on that discussion one final, final time right here and now—once again, according to research by Ms. Stradley, squabbles rage between Denver, Colorado; Louisville, Kentucky; and Pasadena, California, regarding where the cheeseburger was invented. Who really knows, and as Rhett Butler might have put it, Frankly…

What we do know and do give a rip about is that Friona, Texas, is the official Cheeseburger Capital of Texas. Friona doesn’t claim to have invented the cheeseburger, but it does put on one very fine celebration to honor it every July, and in the process, this Parmer County community pays tribute to the beef, wheat and dairy industries—very significant components of Texas agriculture.

Just a Few Words

Fast-forward from 1904—just what happened to the basic hamburger anyway? Too often today, we have instead an array of what my father calls salad circuses on a bun, as evidenced by the majority of selections by the so-called judges dispatched by Texas Monthly in 2009 to create The Fifty Best Burgers in Texas: The List. Well, in my opinion, see below…

Then there are health nuts who, also in my opinion, seem bent on replacing real, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness hamburgers with minced turkey, tofu or worse. Which raises the question, if hamburgers aren’t good for a person, why do Mom and Pop still make them the best?

As for most of the fast McFood chains, remember, in the film Bambi, the scene where the fawn was struggling to stand for the first time, and Thumper’s mother scolded her son for poking fun at his wobbly friend? If you can’t say something nice…

Un-Chained—Lamar.

Old Dave’s Original Hamburger Recipe

From Texas Home Cooking by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison—used with permission,www.cookingwiththejamisons.com.

Frank X. Tolbert, the famous chili promoter, made a strong case for Athens, Texas, as the home of the hamburger. According to Tolbert’s research, a lunch counter owner named Fletcher Davis, better known as Old Dave, invented the hamburger in the 1880’s as his menu specialty. His version was a greasy piece of ground beef placed between slices of hot home-baked bread, and served with a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise, a big slice of Bermuda onion, and pickles. Davis took the concoction to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, where he sold it on the midway out of Old Dave’s Hamburger Stand, directly across from an Indian show featuring Geronimo. McDonald’s Restaurants’ Hamburger University agrees that the sandwich first appeared at the fair, but attributes the invention to an unknown vendor.

6 to 8 ounces ground chuck, in a patty ½ inch thick

2 slices home-style sourdough bread

Prepared mustard and mayonnaise, mixed in equal portions

Onion and dill pickle slides, for garnish

Makes 1 burger

In a cast-iron or other heavy skillet, sear the meat on both sides over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook the meat until it is done to your taste.

Tribute to Old Dave.

While the meat cooks, warm the bread in the oven on low heat, making sure the bread doesn’t toast. Remove it from the oven, and spread one piece with dollops of mustard and mayonnaise, a thick slice of onion, and a few pickles. Place the patty, un-drained, on the other piece of bread, allowing the bread to absorb the grease before you form the sandwich.

Take a bite, savor, and sing the praises of Old Dave.

The Santy Clause Defense

by Crusty McBuns

A few days ago, while I was eatin’ me a fine burger—and some real good fries, with a perfectly cold beer—I begins to think on what exactly does make a hamburger, well, quote-worthy. You know, words like that Walden Thoreau dude mighta said, or Sir Will Rogers, or even that Sam Longhorn Clemens feller. So, I wrote me down a list of some qualities of a honest hamburger.

For starters, a real, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness hamburger needs to be served in a place where the likelihood of someone botherin’ a feller while he’s eatin’ is diminished by a factor of the dimly lit, cooked-fat-and-onion-fragrance square footage, times the square root of a hole-in-the-wall; a place what is held together by amazin’ stories and at least a coupla decades of smoke, spilt beer and grease, but with the way most important ingredient of such a place bein’ frenship. From the purdy waitress what calls ever’one dah’lin’ or hon, to the bartender that may or may not own the dang place (but rarely acts like he does), to the cook who’ll loan a feller five till payday—whenever that may occur. We all knows this kinda place is a joint, pure and simple. And no matter whether it serves hamburgers or barbecue, it’s always a fav’rite-country-song-on-the-jukebox refuge, a sometimes-a-mite-rowdy haven, a who-ain’t-here-when-the-phone-rings home that’s, blessedly, way-the-heck-away from home.

The next thing that a honest burger needs is meat that’s just gotta be pure, unadulterated beef—period. Like th’ man says, It’s what’s for burgers… It’s gotta be the perfect amount of lean and fat, ground fresh the day it’s served, and it’s gotta be handmade—that means it ain’t perfectly round, or of a uniform thickness. In fact, the edges is gotta be thinner than the middle so as they can be seared up a bit crispy.

Any hamburger worth eatin’ is cooked up just the way the joint’s patrons has come to expect, otherwise the joint ain’t no hamburger joint, it’s a dadgum salit bar, tearoom or fast McFood excuse of a place—one of them oxy-mo-ron things. Like bein’ awful purdy, lyin’ to Congress or a "gourmet hamburger."

You remember that nervous little skinny feller in that great ol’ Christmas movie. You know the one I’m talkin’ about, dang it! The one where Santy Claus has got to prove to ever’one that he’s real, and even the little ol’ gal who growed up to be Natalie Wood didn’t believe that he was really Santy Claus. The little skinny guy was talkin’ about Santy bein’ a little crazy, like artists, or some of them people in Washington (or Austin?). A Miracle on Elm Street, or somethin’ like that. Oh, well, it’ll come to me.

Anywho, that’s my whole point. Gourmet hamburger is a term what contradicts its own dang self !

Now looky here, I’m not denyin’ they’s hunnerts of talented cooks what makes lots of stuff gourmet, but by simple definition, a hamburger just cain’t be one of ’em. And by by definition, I mean if the same feller what invented the hamburger in the first place was to say how they’s made, then as soon as they’s made another way, they’s somethin’ else—not a dadblamed hamburger, dadblame it!

So let’s recap, shall we—Fletcher Davis done invented th’ hamburger in Athens, Texas, then Frank X. Tolbert discovered and publicated all the facts pertainin’ to those events.

Come to think on it, that brings a whole ’nother aspect of that ol’ movie to mind—that bein’ the actual provin’ of somethin’ by the Santy Claus Defense, which is what the lawyer guy come up with, based on the fact that the post office, a limb of the gov’ment, what cain’t be misrepresentin’ nothin’ with the cotton-pickin’ U.S. mail, decided that Santy Claus was who he said he was.

You know what? We got us a similar situation, right here in Texas, is what, ’cause the whole Texas legislature done made it official that Ol’ Dave invented the hamburger, just like Frank X. Tolbert said he did. And just like them dang duty-dodging post officers, in that movie, our selected legislators just gotta get somethin’ done proper for us constituents, ever now and again, right? Like a blind armadillo’s sure to find a highway. Well, them folks down in Austin did just that in 2007, when they done declared Athens, Texas, the Original Home of the Hamburger.

So there you has it, nothin’ less than the Texas hamburger’s very own Santy Claus Defense, and by cracky, the end of the discussion. Or to put it another way—on the subject of so-called gourmet hamburgers, well, they simply ain’t no app for that.

Don’t Mess with Texas Hamburgers

by Crusty McBuns

To heck with PETA and mad TV cows, who’s disrespectful of Texas beef and hamburgers. Once I was accosted by a swarm of them PETA nuts after I spoke at the world’s only Official Road Kill Cook-Off in Greer County, Texas. Was pelted with Brussels sprouts, I was. Come up with the followin’ verse I put in a letter to the editor of the Greer County Grinder:

"Owed [sic] to a Critter Lover"

God done made critters to kill an’ eat,

From flocks of geese to herds of beast;

In the winter, when they’s need for heat,

All your veggies is froze, SHUT UP, and eat your meat!

Cows was made to eat and wear,

Flies was made for swattin’,

And man has dominion o’er critters all;

Read your Bible in case you’ve forgotten.

Snakes was put on Earth to hate,

Like mosquitoes, lawyers and cats (I mean rats);

Spiders was made for smashin’, roaches for bashin’,

And ever’ fur-bearin’ varmint was created for coats and hats.

Chickens and fish was meant to be fried,

While crawdads exist to be boiled alive;

So eat your nice fruit and veggies,

And sip your herbal tea—

’Cause all God’s critters gotta die of somethin’,

Just leave all us carnivores be.

Copper Breaks State Park ranger David Turner likes his burgers rare.

Them’s my final sediments on the subject.

Name That Hamburger

My friend Tumbleweed Smith once told me that the best barbecue was likely to be served at an establishment with more pickups than other vehicles in the parking lot (at all hours, not just dinner or supper). The place must have a screen door badly in need of repair and no chairs that