Views Of The Past

Views Of The Past (Pictorial History)

Downtown Wichita Falls, Texas

By Julie Williams Coley

ISBN #978-1470042776

Price: $22.95

337 Pages

Size 8.5 x 11

Rating 5-Stars

This book was a visual time machine, taking me back to Wichita Falls where I spent my formative school years from 1947 to 1956, from age 7 to 16. I attended San Jacinto, Carrigan, and Reagan. From 1947 to 1950, we lived on Ohio Street in downtown Wichita Falls, where I often played barefoot on the hot sidewalks, and my Saturdays were spent at the Gem and Tower theaters. 

Containing pictorial chapters from the 1930s through the ‘80s, as well as chapters on movie theaters, car dealerships, sidewalk photos, and others, the book features 375 pictures from the past, bringing a flood of old memories never truly forgotten to those once touched by the early days in Wichita Falls.

For me, I was able to see the building where we lived for those three years on Ohio Street; or at least, I knew it was one of the two in the picture. And to again visit the Tower Theater, where I watched so many Saturday Matinees in my youth. If there could be a downside to this book, it would be the many pictures yet found and absent from the publication. We can only wish for a second volume to compliment this one. I hope that everyone who looks through this book will be encouraged to search old boxes for family photos, and then contact the author of this book.

A wonderful contribution to the history of Wichita Falls!