{"id":322,"date":"2010-08-02T21:04:04","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T02:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/08\/02\/100802_fsvisitorcenter\/"},"modified":"2022-03-18T08:19:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T13:19:18","slug":"100802_fsvisitorcenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/08\/02\/100802_fsvisitorcenter\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Stockton&#8217;s New Visitor Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I won&#8217;t go so far as to say that it&#8217;s worth driving 200 miles just to see it, but if you happen to be in Fort Stockton (or anywhere close by), the town&#8217;s new visitor center is worth, well, visiting. This multi-million dollar installation &#8211; at the intersection of Main Street and E. Dickinson Blvd. &#8211; incorporates a lot of symbolism representing the area&#8217;s historical and commercial contributions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/fsvc1.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Fort Stockton, Texas\"><\/p>\n<p>The large steel span and signage across Main Street (and close by Paisano Pete, the world&#8217;s largest roadrunner) serves as a gateway to the historic district where many buildings from the old fort have been restored.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/fsvc3.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Fort Stockton, Texas\"><\/p>\n<p>Larger-than-life weathered steel cutouts evoke the varied cultures of the earliest inhabitants of the region: American Indians, Mexican vaqueros, settlers coming through by covered wagon, US Cavalry soldiers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/fsvc2.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Fort Stockton, Texas\"><\/p>\n<p>The visitors center also spotlights the region&#8217;s significant contribution to meeting the country&#8217;s energy needs. It sports a full-sized pumping unit (oil), a big wellhead (natural gas), and the newest installations &#8211; working solar panels and wind turbines. These power the visitor complex, and any surplus electricity is put into the grid.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/fsvc4.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Fort Stockton, Texas\"><\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s this:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ihSKKSYyVLM\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Pretty cool, huh? Streams in the desert&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Isaiah+35:6&amp;version=NIV\">it&#8217;s Biblical<\/a>, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I won&#8217;t go so far as to say that it&#8217;s worth driving 200 miles just to see it, but if you happen to be in Fort Stockton (or anywhere close by), the town&#8217;s new visitor center is worth, well, visiting. This multi-million dollar installation &#8211; at the intersection of Main Street and E. Dickinson Blvd.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/08\/02\/100802_fsvisitorcenter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fort Stockton&#8217;s New Visitor Center<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","category-west-texas","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9013,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/9013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}