This story is from Texas Monthly’s archives. We have left the text as it was originally published to maintain a clear historical record. Read more here about our archive digitization project. Walking his land that cold, clear February morning, Mart Wagner felt just a taste of spring, a hint of promise. Sharp pieces of dust blew as always with the prevailing southwest winds, but the visibility was endless. Wheat farms like Wagner’s stretched west from Ochiltree County in the Texas Panhandle for hundreds of miles north all the way to Canada, an almost perfectly flat horizon of grain, swaying like waves on the country’s mid-ocean, interminably broad and far.Despite the splendid brisk morning, Mart Wagner felt all of his seventy years. For four hours he…The post The Sons of the Pioneers appeared first on Texas Monthly.