Lt. Governor Ben Barnes’ Whistlestop Tour

For his 1972 campaign for Texas Governor, Lt. Governor Ben Barnes led a bombastic whistle stop tour across the state. Chartered by the Santa Fe Railroad, the 923 mile trip featured 20 stops and reached 20,000 Texans. The trip was filled with speeches, extravagant gifts from the towns visited, and autographs from the Dallas Cowboys, harkening back to an earlier era in American politics.