Longhorn Magazine

Longhorn was Texas swagger in print. Published bi-monthly out of Austin by former rodeo promoter Wayne "Buck" Callahan, it was the biggest and loudest of the regional men's magazines we've recovered—sixty-seven issues over twelve years, peaking at 12,000 copies per issue during the oil boom.

The girls were rodeo queens, honky-tonk waitresses, oil field secretaries, and UT coeds. The articles covered muscle cars, the best BBQ joints from Lockhart to Lubbock, honky-tonk guides, and road tests of pickups on ranch roads. The advertising was pure Texas: boot shops, gun dealers, Ford trucks, Lone Star Beer, and the occasional bail bondsman.

Longhorn rode the oil boom and died with the bust. When crude prices collapsed in the early 80s, Buck's advertisers went under one by one, and the magazine folded in 1985. Buck's archive—complete print runs, negatives, and production materials—was discovered in a Round Rock storage unit in 2025 after his passing at age 84.