Show Me Your Badge: Texas Ranger ID

In Livia J. Washburn’s short story “Guarding Her Heart,” hero Grant Stafford is a shotgun guard on a stagecoach. Grant is no ordinary guard, though:

The driver said, “Are you nervous about your first trip ridin’ shotgun, son?”

“No, not really,” Grant replied. His gaze roamed constantly over the landscape as he searched for signs of danger.

What he saw was a wide sweep of mostly ranching country, cut through with stretches of badlands and dotted with low mesas. At this time of year, the middle of February, it was drab and gloomy, but in a few months, once the weather started to warm up and the wildflowers popped out, it would be a sea of color, beautiful for a time…before the heat of summer set in and turned much of the vegetation sere and brown.

But the really important thing, Grant thought, was that the rugged terrain offered plenty of hiding places for outlaws to lie in wait for a passing stagecoach. Such holdups had occurred all too often on this run in recent months.

And that was why he’d been sent here by the Texas Rangers—to put a stop to it.

Later on, Grant is required to prove who he is, so he whips out an iconic badge.

If you had been in the crowd, would you have recognized Grant’s badge? Test your knowledge: Which of the alleged Texas Ranger badges below are genuine? Pick one from each set. (All images are ©Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, Waco, Texas, and are used with permission. All Rights Reserved.)

Set 1

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The right-hand badge, dated 1889, is the earliest authenticated Texas Ranger badge in the collection of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. Badges weren’t standard issue for Rangers until 1935, although from 1874 onward, individual Rangers sometimes commissioned badges from jewelers or gunsmiths, who made them from Mexican coins. Relatively few Rangers wore a badge out in the open. As for the item on the left? There’s no such thing as a “Texas Ranger Special Agent.”

Set 2

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: On the left is an official shield-type badge issued between 1938 and 1957. Ranger captains received gold badges; the shields issued to lower ranks were silver. The badge on the right is a fake, though similar authentic badges exist.

Set 3

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The left-hand badge was the official badge of the Rangers from July 1957 to October 1962. Called the “blue bottle cap badge,” the solid, “modernized” design was universally reviled. The right-hand badge is a fake. According to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, “No genuine Texas Ranger badges are known to exist with ‘Frontier Battalion’ engraved on them.”

Set 4

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The badge on the right, called the “wagon wheel badge,” has been the official Texas Ranger badge since October 1962. Each is made from a Mexican five-peso silver coin. The badge on the left is a “fantasy badge.” According to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, the most common designation on such badges is “Co. A.”

How did you do? Don’t feel badly if you couldn’t tell the legitimate badges from the fakes. Texas Ranger badges are a hot commodity in the collectibles market. The problem? The vast majority of items marketed as genuine Texas Ranger badges are reproductions, facsimiles, or toys. Very few legitimate badges exist outside museums and family collections, and those that do hardly ever are sold. There’s a very good reason for that: Manufacturing, possessing, or selling Texas Ranger insignia, even fakes that are “deceptively similar” to the real thing, can violate Texas law except in specific circumstances.

According to Byron A. Johnson, executive director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum (the official historical center of the Texas Ranger law-enforcement agency), “Spurious badges and fraudulent representation or transactions connected with them date back to the 1950s and are increasing. We receive anywhere from 10 to 30 inquiries a month on badges, the majority connected with sales on eBay.”

For more information about the Texas Rangers—including the history of the organization, biographical sketches of individual Rangers, and all kinds of information about badges and other insignia—visit the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum online at TexasRanger.org. The museum and its staff have our utmost gratitude for their assistance with this post.

To see how fictional Texas Ranger Grant Stafford and his heroine, Julia Courtland, get themselves out of one heckuva mess involving outlaws, lawmen, and a stagecoach wreck, read “Guarding Her Heart” in Hearts and Spurs. The collection of nine Valentine’s Day tales by nine western romance authors is available in print and ebook at your favorite online bookstore.