On this day in 1960, singer Johnny Horton died in a car accident
in Milano, Texas. Though he was born in Los Angeles in 1925,
Horton grew up in East Texas and graduated from high school in
Gallatin. He attended junior college in Jacksonville and Kilgore
and eventually went to Seattle University. He worked in the
fishing industry in California and Alaska but embarked on a
country music singing career in 1950. In 1955 Horton joined the
Louisiana Hayride under the stage name “The Singing Fisherman.”
Recognized for his honky tonk sound, he scored his first hit
“Honky Tonk Man” in 1956 and achieved his first number-one
country recording with “When It’s Springtime in Alaska” several
years later. The singer had crossover appeal on both country and
popular-music radio stations and songs such as “The Battle of
New Orleans” attracted a wide audience. On this day in 1918,
Peter Bentsen and his family left their South Dakota homestead
and headed for Sharyland, an irrigated citrus and vegetable
utopia envisioned by John H