George credits Dr. Edward Jelks, an archaeoolgist who taught at the University of Texas, with the beginnings of his research on the settlements of this region. In the 1960s, archaeologists were primarily interested in evidence of Native Americans in the area, and little work was being done on Spanish colonial settlements. Jelks pointed George toward archaeological field studies that had been carried out by Joe F. Cason before the region was flooded and were now preserved in the archives of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory. Building on this research, George made numerous contacts in the region, enlisted students and interns to help with architectural drawings, and published his first book titled, Historic Architecture of Texas: the Falcón Reservoir in 1975.

In the 1980s, years of drought gave George another opportunity to investigate this region. The water level in the Falcon Reservoir fell so low that from 1983 to 1986, ruined towns and ranch houses were once again on dry ground. George and his students documented the buildings through photographs and drawings. When another series of dry years caused the waters to recede again in the late 1990s, the value of this documentation was made strikingly clear: many of the sites George and his students had documented had been looted, resulting in the loss of much archaeological evidence. George published the results of his 1980s and 1990s research in a book titled, Lost Architecture of the Rio Grande Borderlands, in the year 2008.