In driving around Texas, we landed in College Station. I'd had friends that went to school in College Station but I'd never been there. In fact, I wasn't even sure where it was.
According to this map, you leave Dallas like you're going to Houston. Then around Madisonville, you hang a right. While driving there, it seemed very remote. Lots of farm land. I wasn't even sure that we were headed in the right direction but my GPS assured me that we were. Then we came out of the woods and landed in a town. A pretty big town, actually.
In 1860, The Houston and Texas Railroad came through here. Then in 1871, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas was built. It was the first college in Texas. The name was eventually changed to Texas A&M. In 1877, a post office was opened near the train depot and it was called College Station. The town took it's name from the post office. Now the town is mostly the university. Here's a view of A&M from our hotel window. It's like a small city!
Initially, the town was very remote, despite the railroad. Most of the instructors at the college lived in housing provided by the university. By 1900, the town had electricity and a population of 351. In 1938, College Station was incorporated. Today it's part of the Bryan-College Station metropolitan area as well as part of an area called the Texas Triangle (Houston/Austin/Bryan-College Station).
As I mentioned, most of the businesses in the city cater to the students and their families. That's not to say there aren't houses and other businesses there. There are. This is the Dixie Chicken. It's a bar on University Drive, which is kind of the main drag. The Dixie Chicken is the oldest bar in the "Northgate" area. It got it's name from a song by the band Little Feat. We walked by but we were not the target audience.
We stayed at the Embassy Suites also on University Drive. There are tons of hotel options here. All the chains are represented. Our hotel was packed! There was some kind of swim meet going on and some of the teams were staying at our hotel.
Driving around the A&M Campus. So all colleges have a "saying", right? UT Austin is Hook 'em Horns. A&M is "Gig 'em". I googled that and I still have no idea what that means.
Kyle Field named for Edwin Jackson Kyle, who was the President of the General Athletics Association. He was also a graduate, class of 1899. In 1904, he took land that was assigned to him for agriculture and fenced it off for a field. Then, using $650 of his own money, he bought a covered grandstand that sat about 500 people. I guess the University felt that was just pitiful and in 1929, they built a new stadium. This stadium holds about 120K people. Another fun fact, the game here in 1921 between the Aggies and their arch rivals, The University of Texas, was the first game in Texas to be broadcast live.
For us, the big draw to College Station (other than the fact we'd never been there) was the George Bush Presidential Library. It's on the A&M Campus and was opened in 1997.
Documenting the live of George H. W. Bush, the library has tons of information. There are photographs of Bush 41's life. (He was the 41st president). He lied about his age so he could enlist in the Navy during WWII. He was a pilot serving on the USS San Jacinto. During one raid, his plane was shot down. He was able to escape, though his team died. After the war, he enrolled at Yale and played baseball.
George H. W. and George W. are one of only two sets of father/son presidents, the other being John and John Quincy Adams. The senior Bush moved his family to Midland Tx where he got in the oil business. They eventually moved to Houston where Bush got into politics. He served as head of the CIA under President Gerald Ford.
George H. W. Bush's Oval Office. Bush was Vice President under Ronald Reagan for 8 years. Then President for 4. His VP was Dan Quayle. In my mind, Quayle will always be remembered as the guy who misspelled potato to a kid during a spelling bee causing the kid to lose.
Bush 41 was a one-term president. He lost to Bill Clinton. While I didn't vote for him, I thought he was a class act.
He and his wife, Barbara, and their daughter Robin are interred on the grounds of the library.
The graves of the Bush's. It's a very lovely and peaceful location, away from the library.
Today College Station has about 120K people. Their biggest employer, as you might imagine, is Texas A&M University. Other big employers are the Bryan Independent School District, St. Joseph Health Care and Sanderson Farms (it's a chicken processing plant). (A silo on the way out of College Station)
The city has all your standard fast food chains as well as all the big chain restaurants. Even with all of this, it still feels a bit remote. Having said that, A&M is the largest University in the country with 74,000 students that go here, including Lyle Lovett and Johnny Manziel, so there's something about this place...
Gig em, Aggies!
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