Amarillo, Texas: The Yellow Rose

Every year we spend some time in Colorado visiting friends and every year we pass through Amarillo. This year we decided to stop and check it out.

The city started as a railroad camp for the Fort Worth and Denver City railway. In 1887, the town was platted by J. T. Berry. He and some merchants from Colorado City chose a spot that had plenty of water. In 1888, Henry Sanborn, the father of Amarillo, started buying land a bit east of Berry's settlement claiming it was too low and would flood in a rainstorm. In 1889, it did. 

Originally named Oneida, the name of the town was changed to Amarillo, possibly because of the yellow soil that bordered the creek of the same name. Amarillo was named the county seat of Potter county and in 1888 had their first courthouse.  By 1889, they had already outgrown it and a new courthouse was constructed, just in time for the flood. Heavily damaged, the courthouse was moved to higher ground and a brick structure was erected. Once again, it was quickly outgrown. In 1904. this three story courthouse was constructed. In 1915, the dome was removed and an additional floor was added.

In 1932, the current courthouse was constructed.

Due to the access of the railroad, Amarillo was a cattle marketing center. In the early 1900s, it also became a grain elevator, milling and feed manufacturing center. In 1918, natural gas was discovered which brought the oil and gas industry to town as well.

Route 66, also known as the Mother Road, runs through Amarillo so they have their fair share of roadside attractions. The biggest is the 72 ounce steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. The deal is that if you can eat it, it's free! The rules are that (1) you have to pay first. If you finish, you'll be refunded. (2) You have to eat the whole dinner which includes a shrimp cocktail, house salad, baked potato, dinner roll and the steak, (3) you have an hour to do it. The first person to accomplish this feat was a 445 lb wrestler named Klondike Bill back in 1965.

Big Tex Rex is a dinosaur in cowboy boots. He sits outside the Steak Ranch.

Another famous roadside stop is the Cadillac Ranch where several Cadillacs are buried nose down and then painted. This is the closer Slug Bug Ranch, which has both VW Bugs and Cadillacs.

Amarillo also has an art museum and it's free! The permanent collection is Asian art, which is cool. The second floor has different exhibits that switch out from time to time. It's on the Amarillo College campus. There are other museums to check out such as The Texas Air and Space Museum and the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame to name a couple.

This is the Liberty Theater which was built in 1921. It's notable because it had a balcony which is where Black and Hispanic people were allowed to sit and watch the movies. Back then, that was something! It was abandoned in 1953. Back in 2013, there was an effort to revitalize it but, unfortunately, they couldn't raise the money, I guess. The building is over 100 years old and most likely has structural issues. It's too bad the city couldn't use it for something.

This is the Paramount theater and it's in the middle of downtown. It opened in 1932 and was considered Amarillo's finest theater. It showed movies until 1975. In 1978, it was converted to office space. Since then the lobby has been restored to its original glory and, in 2006, the sign was restored as well. Now, the lobby has a coffee shop and a sushi restaurant.

Woolworth's was a five and dime store that was famous for its lunch counter, which featured grilled cheese sandwiches. This store was built in 1925 and hung around until 1997. Now it houses retail shops and restaurants. I love that they kept the Woolworth's sign.

This amazing building is the Herring Hotel. It was built in 1927 by Cattleman/Oilman/Banker Cornelius Herring. He wanted a place to get his business done in style. When it was built, it was the tallest building in Amarillo at 13 floors plus a basement. The 600 room hotel was built at a cost of $1,000,000 (which is about $14M today). The hotel closed in 1966. In the 1970s it was repurposed as office space but by 1978, it was vacant. Like the Liberty Theater there were plans for renovation but they seem to have fallen through.

The Santa Fe building was the headquarters for the Santa Fe railroad. From this building they managed miles and miles of tracks across the country. Built in 1930 at 14 stories high, it replaced the Herring Hotel as the tallest building in Amarillo, a distinction it held for forty years. It was sold to Potter County and now houses office space for the county.

This is the Potter County Library. This building was designed by Amarillo Architects J. Roy Smith and W.C. Townes, and was built in 1922 by the W.M. Rice construction company at a cost of $25,000. The basement of the library was used as a public lounge to meet the needs of women shoppers and their children, and tourists. The facility included a living room, lunch room, assembly hall and resting room, and was staffed by a matron. It's a very inviting building and it sits next to the county courthouse.

We also found out that Amarillo had a baseball team! This is Hodgetown, home to the Amarillo Sod Poodles. The Soddies are a Double A team for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The stadium was built in 2019.

The Soddies were in town so we had to go. They played the San Antonio Missions. This is Ruckus the Sod Poodle. Unfortunately, he and the Soddies lost but it was fun!

There are 200K people that live there, which is half the population of the panhandle. It's also the economic center of the panhandle. Meat packing is a huge industry here. In fact, one fourth of the beef supply in the United States is processed here. The biggest employer is Tyson Foods.

We had a great time in Amarillo. There's a lot of history and surprisingly, a lot of fun things to do there as well. If you're getting your kicks on route 66 (or I-40), stop in and check it out!

Waco, Texas: The Heart of Texas

Texas is a big state. I can drive for 8 hours in most any direction and still be in Texas. But that's okay because Texas has a lot to see. If you drive down I-35 for about an hour and half from Dallas, you are right smack dab in the middle of Waco. If I've driven through Waco once, I've driven through a hundred times. This time, we stopped.

Waco sits on the Brazos River, the 14th longest river in Texas, and is the county seat of McLennan County. The county is named for Neil McLennan, a Scotsman who acquired a league of land in 1838 from Empresario Sterling Robertson. When Jacob de Cordoba bought the land in 1849, he had Texas Ranger, George Erath survey it and laid out the initial streets. The town was named Waco for the Indians that lived there first.

McLennan County has had several courthouses. The first was built in 1850. It was a two-story log cabin. It didn't last long. By 1856, they needed something bigger so they built another courthouse. This one was not built well structurally. In 1877, this courthouse was built. It was located at Franklin and 2nd Street. By 1900, this courthouse also became too small. The building was sold and was the home to Crow Brothers Steam Laundry. By 1926, the building had been demolished.

In 1901, the fourth McLennan County Courthouse was built and is still in use today. In 1930, Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie & Clyde fame) stood trial here on numerous charges of burglary and theft. In 1955, the first murder trial to be televised was held in this beautiful courthouse.

In 1869, the Waco Suspension Bridge was built, the first bridge to cross the Brazos River. It started out as a toll bridge, charging for foot traffic, carriages, and if you were sending your cattle across, you were charged five cents per head. Prior to the bridge, a ferry was used to cross the river.

Another view of the Waco Suspension Bridge. In 1889, the bridge was sold to the county and it became a free bridge. Today, it's a pedestrian bridge and a great way to get a lovely view of the Brazos River.

This is the Alico building. This 22-story building was erected in 1911 for the Amicable Life Insurance Company. In 1958, it survived an F5 tornado that hit downtown Waco and demolished a good part of the city. The American-Amicable Life Insurance Company is still the tenant in this building.

Waco is known for a lot of things and one of them is the birthplace of Dr Pepper. In 1885, there was a pharmacy on this spot, Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store. This is back when pharmacists actually mixed your medicines. 

In 1906, this building was erected at 5th and Mary Streets as an Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company. There's an actual well inside the building on the first floor where the water was drawn and used to bottle Dr Pepper. They continued bottling the soft drink here until about 1965 when the company moved to a more modern facility. It sat vacant until 1988 when it was donated for a museum.

The museum opened in 1991. On the first floor is a replica of the Old Corner Drug Store where Dr Pepper was invented. There's also a timeline of the invention of soft drinks in general. Did you know Coca Cola was invented by a guy who was trying to cure his morphine addiction?

This is the Kellum Rotan Building. They were wholesale grocers that were originally located on the other side of the Brazos River. They moved to this building in 1882 to take advantage of the proximity to the railroad. The building is now part of the Dr Pepper Museum. Inside is an old fashioned soda fountain. At the end of your tour, you can get a free drink. If you just want the drink, the soda fountain is open to the public. You just have to buy it.

Another fabulous museum in Waco is the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and Museum. It gives the history of the Texas Rangers, warts and all. 

For a long time, Waco was known for the disaster related to the Branch Davidians. In 1993, a religious group led by David Koresh lived in a compound about 13 miles outside of Waco. They were suspected of stockpiling weapons so the ATF got a warrant and they were going to raid the camp. The Davidians were tipped off and it became a gun battle instead. After 51 days, tear gas was tossed into the camp. It just went downhill from there. A lot of people died, including children.

Then in 2013, locals Chip and Joanna Gaines started a show called "Fixer Upper". They would fix up old houses in Waco and the world was fascinated. These are the Silos in Waco. Back when cotton was king, the owners of the silos would press the cottonseeds to extract the oil and the oil was stored in the silos. That business went under in the 1990s. Chip and Joanna bought them in 2014.

The put their Magnolia stamp on them and turned the whole area into a tourist attraction. The complex houses the Magnolia Home, the Magnolia Press where you can get coffee and the Silos Bakery where you can get treats.

The Gaines' changed the perception of Waco by "renovating" the town. This building, for example, was built in 1928 for the Grand Karem Shriners, a Masonic group that used this building until 1995. It was sold to the county who then used some of it for office space. In 2018, Chip and Joanna partnered with an equity company and converted this building to a luxury boutique hotel called Hotel 1928. It has 33 rooms, a restaurant and a bar.

In addition to all the museums, Waco is also home to Baylor University. The photo is not mine. We had so much other stuff to do, we ran out of time. Having said that, Waco is truly a college town. We stayed downtown in June after classes let out and there was nothing going on. Walking around at night, we had the place practically to ourselves. The museums were pretty empty, except the Dr Pepper museum. Baylor University, named for R. E. B. Baylor, was originally in Independence, Texas. In 1845, it merged with Waco University and it settled here in Waco. It's a private Baptist University.

McClane Stadium, right on the Brazos River.

I liked Waco. It was a big enough city that it had all your chain restaurants, fast food and grocery stores but small enough to have that small town feel. It's called the "heart of Texas" because of its central location. There are 138,500 people that live there. The biggest employers in town are Baylor University, of course, Ascension, Waco ISD, H-E-B, and Baylor Scott & White.

If you're passing through and you have the time, stop and check it out! I think you'll be surprised.

Belton, Texas: The Live Music Capital of Bell County

Belton, Texas is a small town about 30 minutes south of Waco. Head down I-35 S, when you get to Temple, hang a right and you're there!

Established in 1850, Belton is the county seat of Bell County. It was originally named "Nolanville" for the Nolan Springs that were nearby. When Bell county was formed, the town was renamed.  

The county was named for Peter Hansbrough Bell, who was Governor of Texas at the time.

Belton is also the home of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Formed in 1845, the original name of the school was Baylor Female College. It was named for R. E. B. Baylor, who also helped form Baylor University. Baylor Female College was coeducational but the sexes were separated. In 1929, the college was in financial straits due to the Great Depression. Mary Hardin was a school teacher from Burkburnett. When she and her husband discovered oil on their property, they became very wealthy. They donated money to the College. In appreciation, the college changed the name to Mary Hardin-Baylor College.

The campus is beautiful! As I mentioned, R. E. B. Baylor was helpful in founding the institution. Baylor was a Judge and a Preacher. He would ride the circuit, hearing cases in various places. Then he would stay in that place until Sunday and preach. He was originally buried in Independence, Texas where the original site of Baylor University was located. In 1885, Baylor University was moved to Waco and merged with Waco University. The people of Independence weren't happy about that. In 1917, Baylor's remains were reinterred at Mary Hardin-Baylor College.

One thing I thought was interesting is that every graduating class made a gift to the school to beautify the grounds. This concrete bench was gifted by the graduating class of 1902. It's the oldest surviving gift on campus. Other gifts include a gazebo, trees, fountains, etc. This was my favorite. All the names from that graduating class are etched into the bench.

At the entrance of the UMHB Campus is this house. It's called the Curtis Mansion. It was built in 1902 by cotton broker William Ray Miller. In 1914, it was sold to Lon and Cora Curtis who lived there for the next 60 years. In 2015, it became property of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. The house has five bedrooms, three bathrooms and is 5,303 square feet.

In 1907, Belton was the recipient for a grant from Andrew Carnegie for a Library. In 1899, the Wednesday Women's Club, a literary club consisting of 25 members, persuaded Carnegie to donate the $10,000 for the library. The way the deals worked was that Carnegie would fund the construction of the building but the citizens would have to supply the books, run the library and maintain it.  The Wednesday Women's Club donated the books and it was an active library until 1975.

There were 32 such libraries in Texas. Only 13 of the buildings are still standing. Belton is using their building as part of the Bell County Museum.

Speaking of, this is the Bell County Museum. In the early 2000s, this building, called the Guffy Building, was linked to the library through a walkway. I was impressed by the museum. It's free, requesting only donations. To the left of the entrance is a room that has various exhibits. 

When we were there, they had a Bob Hope exhibit that was on loan from the World War II Museum. It was very cool. There was a short documentary on Bob Hope's work with the troops during World War II.

Also on that side of the museum is the Marshall Log Cabin. The one room cabin was built in 1854 by John Marshall when he lived in Little River, Texas.  He later built a farmhouse around this cabin that required the removal on one wall. In 2001, the cabin was donated to and reassembled in the Bell County Museum.

To the right of the entrance of the museum, is the history of Bell County. Located on the first floor of the Carnegie Library are artifacts and placards that relate the history of the county. This particular artifact is the 1917 clock from the Temple National Bank.

Across the street from the museum is the historic U.S. Post Office building. It was built in 1917 and Alvah Ferguson was post master. Alvah was the brother of James Ferguson, who happened to be Governor of Texas at the time. By 1973, the building was in sad shape. A heavy storm saw 1/2 an inch of rain leak into the post office. In 1983, a new post office was built. I'm assuming that repairs were made to this building which now houses the Central Texas Workforce Development Board Administrative Office.

The Coca-Cola Mural in downtown Belton, Texas. The mural predates any of the known slogans used over the years. In October 2002, students from the UMHB art department restored the mural. 

Continuing down Main Street, we come to the beautiful Bell County Courthouse. Built in 1885, this is the third county courthouse to stand in this spot. The first was a log cabin built in 1852. In 1855, that cabin was sold (how weird to actually sell a building and have it carted away) and a new courthouse was built in 1859. The commissioners designed a very fancy and , for the time, costly courthouse at $13,625. None of those commissioners were re-elected. The current courthouse was remodeled in 1950 and the tower and dome were removed. In 1999, the whole courthouse was restored using the original plans.

Behind the Courthouse a little further up Main Street is the Grand Opera House. It was built in 1895. Each floor was built by a different person. When the project ran out of money before it was finished, Martha McWhirter of the Sanctified Sisters came to the rescue.

The Sanctified Sisters were the Women's Commonwealth which was a group of women that formed a commune on land that was inherited by women when their husbands died or when the husbands abandoned them. They all had chores and they ran some businesses in Belton. By 1900, they relocated from Belton to Washington DC.

This is the Cochran, Blair and Potts department store in Downtown Belton. The store opened in 1884 and has been there ever since. They sold dry goods, hardware, drugs and coffins. A veritable one-stop shop! 

Belton was a cool little town. There are about 23,000 people that live there. Right on the city limits there's an HEB, which is one of the bigger employers of the city. While they may not have your standard restaurant chains, they butt right up next to Temple so the citizens can still take advantage of those places while living in small town USA.

Check it out!

Bonham, Texas: The Star of North Texas

This week’s adventure is in Bonham Texas. It’s about an hour northeast of Dallas off Highway 121. Bonham is one of the oldest cities in Texas having been established in 1837 by Bailey Inglish. It’s also the county seat of Fannin County.

In 1837, Bailey Inglish received 1280 acres and chose to settle along the Bois d’Arc Creek. Because trouble with the Native Americans increased as settlers moved further west, Inglish built a fort with fellow settlers in the area. It was called Fort Inglish. The Fort Inglish Museum, created in 1976, is a replica of the buildings that were in the fort. Three of the log cabins there are from 1830 and were relocated here from their original locations.

The original name of the town was Bois d’Arc, after the creek.   In 1848, the Congress of the Republic of Texas was prepared to rename the town Bloomington. Instead, they renamed the town Bonham after James Butler Bonham, one of the heroes of the Alamo.

During the Civil War, Bonham was the headquarters for General Henry McCulloch. After the war, there was an influx of settlers. Agriculture was very big. The main crops were cotton and grains. This is the Confederate Commissary where rations were handed out. This is the building where the marker stands. I don't think is the actual commissary building.

In 1873, the Texas and Pacific Railway came through town greatly increasing the population. It was in Bonham that this railway had a division point; a spur went to Denton. By this time, the town had six churches, three colleges, two public schools, a sawmill and two grain mills. This is the Texas & Pacific Depot in Bonham. It's now the Fannin County Historical Museum.

In 1888, the Fannin County Courthouse was built. In 1929, there was a fire that caused severe structural damage. It was at that time that the building was remodeled. It looked the same except that the tower had been removed. The courthouse was remodeled again in 1965 to give it a “sleeker, more modern” look. Then in 2021, the courthouse was restored to its original façade.

In 1890, the Steger Opera house was built and touring companies would come and perform there. That was the second opera house in town. The first was the Russell Opera House. One of the stories on the “walkabout” was about a touring company that was performing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In 1889, word of the booking leaked and the locals were still touchy after their defeat in the Civil War. The citizens wanted the show to be cancelled but that wasn’t an option. Only six people showed up on the night of the performance. When the curtains rose, the actors came out and started the performance. The six attendees stood and began shooting at the stage lights. The actors fled. They quickly grabbed their things from the hotel and scrambled over to the train depot. Luckily, a train was pulling into the station. The troop climbed aboard and made their escape. It was a long time before traveling companies stopped in Bonham after that. The opera houses were razed in 1980.
 
During World War II, Bonham served as a training camp for the United States Army. There was an aviation school nearby. The town also served as a prison camp holding German prisoners of war.

This is the United States Post Office. It was built in 1914.

This is the A.B. Scarborough House. Albert Scarborough was the president of the First National Bank. The house was built in 1897 and it has 3 bedrooms plus a master suite. Albert had ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. In 1935, Albert sold the house to Philip Wise who used it as a funeral home. It is still used that way today. I would love to tour this house. It looks amazing.

Bonham’s biggest claim to fame is one of its prominent citizens, Sam Rayburn. Sam was born in Tennessee, but he and his family moved to Texas in 1887 to a huge cotton farm where he and his siblings picked cotton. He managed to work his way through college. In 1906, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives.

In 1913, he bought 121 acres of land in Bonham. He built a house where he lived with his family (siblings and parents). This is the year that he was elected to the US House of Representatives. He served in the House for 48 years. He was Speaker of the House for 17 of those years. During that time, he mentored a young Lyndon B. Johnson.

His house is a museum that is run by the Texas Historical Commission. Sam lived here with a brother and two sisters. His brother Tom ran the farm while Sam was in Washington. When Tom married, he bought a house next door. One of his sisters was married. She and her husband came to live here when he got sick. His other sister, Lucinda, aka Miss Lou, was not married.

I thought this was a pretty cool story: When the Democrats lost the House in 1947, he became the Minority Leader. The members wanted to get him a gift, but he refused to accept any gift that was greater than $25. So, 142 Democrats and 50 Republicans donated $25 each and bought him this 1947 Fleetwood Cadillac. He returned the money to all the Republicans (to avoid what he thought might be a conflict of interest), but he did thank them for the gesture.

Sam Rayburn also has a library/museum in Bonham. I thought only presidents had libraries but I was wrong. Sam was a great collector of books and things. The library is free to go in and it's very cool.

There are two sections. The first is the museum where there are artifacts that Sam collected from his days in Congress. This is a replica of his office. The chandelier actually came from the white house. Teddy Roosevelt thought it made too much noise and wanted to get rid of it. Sam took it and hung it in his office. Now it resides in his museum. 

The second section of the museum is an actual library where all the books that Sam collected are housed. Sam was a voracious reader. He had a habit of tagging all of his books. He would open the book to page 99 and write his initials. One thing I thought was cool was that you can take a book off the shelf and open it to confirm that he really did that. I pulled a random book off the shelf and checked. Sure enough, his initials were on page 99. I wish I'd thought to take a picture!

As of 2020, there were ten thousand people that live there. They have a WalMart grocery store along with a Brookshire's and the various dollar stores. In fact, there's a Dollar General right across the street from the Courthouse. They have your standard fast food chains but I didn't see any restaurant chains. The biggest employers in Bonham are the hospital, Seven Oaks Nursing Home and Walmart. But Bonham isn't that far from Plano so I'm sure a lot of people work there as well.
 
In Dallas, Highway 121 is called the Sam Rayburn Tollway. I’m wondering if this was on purpose. (Rayburn bought 121 acres in Bonham).
 
I enjoyed our visit to Bonham. We didn’t have enough time to get to everything. There are several museums worth visiting. There’s the Inglish Fort Museum, The Fannin County Historical Museum, The Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site and the Sam Rayburn Library. There is also a self-guided walking tour around the town square. All these cool things make Bonham the star of North Texas. If you're in the area, check it out!