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Dime Box gained a unique place in pop culture when it was cast as the capital of the Second Republic of Texas in Howard Waldrop's book 'Texas-Israeli War: 1999'. Additionally, the opening scene of the 'Swan Song' episode of 'Walker, Texas Ranger' was set in Dime Box, adding to its notoriety.
In 1913, a pivotal moment in the history of Dime Box occurred when the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed a line three miles southeast of the original settlement. This development prompted most residents and businesses to relocate to a site closer to the tracks, leading to the distinction between the original settlement, now known as Old Dime Box, and the new community simply called Dime Box.
The Southern Pacific Railroad played a significant role in shaping Dime Box's history. In 1913, the railroad built a line three miles southeast of the original Dime Box location, leading to the relocation of most residents and businesses to a site near the tracks.
Two communities in Lee County (Old Dime Box and New Dime Box). Before the railroad arrived in 1913, settlers nailed a wooden box to a tree on the Brown's Mill Road; travelers heading to Giddings carried mail for a dime per letter. Dime Box was also the first community to achieve 100 percent participation in the 1945 March of Dimes campaign.
King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road. Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas A. D. 1918
(The old San Antonio Road) Great thoroughfare of early Texas. Following ancient Indian and buffalo paths, sometimes on same course as 1691 "Trail of the Padres", stretches 1,000 miles from Saltillo, Mexico, to present Louisiana. Highway for explorers, traders, smugglers, adventurers, settlers, armies. Was surveyed about 1800 and given name of "King's Highway". Here, as in some other areas, the modern highway follows historic El Camino Real. Also, in this particular area, El Camino Real marked boundary between the major early 19th century colonies of Stephen F. Austin and Sterling C. Robertson. (1968)
Serbin is on Farm Road 2239 seven miles southwest of Giddings in southwestern Lee County. In 1855 Carl Lehman and John Dube purchased 4,000 acres of the Absolem C. Delaplain league on behalf of the group of more than 500 Wends, who under the leadership of Pastor John Kilian , immigrated from Lusatia to Texas in 1854, forming the mother colony of Wends in Texas. They subdivided the tract into farms and town lots which they sold to individuals. Kilian Lutheran congregation bought ninety-five acres for a church and school. The community on the old Gotcher Trace was called Low Pin Oak Settlement, and by 1857 fifty families were reported living in the vicinity. When the town received a post office in 1860 the name was changed to Serbin (Wendish Land). The principal crops grown were corn and cotton; during the Civil War farmers in the Serbin area hauled cotton to Matamoros and Houston and returned goods and gold. In the late nineteenth century Serbin had two general stores, three blacksmiths, two wheelwrights, a meat market, a carpenter, a physician, and two churches and parochial schools. St. Paul Lutheran Church was the first congregation of the Missouri Synod in Texas. The church, its parochial school, and the town held a prominent place in the history of Lutheranism in Texas and was the site of synodical conventions. In 1890 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway laid tracks through Lee County two miles east of Serbin. Many businessmen moved nearer to the railroad tracks and called the community New Serbin or Serbin Switch. This name was changed to Northrup when a station was established in 1892. The post office in Serbin was closed by 1909. Although Serbin declined with the rise of Giddings in the twentieth century, a community of fifty persons still existed by 1930. This figure remained relatively stable for the next two decades. From the 1960s to 2000 Serbin had a population of ninety. In 1990 St. Paul Lutheran Church, situated halfway between Serbin and Northrup, had 555 members; seventy-eight students were enrolled in its parochial school. In 1980 the church donated the 1915 parochial school building to the Texas Wendish Heritage Society and leased them an acre of land. The society founded the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum, now a complex of several buildings, including a log home built in 1865 by an original settler. The museum research library and archives preserve, interpret, and make available for study the history of the Wends. Visitors may tour the museum, cemetery, and the church built in 1871. Serbin Homecoming is held on Memorial weekend, and a Wendish Fest is held in the fall by the museum. In 2004 a series of events in Serbin commemorated the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Wends in Texas and the formation of the church congregation.
The Wends (also known as Sorbs or Lusatian Serbs) are a Slavic people concentrated in East Germany near Bautzen and Cottbus in the upper Spree River valley, an area long known as Lusatia. They speak Sorbian, which is divided into two dialects, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. The language was originally written with Gothic letters, although since 1937 the Latin alphabet has been used. Wends have never had an independent nation, and their homeland has always been surrounded by Germans. During the Middle Ages the Wends survived the raids and massacres of German Eastland horsemen; especially during the Nazi years they were pressured to assimilate the German culture, and gradually they have adopted the German language and many customs, although they still retain a separate identity. In 1840, before overseas migration began, there were about 164,000 Wends in Lusatia. In the 1980s there were only 60,000. Outside Germany, most of the Wends settled in two areas, Australia and Texas. The desire for better economic opportunity was probably the main reason for Wendish immigration to Australia and to Texas a few years later. Although scholars dispute the role of social and religious factors in the process, Texas Wends commonly express the belief that their forefathers came here solely for religious freedom. Around 1848 small groups of Wends began immigrating to Australia, where many Germans had already settled. These pioneers sent letters home, many of which were published in local newspapers, and which influenced Wends still in Europe. A small group of Wends came to Austin County around 1849–50 and were quickly absorbed into the German community. In 1853 a group of thirty-five Wends left Bremen for Texas. They were shipwrecked off the coast of Cuba, but eventually made their way to Galveston, and from there to the communities of New Ulm and Industry. In the fall of 1854 a newly established congregation of nearly 600 conservative Lutheran Wends, led by John Kilian , left Germany to join their countrymen in Texas. The group constituted the only mass exodus of Wends. Traveling first by railway and steamship to Liverpool, England, the Wends embarked on an English ship, the Ben Nevis , for the journey to Texas. While in Liverpool, however, a number of Wends contracted cholera, and seventy-three of them died on board the ship. After a three week stop in Queenstown, Ireland, to remove the sick and fumigate the ship, the Ben Nevis sailed for Galveston, where it arrived on December 15, 1854. Galveston was having a yellow fever epidemic. From December to January the Wends walked the eighty-five miles to New Ulm and Industry. Two lay leaders of the congregation, Johann Dube and Carl Lehmann, went on ahead thirty miles and purchased a league of land in what is now Lee County. At first services were held in one room of Kilian's two-room house, but the group set aside ninety-five acres for a church and school, later called St. Paul's. This was the first Missouri Synod Lutheran church founded in Texas and is thus the mother church not only of the Wends, but of all conservative Lutherans in Texas. After their first tiny log church was erected, individuals purchased farm acreage and town lots, built crude dugout houses for shelter, and established what became the community of Serbin. In 1860 Serbin had a post office. After 1871, however, a new railroad connection made nearby Giddings the business and commercial center of the region, and Serbin declined in both population and influence. Over the years, due to religious dissension and economic pressures, the Wends spread throughout south central Texas. Today the leading Wendish centers are in Lee, Fayette, Williamson, Coryell, and Bell counties, especially in the towns of Serbin, Warda, Giddings, Fedor, Manheim, Loebau, Lincoln, Winchester, La Grange, Thorndale, Walburg, Copperas Cove, The Grove, Vernon, Swiss Alp, New Ulm, Industry, Noack, and Aleman. Substantial numbers of people of Wendish descent also
Texas Monthly's #1 BBQ. Only open Saturday mornings in tiny Lexington.
Festival Hill: a 210-acre classical-music campus on Jaster Road hosting summer concerts, recitals, and a renowned festival in its grand concert hall.
Bud Royer's pie-mecca on the Round Top square — buttermilk, pecan, and a daily rotation of about ten flavors. Statewide-famous and the anchor of the…
Texas whiskey-blending house and tasting room in Ledbetter, about 8 miles southwest of Round Top.
Premier antiques-show venue on Highway 237 just north of town — a marquee stop during Round Top's twice-yearly fairs, with shopping and dining year-round.
Chef-driven, farm-to-table restaurant inside the Market Hill complex on Highway 237.
A restored village of 1800s German-Texan buildings on the square, now home to boutique shops, makers, and a market hall.
Nanobrewery and kitchen on the square pouring house-made craft beer.
333 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.
You're driving through Lee County, and you might be wondering how this place got its name: Dime Box. It all started back in the 1870s when folks here needed a post office. Until it opened, settlers would leave their…
Dime Box gained a unique place in pop culture when it was cast as the capital of the Second Republic of Texas in Howard Waldrop's book 'Texas-Israeli War: 1999'. Additionally, the opening scene of the 'Swan Song'…
Here in Dime Box, Texas, the name once paid off in a way nobody could have planned. In nineteen forty-five, the national polio fundraising drive known as the March of Dimes needed a hook, and some clever organizer…
You're rolling into Dime Box, Texas, a town that wears its own origin story right on the sign. Before there was a post office out here, back in the eighteen seventies, folks around Joseph Brown's sawmill had a problem:…
The mixed settlement that grew up around Dime Box, Texas, included a group called the Wends, and that thread deserves a story of its own, because it points at one of the most remarkable little migrations in Texas…
You're passing through Dime Box, Texas, the little town whose name got borrowed by the national March of Dimes polio campaign back in the nineteen forties. That connection is worth a short detour, because it is worth…
Let's talk about what is underneath you here in Dime Box, Texas, because this quiet farm country sat on top of a genuine oil drama. Late in the nineteen seventies, the land around Dime Box and nearby Giddings became…
You're in Dime Box, Texas, but this place almost carried a different name entirely. So why isn't it still called Brown's Mill? Blame the post office and a spelling problem. Joseph Brown put up his sawmill somewhere…
Look at a map around Dime Box, Texas, and you will notice a wrinkle: there is a Dime Box and an Old Dime Box, three miles apart. That split happened in nineteen thirteen, and it is a story that played out in hundreds of…
So look at everything one small, odd town name can hold. Pull on the words Dime Box and the whole thread unspools. It starts with a wooden box and a ten-cent coin at a frontier sawmill, and a carrier riding to Giddings…
Two communities in Lee County (Old Dime Box and New Dime Box). Before the railroad arrived in 1913, settlers nailed a wooden box to a tree on the Brown's Mill Road; travelers heading to Giddings carried mail for a dime…
You're driving through Dime Box, Texas, a community with a name as unique as its origin story! Originally known as Browne's Mills, this spot was part of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old Three Hundred" colony. But how…
King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road. Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Texas A. D. 1918
State Highway Twenty One follows much of the Old San Antonio Road, also called the Camino Real and the King's Highway. And the old route carries an extra name. A state highway minute order dated June twenty first,…
(The old San Antonio Road) Great thoroughfare of early Texas. Following ancient Indian and buffalo paths, sometimes on same course as 1691 "Trail of the Padres", stretches 1,000 miles from Saltillo, Mexico, to present…
You're driving past a key junction on the Chisholm Trail, folks! Developed after the Civil War, this famous route brought Texas cattle north to Kansas railheads for shipment east. An arm of that celebrated trail,…
During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved people came here from Washington, Burleson, and Fayette counties, drawn by cheap land eleven miles east of Giddings on what's now Farm Road 141. It grew into the largest Black…
You're driving through Deanville, a community that owes its existence to a general store. In 1872, James L. Dean set up shop right here, and the town grew up around it. This spot was also a handy place for cattlemen…
Around 1890, twelve families left the Antioch community and settled eight miles northeast of Giddings, on what's now Farm Road 141, founding Sweet Home. Other Black settlers came in from Washington and Fayette counties.…
You're driving past a piece of Texas history that's older than the state itself! This was once known as the King's Highway, or Camino Real, or the Old San Antonio Road. Established way back in <say-as…
You're driving through Deanville, a town that owes its start to the legendary Chisholm Cattle Trail. Merchant James L. Dean founded this spot in 1872. Imagine the cowboys and cattle passing right through here! The post…
You're driving past the site of St. John's Lutheran Church in Deanville. Organized in 1910 with 35 charter members, services were first held in a schoolhouse. Look for the tower – it still houses the original 800-pound…
You're driving past the Early Chapel Cemetery near Lexington, a resting place for some real Texas history. This land was bought by the Methodist Episcopal Church South back in 1850, but burials were happening here even…
You're driving past the site where William W. Hawkins lived, a soldier who fought in the pivotal Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That was the decisive battle that won Texas its independence. After the revolution, Hawkins…
You're driving past the resting place of James Shaw, a true veteran of Texas history. Born in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1808</say-as>, Shaw fought for Texas independence and stood on the battlefield at San…
U S Highway Two Ninety from Interstate Thirty Five, and then State Highway Twenty One on to State Highway Six, together make up the Presidential Corridor. The Legislature drew it in nineteen ninety seven, in recognition…
North of Somerville, Sweet Home Baptist Church still stands in the community once known simply as Birch, on FM 60 along Birch Creek in southern Burleson County. The congregation was organized around 1890 by formerly…
Serbin is on Farm Road 2239 seven miles southwest of Giddings in southwestern Lee County. In 1855 Carl Lehman and John Dube purchased 4,000 acres of the Absolem C. Delaplain league on behalf of the group of more than…
The Wends (also known as Sorbs or Lusatian Serbs) are a Slavic people concentrated in East Germany near Bautzen and Cottbus in the upper Spree River valley, an area long known as Lusatia. They speak Sorbian, which is…
You're driving through Lee County, not far from Fedor, and you might just be passing the stomping grounds of Gotthilf Birkmann. He was a Lutheran pastor, yes, but also a dedicated amateur entomologist. Starting around…
Globe Hill is on a gravel road two miles east of Giddings and 1½ miles north of State Highway 290 in southeastern Lee County. George Coleman Truitt, founder of this predominantly black settlement, bought land in the…
Knobbs Springs, known at various times as The Knobbs, Knobbs, or Gleam, is a rural community just off Farm Road 696, twelve miles west of Lexington in far western Lee County. The area was named for Yegua Knobbs, three…
You're driving through Lee County, a place with a history stretching back thousands of years. Around 1835, the first known white settler, James Gotier, arrived and set up a cabin on Rabbs Creek. Before his life was cut…
You're driving through Lee County, near Sweet Home. This community was founded by Black settlers, primarily from Washington and Fayette counties, who established cotton and grain farms here. In 1880, they started their…
Cummins Creek rises near Giddings in Lee County (at 30°11' N, 96°55' W) and runs southeast through Lee, Fayette, and Colorado counties for sixty-five miles to its mouth on a horseshoe bend of the Colorado River,…
Doak Springs is on Farm Road 3403 a half mile east of Leo in central Lee County. The small, black community centered around the Doak Springs school, which was organized in 1897. A Mr. Doak, of nearby Lexington, donated…
Hranice, two miles northwest of Dime Box in north central Lee County, was near the center of the four-league grant awarded in 1831 to Stephen F. Austin . The area was sparsely settled until the early 1880s, when the…
Lincoln is eight miles northwest of Giddings in central Lee County. The town was named for a circuit rider named John A. Lincoln who lived on a nearby farm and frequently led revivals in the area. The earliest settlers…
Loebau is on West Yegua Creek three miles east of Lincoln in central Lee County. It developed after the Civil War , near the Bluff Creek Crossing of West Yegua Creek on the Giddings-to-Caldwell road. A cotton gin owned…
Tanglewood is on U.S. Highway 77 five miles northwest of Lexington in northwestern Lee County. The area was first settled in 1856 by the Rev. Hugh Wilson , who founded the String Prairie Presbyterian Church there. After…
You're driving past the site of the old Gloyna School, a vital hub for this German community for half a century. It started life in 1893 as Hannes School, but was renamed in 1900 after Christian Gloyna bought the…
You're driving through Lee County, and you might be passing the oldest living witness to Texas history. This old evergreen tree is said to have sheltered explorer Louis de St. Denis way back in 1714, likely the first…
You're driving through Caldwell, and just off the road is Frenstat Cemetery. It all started back in 1884 when Moravian Czech families settled here, calling their new home Frenstat. Two years later, Adolf and Veronica…
You're driving past the site of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, a testament to the faith of Czech immigrants who settled this area. <break time="400ms"/> Arriving in 1884, they named their new home…
Sometime between the end of the Civil War and 1875, four brothers — Abram, Alexander, George, and Philip Jones — settled this ground on what's now Farm Road 180, a half mile north of Highway 290 in southeastern Lee…
You're driving past Indian Camp Branch, a spot that was a favorite camping place for Indian hunting parties long before Texas was a state. In 1837, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, James Shaw, encountered a band…
You're driving past St. John Lutheran Church in Lincoln, a community cornerstone since 1886. That's when pastors from nearby towns helped organize this Lutheran congregation. The first resident pastor arrived just a…
You're driving past Globe Hill Commnuity and Baptist Church. George Coleman Truitt, founder of this predominantly African American community, bought land in the area and built at least nine box houses for his tenant…
Driving through Lexington, you're passing the final resting place for many of this area's early German immigrants. The German Methodist Church, organized here in 1882, purchased this land for a cemetery in 1898. The…
You're driving past Lexington, Texas, where education took root way back in 1849. The very first classes were held in the log home of Captain James Shaw, the town's founder. Later, a local Masonic lodge, Andrew Neill…
You're driving past the site of the First Baptist Church of Lexington. It all started back in January of 1855, when nine charter members, inspired by a reverend from Prospect Church, decided to form their own…
On Main Street here sits a barbecue joint that Texas Monthly twice crowned the best in the entire state, once in 2008 and again in 2017. Snow's BBQ opened on March 1, 2003, founded by Kerry Bexley, whose childhood…
This town started out with a humbler name. James Shaw, an Ohio-born surveyor, teacher, and Republic of Texas veteran, rode into the area in 1837 to claim land granted for his military service. In 1848 a post office…
You're cruising through Lexington, and right here is the United Methodist Church. Its roots go way back to 1850, starting as the Lexington Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This church has a unique history of absorbing…
You're driving through Burleson County, and right here in Lexington, Titus Howard Mundine was a man who made history in more ways than one. In 1868, this legislator, a staunch Unionist, proposed something truly radical…
You're driving through what was once Moab, a predominantly African-American community that sprang up after the Civil War. Farmers here worked the land, but often traveled for 'cotton picks' to supplement their income.…
During the Texas Revolution , several groups of volunteers for the army, particularly volunteers from Kentucky, wore the designation of "Ladies'" battalions or legions. On February 12, 1836, the Committee of Vigilance…
Cotton built early Lexington. Farmers on the prairie east of town raised it, and the settlement grew as new hands arrived to work the land. In 1869, twenty-one families rolled in by wagon train from Mississippi, most…
You're driving through Lexington, Texas, a town with roots stretching back to 1837. Originally part of Burleson County, this area was first home to the Tonkawa Indians. The first white settler, James Shaw, arrived that…
You're driving through what is now Lee County, near Lexington, where Charles Rogan settled with his family back in 1862. Rogan went on to be one of the first graduates of Texas A&M. But his biggest impact came later, as…
You're driving through Lexington, Texas, a town with roots stretching back to 1837. That's when James Shaw rode into this area, looking for land granted for his service in the Republic of Texas army. A few years later,…
You're driving near Hillsboro, and right here is the site of old Lexington, later known as Union Bluff. This settlement began in the winter of 1851-52 when the Wornell family arrived, looking to set up shop. Young D.C.…
You're driving through Central Texas, and right here in Lexington, Texas, is where Francis Marion Mundine made his home. Mundine was a merchant, farmer, and postmaster who also served in the Texas Legislature. In 1897,…
You're driving through Lexington, site of the Masonic Lodge No. 138. Chartered in 1854, it was first named for Texas War for Independence veteran Andrew Neill. Members helped build a lodge and school in 1854, which…
Texas Monthly's #1 BBQ. Only open Saturday mornings in tiny Lexington.
The two creeks that frame this town, East Yegua and Middle Yegua, gave their name to something geologists worldwide still use. In 1918, geologist Edwin Dumble named the Yegua Formation, a layer of rock from the middle…
You're driving through Central Texas, and right here, in Lee County, is where Bill Longley met his end. Born in Austin County in 1851, Longley's life was a whirlwind of violence after the Civil War. He claimed to have…
You're driving through Giddings, Texas, the hometown of Hilton Lee Smith, a baseball legend you might not have heard of. Born in 1907, Smith was a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues, often hailed as the best all-around…
You're driving through what was once the frontier of the Republic of Texas, and right here in Bastrop County, you passed the final resting place of Henry Prentice Redfield. Born in New Hampshire in 1819, Redfield came…
Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his name to this stretch of U.S. Highway Seventy Seven, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Highway. King was born Michael Luther King, Jr., in nineteen twenty nine, and later had his name…
You're driving through Lee County, maybe past Giddings. Right here, John Allen Singley was busy documenting Texas's natural wonders. After arriving in Texas around 1876, he settled in Giddings by 1884. He began…
You're driving through Giddings, Texas, a town born from the railroad. In 1871, the Houston and Texas Central Railway cut through this land, originally part of Stephen F. Austin's and later Robertson's colonies. A new…
All of U.S. Highway Two Ninety in Lee County is the Henry G. Bud Lehman Highway. Bud Lehman was born in Lee County on January fifteenth, nineteen ten. He won a seat in the Texas House in nineteen thirty seven and served…
You're driving past the old Burleson County Jail, where Sheriff Lee W. Henslee and his family once lived. Born and raised right here, Henslee became sheriff in 1902, serving during a tough time for law and order.…
You're driving past Caldwell, Texas, where this cemetery holds over 2,700 stories. It started in 1890 as a Masonic cemetery, but people were buried here even earlier, as far back as 1860. Look closely at the stones –…
You're driving past the site of the First United Methodist Church of Giddings. This congregation got its start way back in 1871, with just 24 members. That makes it the very first church organized in this community,…
On the seventh of September, 1975, a family stopped at the roadside park on Highway 77 south of Giddings to have a picnic. The father crossed the fence line and found a green trash bag under a tree. Inside were the…
In 1960 the Giddings Star got a new owner named Lawrence Pope. He came out of a banking family, he had spent three years as a national bank examiner, and he had just been president of a bank near Waco until the board…
Caldwell's story is rooted in the land itself. Situated in the rolling hills of the Brazos River watershed, it was always good country for agriculture and ranching, a natural draw for settlers. But what set it apart…
Every September, the courthouse square here in Caldwell transforms. The normal quiet of a county seat gives way to the sound of polka music and the smell of baking dough. This is the Kolache Festival, always the second…
In 1880, the sound of progress arrived in Caldwell: a steam locomotive. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was building its main line up through Burleson County, and its engineers laid the tracks right through…
Giddings, Texas, has a rich history that began with the land grant to Stephen F. Austin in 1821 for a colony in Spanish Texas. The city itself was founded in 1871 with the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central…
State Highway Thirty Six and U S Highway One Ninety both carry the name Thirty Sixth Division Memorial Highway. The Thirty Sixth Infantry Division was called the Texas Division, because when it entered federal service…
On the sixth of February, 2008, a man robbed the Capital One bank in Giddings. The bank is not here anymore. Neither was the robber, for a very long time. He worked in disguises, false beards among them, which is how he…
The road you're on right now, Texas Highway 21, is more than just asphalt. You're traveling along the same corridor as one of North America's oldest and most important roads: the El Camino Real de los Tejas, or the…
You're cruising through Giddings, and right here is a classic American Four Square house, built around 1890. This was home to Edward "Ed" R. Sinks, a real mover and shaker in early Lee County. Ed wasn't just any…
You're driving through Giddings, and right here is the site of Lee County's oldest bank. It got its start in 1891, born from the merger of two local financial ventures. One was a private bank run by P.M. Cuney. The…
You're driving past the site of Shorter Chapel, A.M.E. Church. Organized way back in 1875, this was one of the very first African American churches established in Giddings. The congregation honors the Rev. James A.…
You're driving through Giddings, and right here is the First Presbyterian Church. It was founded way back in 1876 with just thirteen members. The original building you see was designed and built in 1886 by a ruling…
You're driving past the site where Bethany Lutheran Church and School once stood. Established in 1895 as a German-English mission, it served this community for decades. The mission board withdrew support in 1902, but…
You're driving through Giddings, where J. D. Lodge No. 280, A.F.&A.M. was chartered in 1865. It started near Evergreen but moved to Giddings in 1872 when the railroad arrived. The lodge has played a big part in civic…
Giddings began in 1871 as a railroad town, when the Houston and Texas Central built a station here to serve communities the tracks had bypassed. It is usually said to be named for railroad investor Jabez Deming…
The handsome red-brick courthouse in the middle of Giddings exists because the town once had to fight to keep it. Lee County's first courthouse was finished here in 1878, an ornate building with a mansard roof and a…
Under the countryside around Giddings sits a band of rock called the Austin Chalk, a thick layer of marine stone laid down in the Cretaceous, back in the age of the dinosaurs. It holds a lot of oil, but it posed a nasty…
City Meat Market in downtown Giddings is the kind of barbecue place that barely exists anymore: an old-fashioned butcher shop where you walk to the back, watch the meat come straight off the pits, order it by the pound,…
You're driving past the heart of Lee County, a place with roots reaching back to the very beginnings of Texas settlement. The land here was first surveyed way back in 1821, part of Moses and Stephen F. Austin's original…
You're driving through Lee County, named for a man Texans knew well before he became a Confederate general: Robert E. Lee. He spent time right here on the Texas frontier, stationed at Camp Cooper. Imagine him leading a…
You're driving past the Fletcher Home, built way back in 1879 by August Schubert. Imagine this place buzzing with young men studying to become ministers! The Lutheran Church bought it in 1894 to start a college. But the…
You're rolling through Giddings, Texas, a town born from the railroad boom. Look around – this place owes its existence to transportation pioneers, especially Jabez D. Giddings, a man who saw the potential of the rails.…
You're driving through Giddings, the heart of Lee County. Right here, we remember Milton Garrett York, Sr. Born in East Texas in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1843</say-as>, he saw a lot of change in his life.…
You're driving through Giddings, and right here is the Lee County Courthouse. Take a look at this building! Designed by J. R. Gordon, it takes its cues from places like the New York State Capitol and Harvard University.…
You're driving past the First Baptist Church of Giddings, a church that's been serving this community for a century. It all started way back in 1872 with just 16 members and a pastor named J. Budd. Their first building…
You're driving past the site of Black Jack Baptist Church near Caldwell. Organized in May of 1885 with just 17 members, this congregation was sponsored by its neighbor, Liberty Baptist Church. For nine years, they met…
Giddings gave baseball a giant: Hilton Smith. Born here in 1907, Smith became a dominant pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the premier teams of the Negro leagues. He was a master of the curveball, and his…
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an energy revolution transformed the landscape around Giddings, and it all happened because engineers cracked the code of a rock formation called the Austin Chalk. For years, oilmen…
Just south of Giddings is Serbin, the heart of one of the strangest immigrant stories in America. The Wends, today usually called Sorbs, are a Slavic people from Lusatia in eastern Germany, with their own language and…
One of the most consequential figures of Reconstruction Texas spent his final years right here in Giddings. Matthew Gaines was born into slavery, became a Baptist minister, and during Reconstruction won a seat in the…
Before the railroad, the trading center out here was a place called Evergreen, sitting right on the Washington-Lee county line a few miles from where you are. It had the stores, the Masonic lodge, the whole works. Then…
As you pass through Giddings, you're at the commercial heart of a unique American cultural group: the Wends. The Wends, or Sorbs, are a Slavic people from Germany who came to Texas in the 1850s to escape cultural and…
You're driving past the site of Bethel Union Baptist Church in Giddings. This congregation has roots going back to 1874, when it was first organized in a private home and later built a church called Willow Grove…
For more than a century, people argued over whether the outlaw buried in the Giddings cemetery had actually escaped his own hanging. William Wild Bill Longley was hanged before thousands here on October 11, 1878. He…
You're driving past Giddings, where one of Texas' most notorious outlaws met his end. William Preston Longley, known as Bill, was born in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1851</say-as>. Despite a respectable…
You're driving past the site of the Woodson Lumber Company, a business that helped build Caldwell and much of the region. Brothers Jim and Harrie Woodson partnered to open this lumberyard in 1913, and it grew into a…
You're driving through Central Texas, and right here, you're passing through the legacy of George Bernard Erath. Born in Austria, he came to Texas in 1833 and immediately jumped into the fight for independence, serving…
You're driving past Giddings, hometown of Helen Knox, a woman who broke barriers in both sports and finance. Born right here in 1885, she was one of the first women to earn an athletic letter at the University of Texas,…
You're driving past the marker for Henry Prentice Redfield, a man who saw more Texas history than most. Born way up in New Hampshire in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1819</say-as>, Redfield came to Texas when…
You're driving through Central Texas, where in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1835</say-as>, Alexander Thomson Jr. helped make history. While serving as chairman of the local Methodist Church, he spearheaded an…
You're driving past the site of Giddings' first professional educators, Robert and Sarah McClellan. They opened a private school right here in 1874, shaping young minds. Then, in 1883, they were tapped to lead the very…
You're driving past Caldwell, a town with roots stretching back to 1840. Lewis L. Chiles, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, founded this place. It was named for Mathew 'Old Paint' Caldwell, a tough Indian fighter…
You're driving through Caldwell, Texas, the birthplace of Thomas Fontaine Turner. Born in 1864, Turner became a lawyer, a civic leader, and a passionate supporter of history. He helped found the Panhandle-Plains…
The little farm crossroads you're rolling through took its name from one of north Fayette County's early pioneer families, the Ledbetters. The Hamilton Ledbetter clan had reached this part of the county by the 1840s and…
For one brief stretch in the 1870s, this quiet spot was the busiest place in Fayette County. When the Texas and New Orleans Railroad reached Ledbetter in 1870, it became the first community in the county to be served by…
Just south of US 290 on FM 1291, a historical marker remembers a road far older than the town: the Gotcher Trace, cut through this country about 1828. It was opened by James Gotcher, an Alabama trail-blazer and teamster…
At the corner of US 290 and FM 1291 sits the Stuermer Store, and it has been doing business in roughly the same spot since before most Texas towns were even built. The Stuermers were German immigrants who came over in…
Out the back roads near Ledbetter lies Waldeck, a German farming community that started life under the plain-spoken name Long Prairie. Its families came to break the prairie into cropland, and like a lot of Texas-German…
Long after the railroad faded, the thing that kept Ledbetter on the map was buried under it. This corner of Fayette County sits on commercially valuable deposits of sand and gravel, and the town's quarries have shipped…
On Sunday, the fifteenth of November, nineteen eighty seven, a string of tornadoes tore across East Texas, and a little after noon one of them touched down just north of Caldwell, as people were coming home from church.…
From eighteen ninety eight to nineteen forty, Caldwell was home to Company E of the Texas National Guard, and according to the Handbook of Texas, it was the smallest town in Texas to have a full infantry company. Its…
James Louis Giddings was born in Caldwell on the tenth of April, nineteen oh nine, and he became one of the great archaeologists of the Arctic. He was the first to use tree ring dating up there, working from living…
Caldwell is named for Mathew Caldwell, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence who was nicknamed Old Paint because his whiskers were spotted. The famous cowboy song Goodbye, Old Paint isn't about him, but it…
The Caldwell Hornets get their name from a stinging insect, so here's the story of the hornet America went hunting for. In August of twenty nineteen, a nest of the world's largest hornet was found and destroyed in…
Caldwell is the Kolache Capital of Texas, thanks to the Czech families who settled Burleson County, so here's a Czech story you use every day. The word robot comes from a Czech play, R U R, by the writer Karel Čapek,…
Another Czech story, for Caldwell's Czech heritage. In the nineteen fifties, a Czech chemist named Otto Wichterle developed a clear gel that soaks up water, and he thought it would make a soft contact lens. After a…
In May of eighteen fifty seven, a Burleson County constable had a warrant for a man named John Carroway, suspected of stealing a mule from a widow, and a justice of the peace, William Barbee, rode along with him. They…
You're driving through Caldwell, Burleson County, where one of the first Presbyterian congregations in Texas took root. Organized sometime after the city was founded in 1840, this church has a long history. Early on,…
After the Civil War, no federal soldiers were stationed in Burleson County, but a company of the Texas State Police was, here in Caldwell, and it was made up almost entirely of Black officers. Their job was to protect…
About ten miles southwest of Caldwell, near where State Highway twenty one meets Farm Road six ninety six, the White family ran a two story stagecoach inn by the early eighteen sixties, called the White Inn. It sat…
East of Caldwell, toward the Brazos, is the old community of Tunis, which grew up in the eighteen hundreds as the trading center for several large plantations. It had another name, too. According to the Handbook of…
On the evening of the tenth of March, two thousand, an F Three tornado touched down south of Caldwell, around seven fifty five, and tracked east across the county for about twenty one miles, as much as eight hundred…
In nineteen thirty, two men indicted in Burleson County were arrested in Dallas, on six different warrants between them. A county constable brought them both back to Caldwell on one trip, in one car. But the sheriff,…
In nineteen thirty nine, a California artist named Suzanne Scheuer painted a mural called Indians Moving for the Caldwell post office, one of the Depression-era murals the federal government commissioned for small-town…
The Caldwell Lady Hornets have been to the state volleyball tournament seven times, and they came home champions twice, in nineteen ninety eight and in two thousand. In the two thousand title game, according to a…
South of Caldwell is Frenstat, named in eighteen eighty six after the town of Frenštát in Moravia, where most of its first families came from. By eighteen eighty nine the settlers had built Holy Rosary Catholic Church,…
Caldwell still has its little concrete city jail, a two cell calaboose built in nineteen thirty five. The local paper reported at the time that it would cost about two hundred dollars, and that the builders were using…
Oil was found in Burleson County in nineteen thirty eight, but for decades only token amounts came up, because it was locked in deep rock like the Austin Chalk. Then the energy crisis of the nineteen seventies made it…
On the eve of the Civil War, a chapter of a secret pro-slavery order, the Knights of the Golden Circle, was formed here at Caldwell, and it pushed for Texas to leave the Union. Not everyone agreed; a local legislator…
The town you're rolling through carries the name of a man who never lived here. Caldwell was laid out by surveyor George B. Erath on a site first settled by Lewis L. Chiles, west of Davidson Creek and parallel to the…
In the 1880s, large numbers of Czech immigrants poured into Burleson County and settled the land around Caldwell, founding all-Czech communities like Frenstat, New Tabor, and Sebesta, the last later renamed Snook.…
Charles Andrew Krueger was born in Caldwell in 1937, the second oldest of eight children raised here in Burleson County. He played his high school ball in Caldwell before heading to Texas A&M, where he became a two-time…
For its first decades Caldwell lived off the Old San Antonio Road, a wagon town with a famous hotel and a red-brick courthouse. Everything changed in 1880, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway pushed its main…
Caldwell has spent decades in a low-simmering rivalry over a sweet roll. The town proclaimed itself the kolache capital back in the 1980s, and in 1989 the Texas Legislature made Caldwell the official Kolache Capital of…
Local theater lore says the Caldwell High auditorium out on Highway 21 keeps an extra crew member nobody hired. Students who worked the spotlight and sound booth over the years gave the presence a name, George, and told…
If you want a kolache with real Caldwell pedigree, Jake's Bakery at 160 Highway 36 North has been pulling them out of the oven since 1956. It's a family operation, run today by Christine Campbell and her family, and…
Melvin Elliott Deutsch was born in Caldwell in 1915, a tall right-hander who stood six foot four. He pitched at the University of Texas in Austin and signed with the Boston Red Sox, but like a whole generation of…
Every kolache that comes out of a Caldwell oven is a small chemistry experiment. A real kolache isn't bread, it's an enriched dough, loaded with butter, eggs, milk, and sugar, which puts it in the same family as…
You're driving past the spot where Lewis L. Chiles, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, made his home. Born in Virginia in 1811, Chiles fought for Texas independence and later founded the city of Caldwell right…
You're cruising through Caldwell, and right here is the Reeves-Womack House. Built before <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1900</say-as> by William Reeves, a big-time merchant and banker born right here in town in…
You're driving past the site of the First United Methodist Church of Caldwell, a congregation that’s been a part of Texas history since 1840. That makes it one of the oldest Methodist churches in the entire state! Can…
You're driving through Caldwell, and right here is the site of St. Mary's Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. It all started in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1893</say-as>, when priests from nearby towns began…
You're driving past the Porter House in Caldwell, folks. This imposing farmhouse echoes the Kentucky mansions of Robert Porter's childhood. Porter came to Texas with his parents way back in 1833, eventually taking over…
You're driving through Fedor, and right here is Trinity Lutheran Church, a cornerstone of this community since 1870. It wasn't just a place of worship; it was the heart of religious, educational, and social life for the…
You're driving past Caldwell's original cemetery, established way back in 1840, the same year this town was founded. Lots three and twelve were set aside as a 'Grave Yard and Church lot' forever. Look for the final…
You're driving past the site of Caldwell's First Baptist Church, a congregation with deep roots in Texas. It all started way back on May 14, 1843, in the home of Laban Rice, with just six charter members. This frontier…
You're driving past St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Caldwell. Early priests served the Catholic community here, meeting in homes before a church was built in 1895. Four years later, this land was purchased for the…
Right here in Lexington is a small, unassuming building that becomes the center of the barbecue universe every Saturday morning. This is Snow's BBQ. And its story is the story of its pitmaster, Tootsie Tomanetz. For…
There is a lost town in this story, and it isn't Lexington. James Shaw, an Ohio surveyor and teacher who fought at San Jacinto, took his land grant here in 1837, and in 1850 the residents renamed the settlement…
The layout of Lexington is the work of two men fifty years apart. James Shaw came here in 1837 chasing a land grant, and in 1848 he opened a post office and called it String Prairie — that was this town's first name,…
You're driving past the site of the Caldwell National Bank, which opened its doors right here in Caldwell back in 1903. It wasn't just any bank; it was the first and oldest publicly owned financial institution in…
You're driving past the site of Caldwell's first organized fire department! Back on July 22nd, 1886, five years before the city was even incorporated, the Caldwell Hook & Ladder Company No. 1 was formed. Twenty-two…
You're driving through Caldwell, the historic heart of Burleson County. Back in 1848, nine local Freemasons wanted their own lodge. They petitioned the Grand Master of Texas, and by 1849, Burleson Lodge Number 59 was up…
You're driving through Burleson County, a place that sent nearly 1300 of its 18,000 residents to fight in World War II. From Pearl Harbor to the beaches of Normandy, these soldiers and sailors served around the globe.…
The buff-colored landmark anchoring the square at 100 West Buck Street is Burleson County's fifth courthouse, and the one that finally lasted. Earlier versions went up in 1846 and 1850, and a two-story brick building…
You're driving through Burleson County, a place with roots stretching back to 1825. This land was home to Tenoxtitlan, one of three Mexican forts built right here in 1830, overlooking the Brazos River crossing on El…
You're driving through Caldwell, and right here is the story of John Mitchell, a man who shaped Texas history. Born in Tennessee around <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1836</say-as>, Mitchell arrived in Texas in…
You're driving through Caldwell, and right here is the marker for Burleson County's role in the Civil War. Back on February 23rd, 1861, the citizens voted overwhelmingly for secession, 422 to 84. Just days later, the…
You're cruising through Caldwell, a town named for Mathew 'Old Paint' Caldwell, a pioneer and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Back in 1840, this spot was chosen for a new settlement right on the Old San…
You're driving through Burleson County, not far from where history was made during the Texas War for Independence. When dictator Santa Anna started revoking rights, over thirty men from this sparsely settled area didn't…
Texas whiskey-blending house and tasting room in Ledbetter, about 8 miles southwest of Round Top.
At 200 East Fawn Street, on the corner of Shaw and Fawn just off the main route through town, sits a nineteenth-century house that now holds the memory of Caldwell's founding culture. The Burleson County Czech Heritage…
You're driving past the Thomas Kraitchar, Jr. House, built back in 1891. This fine Victorian cottage was the home of a merchant who also served as Burleson County Tax Collector and a Caldwell City Alderman. Notice the…
You're driving along a road that's seen more history than most towns! This is King's Highway, one of the oldest routes in Texas. Long before cars, long before even wagons, Native Americans and Spanish explorers traveled…
You're driving through Burleson County, a place with roots stretching back to 1744 when Native Americans were farming here under Spanish missionaries. Later, in 1830, Fort Tenoxtitlan popped up to guard a crucial…
You're driving past Good Hope Cemetery, established by German and Wendish settlers in the 1880s. The earliest marked grave here is Dora Vick, from 1889. Look across the road – George Kruse, also buried here, quarried…
You're passing the Christian Church Cemetery, the final resting place for McClellan's Settlement. This land was originally part of William B. McClellan's property, who ran a store and gin right here. In <say-as…
You're driving through what was once Robertson's Colony, and right here in Tenoxtitlan, in what is now Burleson County, James Gibson Swisher made his mark. Arriving in Texas in 1833, Swisher was no stranger to conflict,…
You're driving through what is now Burleson County, but back in 1835, this was a crucial spot for Texas independence. Right here, Texas agents were raising funds to buy two iron cannons from supporters in Cincinnati,…
You're driving through Burleson County, near where the Old San Antonio Road once crossed the Brazos River. Right here, in 1830, stood Fort Tenoxtitlan. It was built by the Mexican government, part of a plan to bring…
You're driving through Central Texas, and right here, in what is now Burleson County, is Prairie Mound, the final resting place of William Isbell. Isbell fought for Texas independence, serving in the battle of San…
You're driving through Burleson County, and right here is the site of Fort Oldham. In the 1830s and 40s, Major William Oldham's homestead became a refuge for settlers during Indian alarms. It was known as 'Fort Oldham.'…
You're driving through what was once Burleson County, the birthplace of Joseph Graves Olney. Born in 1849, Olney wasn't your average rancher. By 1874, he was embroiled in a dispute that ended with him shooting a man in…
You're driving through Texas, a land where women have long been partners in hardship and work, but not in politics. For decades, the idea of woman suffrage was a radical notion, seen by many as a threat to the social…
You're driving near the Brazos River, right where a vital crossing once served travelers on the Old San Antonio Road. For generations a ferry was the only way most people could get across a river this wide, since few…
Cooks (Cookes) Point, on State Highway 21 eight miles east of Caldwell in Burleson County, is one of the oldest communities in the county. It was named for Silas L. Cooke, a surveyor who lived in the area during the…
Frenstat, also known as Friendsted, is on Big Creek and Farm Road 2774 some seven miles northwest of Somerville in southern Burleson County. Settlement in the area began in the mid-1830s. The community was founded by…
Hogg is a tiny rural community located near the junction of State Highway 21 and Farm Road 696 about ten miles southwest of Caldwell in western Burleson County. Settlement began in the area by the early 1860s when the…
Pittsbridge, also known as Evans Ferry and Pitt's Ferry, was on the west bank of the Brazos River thirteen miles northeast of Caldwell in extreme eastern Burleson County. It sprang up after the Civil War at the site of…
Chriesman is on the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway just west of State Highway 36 seven miles northwest of Caldwell in northwestern Burleson County. In the 1830s Alexander Thomson, Jr. , brought a group of…
In the mid-1880s Czech families settled in the southeastern part of Burleson County in a small pocket of Blackland Prairie soil located in a larger area generally known as Mound Prairie; there they formed an all-Czech…
Whittaker was a small farming community on the west bank of the Brazos River five miles east of Snook in southeastern Burleson County. Anglo-American settlement in the vicinity began in the early 1820s. The town itself…
You're driving past Lyons, Texas, where this building stands as a testament to faith and community. Organized before 1880 out at High Prairie, the congregation moved here when the railroad arrived. The structure you see…
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