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Italy, Texas

Everything Italy is known for

3 songs mention this city

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Music in Italy

Songs About Italy

Texas Twister
Little Feat
8%
"It's ladies night in Italy"
La Reina del Sur
Los Tigres Del Norte
6%
"otros que vive en Italia"
Those Feat’ll Steer Ya Wrong Sometimes
Little Feat
3%
"Now we're going to London, Liverpool, Italy, Paris, Egypt, Dublin, Frisco, Waco"

Artists From Italy

No artists from Italy in the database yet.

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Italy

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Italy.

Interstate 35 45 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Trinity River 11 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Brazos River 43 songs

History of Italy

The Black City Hall on The Hill RoadyGoat

Under segregation, Italy's Black neighborhood, known locally as The Hill and centered on Hardeman, Williams, and Harris streets and parts of Poplar and Clark, went without running water, sewers, paved streets, and adequate streetlights that other parts of town already had. Rather than simply petition and wait, community leaders organized what became the Italy Colored Council and sat down with the all-white city government to press for basic services. In the council's first election, residents chose John Henry Farrow as mayor, Nelton Tarrant as secretary, and five aldermen. A March 1951 feature in Ebony magazine called Farrow Texas' First Negro Mayor and reported that roughly 95 percent of Italy's Black residents owned their homes and 60 percent paid the poll tax required to vote. In 1953 the town built a dedicated Colored City Hall, its dedication photographed by Dallas photographer R. C. Hickman. The small building grew obsolete around 1965 as segregation weakened and the municipal governments were unified. Longtime resident and preservationist Elmerine Allen Bell later worked to protect the structure and win it a Texas historical marker, documenting plainly that this parallel government was never ceremonial, it existed because one part of town had been denied infrastructure available everywhere else. (Source: Texas Historical Commission; Ebony, March 1951.)

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The 900-Foot Tornado Down Main Street RoadyGoat

If Italy's downtown looks like a patchwork of older masonry, altered storefronts, and newer construction rather than an intact nineteenth-century row, this is largely why. At about 7:20 p.m. on March 26, 1961, a tornado entered Italy from the southwest and ground northeast straight through the main business district. Mayor Robert Windham put the losses at 500,000 dollars, an enormous sum for a town of roughly 1,200 people. A contemporary Associated Press report stated bluntly that no business on Main Street escaped damage. Ennis patrolman A. E. Chapman, who helped with rescue and cleanup, estimated the tornado's path at 900 feet wide, running the length of town from one end to the other. W. Lee Coulston was inside an Italy cafe with about a dozen other people when it hit. They took shelter as the roof was peeled away and dishes flew through the building, and remarkably, everyone in the cafe survived without injury. Rescue vehicles came from as far as Dallas. Stand on this stretch of downtown and you're standing in the storm's old path. (Source: Associated Press archives.)

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The Town That Was Almost Called Egypt RoadyGoat

The little Blackland Prairie town you're passing through, the one locals pronounce IT-lee, came within a postmaster's whim of being named something else entirely. The first building on this site went up in 1879, raised by the Aycock brothers and serving all at once as their home, a grocery store, and a post office. When residents sat down to name the place, they argued over a few candidates. One faction pushed for Houston Creek, citing a local tradition that Sam Houston had once camped beside the creek running through the settlement, though no firm contemporary record confirms the visit. Others liked Egypt. Postal officials rejected Houston Creek outright, worried it would be confused with another Texas locality. So in 1880 the Waxahachie postmaster, Gabriel J. Penn, made the call: Italy, because he thought the climate here resembled that of sunny Italy. The town was never founded by Italian immigrants or named for an Italian landowner. It owes its name to one man's optimistic comparison between Central Texas weather and the Mediterranean, a judgment that sounds awfully generous come a Texas August. (Source: Texas State Historical Association.)

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Italy Colored City Hall

1950

Frustrated by poor infrastructure, residents of an African American community in Italy called “the Hill” rallied to get a hearing with the city council in the mid-twentieth century. A group of African American men met in a small building on Poplar Street to discuss their impending meeting with the city council. The meeting between them and the all-white city council led to the establishment of the Italy Colored City Council around 1950. Elections for both city councils were held at the same time, and all citizens could vote on both ballots. In the first election for the Colored City Council, the people elected John Henry Farrow (1891-1959) as mayor, Nelton Tarrant (1913-1989) as secretary, and James “Jim” Hardeman (1885-1953), Matthew Sweatt (1882-1969), Walter Smith (1893-1961), Edd Lee Lewis (1900-1967), and William Costonia Jennings (1920-2009) as aldermen. A march 1951 issue of Ebony magazine featured the men in the article, “Texas’ first Negro Mayor.” Most, if not all, of the men elected to the council were descendants of enslaved people in Ellis County, illustrating the continued endurance of African Americans in Ellis County. The small wooden building with the sign “Colored City Hall” on the front was built in 1953 on Williams Street. The building served as a meeting place for African American council members and represented hope and progress for the Italy African American community. Despite the history of racial violence and segregation in Ellis County, the Italy Colored City Hall stands as a symbol of African American self-determination and political activism. (2017)

Historical Marker →

Shawnee Cattle Trail

1850

In use from approximately 1850 to 1873, the Shawnee Cattle Trail was the first north-south cattle trail and reached the farthest east of the four great cattle-driving Trails from Texas to the northern markets. These included the Shawnee, Chisholm, Great Western and Goodnight-Loving trails. The Shawnee Trail passed through western Ellis County crossing the Brazos River at Waco, the Trinity River at Dallas and the Red River at Preston en route to Missouri. The trail was well-suited for cattle drives as Ellis County is situated within the Blackland Prairie. The prairie transitioned from gently rolling terrain to level ground in the central corridor, which provided an easy pathway for cattle transport. In the 19th century, the prairie provided an abundance of forage and water, which ensured safe passage for their journey north. Waxahachie, the Ellis County seat, was created in 1850 and was a supply stop on the trail. However, by 1855, an epidemic of Texas fever, also called tick fever, began to pass from unaffected Texas cattle to northern cattle. The fever ravaged cattle and enraged local stockmen, but the drives continued. Between 1861 and 1865, the cattle drives were all but discontinued due to the outbreak of the Civil War and laws that regulated infected Texas cattle. Famed cattle baron Joseph Geiting McCoy first used the Chisholm Trail in 1867, which followed the Shawnee Trail through Waco but then travelled west through Fort Worth. Although the Chisholm trail eventually became the major route for Texas cattle, drives up the Shawnee trail continued through 1873.

Historical Marker → · 4.3 mi away

Italy, TX

1879

Italy is at the junction of U.S. Highway 77 and State Highway 34, on the Blackland Prairie forty-five miles south of Dallas in southwest Ellis County. Although a few families had settled in the vicinity by 1860, the Aycock brothers built the first house on the present site of the town in 1879 and used it as a dwelling, grocery store, and post office. That year residents debated what to name the settlement. Some favored Houston Creek, because Sam Houston reportedly camped on the creek that flowed through town. Others wanted the name Egypt or Italy. The postal department rejected the first choice because of possible confusion with Houston Creek in Harris County. Gabriel J. Penn, postmaster in Waxahachie, named the town Italy in 1880 because the climate was much like that found in "sunny Italy." The population was 500 in 1890. Settlers found the land good for cotton, corn, sweet potatoes, and wheat. The greatest impetus for growth occurred in December 1890, when the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad arrived, and the town became a market center for the surrounding area. The next year the first newspaper was published, and Italy was officially incorporated. Besides trade and agriculture, residents were attracted to Italy because of its many schools and churches. Italy Institute, Southwestern Normal College, and Hope Institute educated the youth of the community and the surrounding counties. By 1894 more than 350 students were attending classes. Six churches held Sunday services by 1900. In March 1925 the Italy Independent School District was established. The population grew steadily in the early twentieth century, rising from 1,061 in 1900 to 1,500 in 1925. The International-Great Northern Railroad reached the town in 1901. In 1913 the first cream and crimson interurbans opened service between Dallas and Waco on what became the Texas Electric Railway. Italy profited from this service, particularly when the Texas Electric made the town an exchange point for freight with the Katy. Cotton ruled the economy by the 1920s, when Italy had five gins, a compress, and a cottonseed oil mill. The main road through Italy, a graded dirt road stretching from Dallas to Waco, was known as the King of Trails Highway. Although the local ice plant produced some electricity for the town, most electricity was brought in from Waco by transmission towers built by the Texas Electric. The Great Depression started a downward trend for Italy that lasted for thirty-five years. In 1930 the town had 1,230 residents and forty-five businesses. In 1960 the population was 1,183, and in 1970 the businesses numbered twenty. Throughout the period agricultural operations expanded and displaced much of the rural population. An upswing began in 1975, when milo and corn production increased. The town had become a bedroom community for the Dallas-Fort Worth area by 1980, when the population was 1,306. The town sponsors an Italian festival each June and supports the S. M. Dunlap Memorial Library. In 1990 the population was 1,699. In 2000 the population reached 1,993.

Tsha Handbook →

Meharg, Emma Grigsby

1925

Emma Grigsby Meharg, the first Texas woman secretary of state, was born on August 14, 1873, at Lynnville, Tennessee, the daughter of Jasper N. and Mary Amanda (Calvert) Grigsby. In 1883 the family moved to Italy, Texas, where she attended public school. She graduated from Southwestern Normal College in 1895. She married Samuel W. Meharg, a native of Anniston, Alabama, on June 24, 1902, and went as a bride to Plainview, Texas, where her husband became principal of the public school. Mrs. Meharg also taught school both in Italy and Plainview. The couple had two children. Emma Meharg was appointed secretary of state by Governor Miriam A. Ferguson and served during 1925 and 1926. In her official biennial report she made a number of recommendations for changes in laws relating to corporations, securities, administration of the secretary of state 's office, and the institution of a civil service system for state employees. Subsequent legislatures enacted into law many of her proposals. She strongly recommended that the office of the secretary of state be made an elective rather than appointive office because the duties of the office were of a more public nature than at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of 1876 . She also advocated adoption of a constitutional amendment to raise the salary of the secretary of state from the $2,000 per year set by the Constitution of 1876. During her administration as secretary of state many historical records were taken out of storage, restored, and processed for easy reference and exhibit. Mrs. Meharg was a leader in civic, cultural, church, and political affairs. She served on the Plainview board of school trustees and on the board of regents of Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) from 1932 to 1937. She died at Plainview on September 4, 1937, and was buried there.

Tsha Handbook →

Tarrant, General Edward H.

1796

Veteran of the War of 1812, member of the Texas Congress and a courageous indian fighter. Born in North Carolina, 1796, died in Parker County, Texas, August 2, 1858. Reburied in Ellis County near his former plantation, 1859. His remains removed to the county named in his honor in 1928 and reinterred in Fort Worth.

Historical Marker →

Watson, Benjamin William

1862

Benjamin William Abner Joseph John Frederick Watson, landowner, farmer, and Confederate officer, was born on June 9, 1828, in Virginia. He was the son of Richard Price Watson and Elizabeth (McGeeHee) Watson. Watson came to Ellis County in the 1850s with his father and assisted in the establishment of a plantation on Chambers Creek a few miles northeast of Italy, Texas. Upon his father's death in 1859, Watson took charge of the plantation and by 1860 owned thirty slaves. On May 15, 1850, he married Mary E. Scott in Harrison, Texas. Mary died in 1851. Watson married Margaret Ruth Overstreet in 1854 and the couple produced six children—four daughters and two sons. In 1862 Watson helped recruit and organize the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment. He enlisted as a captain on March 16, 1862, at Chambers Creek and was elected lieutenant colonel on April 10, 1862. He participated in the Marmaduke Raid into Missouri on April 1, 1863, as well as the Red River campaign . Watson quickly gained recognition for his gallantry and coolness in action. In the summer of 1864 Watson succeeded Nathaniel M. Burford as commander of the Nineteenth Cavalry. At the close of the war, Watson was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general. After the war, he returned to his plantation in Barnham, Ellis County. He died in Waxahachie on September 11, 1873. In 1999 the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker at the Watson Family Cemetery.

Tsha Handbook →

Everything Near Italy

550 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Italy, TX · Tsha Handbook

    Italy is at the junction of U.S. Highway 77 and State Highway 34, on the Blackland Prairie forty-five miles south of Dallas in southwest Ellis County. Although a few families had settled in the vicinity by 1860, the…

  • Meharg, Emma Grigsby · Tsha Handbook

    Emma Grigsby Meharg, the first Texas woman secretary of state, was born on August 14, 1873, at Lynnville, Tennessee, the daughter of Jasper N. and Mary Amanda (Calvert) Grigsby. In 1883 the family moved to Italy, Texas,…

  • Watson, Benjamin William · Tsha Handbook

    Benjamin William Abner Joseph John Frederick Watson, landowner, farmer, and Confederate officer, was born on June 9, 1828, in Virginia. He was the son of Richard Price Watson and Elizabeth (McGeeHee) Watson. Watson came…

  • Hardeman, John Marr · 0.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the marker for John Marr Hardeman, a soldier who fought for Texas independence in 1836. He was born way back in Tennessee in 1804, but he made his life here in Texas. Hardeman lived a long life,…

  • The Black City Hall on The Hill · 0.2 mi

    Under segregation, Italy's Black neighborhood, known locally as The Hill and centered on Hardeman, Williams, and Harris streets and parts of Poplar and Clark, went without running water, sewers, paved streets, and…

  • The 900-Foot Tornado Down Main Street · 0.2 mi

    If Italy's downtown looks like a patchwork of older masonry, altered storefronts, and newer construction rather than an intact nineteenth-century row, this is largely why. At about 7:20 p.m. on March 26, 1961, a tornado…

  • Art the Great, Baseball's Loudest Showman · 0.2 mi

    Italy produced one of professional baseball's all-time characters, and he never let anyone forget it. Arthur Shires, born here, billed himself as Art the Great, dressed extravagantly, boxed professionally, turned up in…

  • The Town That Was Almost Called Egypt · 0.2 mi

    The little Blackland Prairie town you're passing through, the one locals pronounce IT-lee, came within a postmaster's whim of being named something else entirely. The first building on this site went up in 1879, raised…

  • Where Steam Trains, Electric Cars, and Cotton Wagons Crossed · 0.2 mi

    This compact downtown was once a genuine crossroads of freight, the kind of place where four different eras of transportation briefly overlapped. The Katy, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, reached Italy in December…

  • The Queen of the West's Italy Connection · 0.2 mi

    The golden age of singing cowboys reaches surprisingly far into this farming town. Dale Evans, the actress, singer, and songwriter remembered as the Queen of the West, was born in Uvalde, but her parents farmed here at…

  • Italy, TX · 0.2 mi

    Once a small settlement in Ellis County, Texas, the town of Italy has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Founded in 1879 by settlers who found the land ideal for growing cotton, corn, sweet potatoes, and wheat, Italy…

  • Tarrant, General Edward H. · 0.2 mi · Historical Marker

    Veteran of the War of 1812, member of the Texas Congress and a courageous indian fighter. Born in North Carolina, 1796, died in Parker County, Texas, August 2, 1858. Reburied in Ellis County near his former plantation,…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • The Marker for a Grave That Isn't There · 0.2 mi

    In the traffic circle where State Highway 34 meets Couch Street stands a 1936 granite marker for General Edward H. Tarrant, the man Tarrant County is named for, and it commemorates a grave that no longer holds him.…

  • The Cafe That Became the Town's Scrapbook · 0.2 mi

    For three decades the most beloved place to eat in Italy was Doris Mitchell's Uptown Cafe, and it was as much a community institution as a restaurant. Mitchell started with a small burger operation near I-35E before…

  • Italy - Because the Founder Said So · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Italy is a small town in Ellis County, just south of Dallas off Interstate 35. It was platted in 1879 along the railroad. The founder, a man named John Tucker, had recently traveled in Europe, and he decided that the…

  • Does It Actually Feel Like Italy · 0.6 mi

    Postmaster Penn named this place for a climate he imagined, so it's worth asking, does Italy, Texas actually feel like Italy? Here's the reality, and it is a lesson in climate science. The parts of Italy people picture,…

  • All Roads Lead to Rome · 0.6 mi

    You're rolling through Italy, Texas, a small town on the Blackland Prairie named on a postmaster's whim, not the boot-shaped country across the ocean. But since the name begs the obvious question, let's actually talk…

  • The Boot That Became One Nation · 0.6 mi

    You're parked in Italy, Texas, but the name keeps pulling us overseas, so let's stay with Italy the country for one more beat, because the second act is just as big. Fast forward past Rome and you land in the…

  • The Ghost of the Super Collider · 0.6 mi

    In the late 1980s, the quiet farmland of Ellis County was set to become the site of one of the most ambitious science projects in human history: the Superconducting Super Collider. It was a particle accelerator with a…

  • Engineering the Ghost Tunnel · 0.6 mi

    The biggest science project you've never seen lies buried in the Ellis County fields up the road, around Waxahachie. The Superconducting Super Collider required a tunnel 54 miles around - an immense engineering…

  • A Town Named for a Sky · 0.6 mi

    Here's a Texas town wearing the name of an entire country, and the reason is pure weather envy. Italy, in Ellis County, was named in eighteen eighty by Gabriel J. Penn, the postmaster over in Waxahachie, about fifteen…

  • It Almost Was Egypt · 0.6 mi

    Before Italy won the name, there was an argument. Early residents floated three choices, and each opens its own thread. One camp wanted Houston Creek, after the stream running through town, because the story goes that…

  • One Borrowed Name, a Whole World · 0.6 mi

    So think about how much one small town name can carry. Pull on Italy, Texas, and the thread unspools fast. It starts with a Waxahachie postmaster in eighteen eighty who thought the sky looked Mediterranean, even though…

  • Italy Colored City Hall · 0.6 mi · Historical Marker

    Frustrated by poor infrastructure, residents of an African American community in Italy called “the Hill” rallied to get a hearing with the city council in the mid-twentieth century. A group of African…

  • Cotton, Katy, and the Interurban · 0.6 mi

    Back on solid Texas ground, the name may be borrowed but the history here is homegrown, and it runs on cotton and steel rail. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, the old Katy, reached Italy in December of eighteen…

  • The Festival That Folds Back · 0.6 mi

    Here's a nice loop the town closes on purpose. Italy, Texas leans into its borrowed name and throws an Italian festival every June. Think about that for a second. A place named on a postmaster's whim, by a man who very…

  • The Railroad That Built the Town · 0.6 mi

    Every building, every street in downtown Italy owes its existence to a sound you can no longer hear: the whistle of a steam locomotive. For its first decade, Italy was just a tiny farm hamlet. The game-changer arrived…

  • Queen of the West's Texas Roots · 0.6 mi

    Picture a very small girl in a very small Texas town, in a family running a hardware and general store. For Italy, Texas, that girl was Frances Smith - born Lucille Wood Smith down in Uvalde in 1912, renamed while she…

  • Italy, TX · 0.6 mi

    The town of Italy, Texas, was named after the European country by a settler who had visited Italy. This unique naming choice sets the town apart and adds a touch of international flair to this small Texas community.

  • Bruco the Caterpillar and the Concrete Domes of I-35E · 1.1 mi

    Beside Interstate 35E sits one of the strangest engineering campuses in Texas: the Monolithic Dome Research Park at 177 Dome Park Place, home of Monolithic Constructors and the Monolithic Dome Institute. Its most…

  • Site of The Plantation Home of Edward H. Tarrant · 3.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a significant Texas frontier home. Edward H. Tarrant, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a renowned Indian fighter, built his house here in 1845. He was a statesman of vision and commanded…

  • Chambers' Creek · 3.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving by Chambers' Creek. This area was first granted land by the Mexican government in 1834 to Thomas Jefferson Chambers, a name you'll see on maps all over Texas. But before it was Chambers' Creek, settlers…

  • Shawnee Cattle Trail · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    In use from approximately 1850 to 1873, the Shawnee Cattle Trail was the first north-south cattle trail and reached the farthest east of the four great cattle-driving Trails from Texas to the northern markets. These…

  • The Sims Family of Ellis County · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Italy, Texas, and the Sims family story unfolds. These weren't just settlers; they were the bedrock of early Ellis County development. In 1851, Nicholas P. Sims and his family established their…

  • The Day the Sky Turned Black · 5.1 mi

    As you roll into Milford, it's easy to miss how much history sits along this quiet ridge just south of Mill Creek. The town was laid out back in 1854, and a settler named William Hudson gave it its name after a little…

  • Milford, TX · 5.1 mi

    In 2013, Milford received media attention due to a Chevron gas pipeline explosion and resulting town evacuation. The explosion occurred when a 10-inch Chevron Corporation liquefied petroleum gas pipeline was punctured…

  • The College on the Prairie · 5.1 mi

    In the early 1900s, Milford was more than just a cotton town; it was a college town. The town put up ten acres and twenty-five thousand dollars, and in September 1902 the Presbyterian Synod of Texas opened the Texas…

  • Named for a factory town near Boston · 5.1 mi

    The spot where you're driving through Milford now is where the town has always been. Men from Cherokee County came into the Mill Creek valley in the early 1850s and bought land at fifty cents an acre. In 1854 Arvin…

  • McDaniel, James · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the resting place of James McDaniel, a veteran of the Texas Revolution. Born in Alabama in 1810, McDaniel came to Texas and served in the army in 1836, the very year Texas won its independence. He…

  • Jordan, Thomas J. · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the final resting place of Thomas J. Jordan, a soldier who fought for Texas's independence in 1836. Born in Tennessee in 1808, Jordan lived a long life, passing away in 1880. His wife, Stacy Choate…

  • Milford Cemetery · 5.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Milford Cemetery, a final resting place for generations of Ellis County pioneers. It all started back in 1853 when W.R. Hudson and J.M. Higgins settled here, laying out the townsite of Milford just a…

  • First Baptist Church of Milford · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Milford, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church, chartered way back in 1855. It started with just eleven members meeting at a doctor's home. The first pastor, Reverend J.M. Perry,…

  • Milford Presbyterian Church · 5.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Milford, and just off the road stands Milford Presbyterian Church, organized way back in June 1855. It started with 16 members and was one of only four Presbyterian churches within a massive…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Avalon (Avalon) · 5.7 mi

    Avalon (Avalon, TX) placed on the 2A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Josh Novak (0.571 avg, 1 HR).

  • Avalon Missionary Baptist Church · 5.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Avalon Missionary Baptist Church, but this congregation started out as Mt. Nebo Baptist Church way back on July 6, 1879. Sixteen charter members, including families like the Martins, the…

  • Saint James A.M.E. Church · 5.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Milford, and right here stands Saint James A.M.E. Church, Milford's oldest African-American church and building. It all started back in 1883, organized by Reverend Joshua Goins, Sr. Services first…

  • Carnohan, Harry Peyton · 5.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, maybe near Milford, where artist Harry Carnohan got his start. After studying art in Dallas and Chicago, he spent over four years in Europe, soaking up modernist ideas. Back in…

  • Milford, TX · 5.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Milford, a community that owes its start to a bit of foresight and a bargain. Back in the 1850s, settlers bought land for just fifty cents an acre. Then, in 1854, men like William R. Hudson laid…

  • Two Hundred Forty Six · 6.7 mi

    On a cold night near Frost, Texas, this one is close to home, so it is told plainly. In February of two thousand twenty one, a snow and ice storm swept Texas, overwhelmed the state's power grid, and left millions of…

  • Nash Public School · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Forreston, and right here is the site of the Nash Public School. Back in 1873, pioneer Thomas Alexander Williams brought his family to Garden Valley and immediately set about establishing a school…

  • Bethel Cemetery · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Ellis County, near where Bethel Methodist Church was established. In 1852, N.P. Sims donated land for a church and burial ground. The cemetery you're passing has over 400 graves, including those…

  • Bethel Methodist Church · 7.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bethel Methodist Church, a place with roots stretching back to 1853. It all started under a simple brush arbor at High Springs. Services moved around a bit, first to a log schoolhouse, then another…

  • The Cold Wave That Killed · 8.4 mi

    Out on a dark road near Frost, Texas, here is a cold wave so severe that many of its record lows still stand, and it was deadly. From late January to the middle of February, eighteen ninety nine, arctic air poured south…

  • Greathouse Community, Church, and Cemetery · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Ellis County, passing the site of the old Greathouse community. It all started back in 1848 when Archibald and Mary Greathouse settled here, giving their name to the creek and the community. The…

  • Frost Baptist Church · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Frost, Texas, and right here is where the Frost Baptist Church has stood since 1890. Led by Reverend H. A. Conway, about twenty charter members started this congregation. They began with services…

  • Frost Methodist Church · 8.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Frost, Texas, and right here is the Frost Methodist Church, a survivor of a devastating tornado. This congregation started way back in the 1860s, over two miles south at a place called Cross…

  • Jefferson Dunaway Home · 8.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Jefferson Dunaway Home, built in 1855. Jefferson Madison Dunaway built this home for his bride, Sarah Ann Brack. The stone for the chimneys was gathered right from the creek banks nearby, and…

  • Why Orchards Spray Water in a Freeze · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: spraying water during a freeze sounds backward, but water releases latent heat as it changes from liquid to ice. If irrigation continues at the correct rate, the…

  • Ice Without Liquid Water · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: true frost forms when water vapor deposits directly as ice on a surface at or below freezing. Frozen dew takes a different route: liquid dew forms first, then freezes…

  • Frost When the Forecast Says Thirty-Six · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: frost can appear even when the official low remains above thirty-two degrees because the reported air temperature is measured several feet above ground. On a clear,…

  • The Dates Farmers Circle · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: the first autumn frost can end production for tender crops, while the last spring frost helps determine when planting becomes reasonably safe. These are probabilities…

  • White Frost and Black Frost · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: a damaging freeze does not need visible white crystals. In dry air, plant tissue can freeze without enough surface moisture to make frost, leaving foliage darkened…

  • Ground That Lifts a Road · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: frost heave is more than water already in soil expanding when it freezes. In frost-susceptible soils, liquid water migrates toward the freezing front and builds…

  • Frozen for Two Years · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: permafrost is ground that remains at or below freezing for at least two consecutive years. The definition is about temperature, so permafrost does not have to be a…

  • How Frost-Free Freezers Cheat Winter · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: a frost-free refrigerator periodically warms its evaporator coil just enough to melt accumulated ice, then drains the water away. Fans circulate cold air, so food…

  • Flowers Made of Ice · 8.7 mi

    You're in Frost, Texas, so here's the frost tangent: the phrase frost flower describes more than one delicate phenomenon. On certain plants during the first hard freezes, water pushed through cracks in a stem can freeze…

  • Frost, TX · 8.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Frost, Texas, a town that knows the raw power of nature firsthand. Back in 1930, this community was struck by a devastating tornado. The storm tore through, killing twenty-two people and injuring…

  • Frost · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Frost, Texas, a town that sprung up in 1887 when the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas Railroad came through. Before that, this area was known as Cross Roads, but businesses and people moved…

  • Wesley Chapel Methodist Church · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Wesley Chapel Methodist Church, a pillar of the rural Pelham community. Established in 1877 by Reverend Austin Lockhart, this congregation began its journey in a humble log schoolhouse.…

  • Frost, Samuel R. · 8.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Navarro County, and right here is the town of Frost, named for Samuel R. Frost. Frost was a lawyer, judge, and state representative, but what's interesting is why he gave up farming. In 1867,…

  • Mertens Baptist Church · 8.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing Mertens Baptist Church, a testament to faith and community that's been serving Hill County for over a century. It all started on June 14, 1884, when a small group of Baptists, led by W. J. Priddy, D. P.…

  • Mertens, TX · 8.8 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Mertens, a town born from the railroad. Back in 1887, the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas line was building west, and right here, a station popped up. It was named Mertens, for the wife of the…

  • Hammel's Branch · 8.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through what used to be Hammel's Branch, a Texas town born from a German family's settlement. In 1876, the John Henry Himmel family arrived, and seven years later, their daughter Emma became the first…

  • The Tornado That Leveled Frost — And the Blues Song It Became · 9.0 mi

    On May sixth, nineteen thirty, an F-four tornado tore through Frost, Texas with winds exceeding two hundred sixty miles per hour. In two to three minutes, the entire town was leveled. At least twenty-two people were…

  • I Am Just Going Outside · 9.6 mi

    Since you're in Frost, Texas, here is the darkest thing frost ever did to a man. In January of nineteen twelve, five men led by the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole, only to find a tent left…

  • Site of Fort Smith · 9.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Fort Smith, established around 1846. This was one of a chain of forts built to protect settlers from Indian raids, stretching all the way from the Colorado River to the Red River. The…

  • Richland Cemetery · 10.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Richland Cemetery, a final resting place for generations of Texans. The Thomas family settled here in 1873, and by 1883, they deeded land for this very spot. The oldest grave belongs to Mary E.…

  • Brandon Mill, Old · 10.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Old Brandon Mill, one of the first grist mills in Hill County! Built in 1868 by Dr. James T. Harrington, the same man who founded the town of Brandon, this mill was crucial for…

  • The Engineering That Built a Town · 11.0 mi

    The very existence of Mertens is a story of 19th-century engineering and technology. In the 1880s, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, or 'Cotton Belt Route,' laid the tracks that created this town. This wasn't just a…

  • Mertens, TX · 11.0 mi

    In the late 1880s, Mertens, Texas, began to take shape as the first settlers arrived. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway was constructed through the area, connecting Corsicana to Hillsboro. This development led to the…

  • Shot in the Vault · 11.1 mi

    At about ten minutes after noon on the tenth of May, nineteen thirty nine, the president of the bank in Maypearl, Willis Wilemon, was alone when a young man walked in with a pistol. The man had driven through town the…

  • Pure Country Came to Maypearl · 11.1 mi

    In the spring of nineteen ninety two, George Strait's movie Pure Country came to Maypearl. Filming began that May, and the town is thanked by name in the film's closing credits. Strait plays Dusty Chandler, a…

  • Shotgun on Main Street · 11.1 mi

    In nineteen twenty seven, a farmer named Olin Mercer had married the divorced wife of a man named Grover Tirey, and there was bad blood. The day before the shooting, Tirey's cousin, Bobbie Maxwell, drew a pistol on…

  • The Night the Brick Block Burned · 11.1 mi

    On a Wednesday night in December of nineteen fifteen, a small fire broke out in the office of a dry goods store on Maypearl's Main Street, twenty minutes after the manager and some friends had left. It spread into…

  • The Golden Spike at Maypearl · 11.1 mi

    On the twenty ninth of April, nineteen oh three, Maypearl had its big day. The last act completing the International and Great Northern Railroad's line to Fort Worth was performed right here. The railroad's officials…

  • Five Miles From a Black Hole · 11.1 mi

    Here's a Maypearl story about something that never happened. In November of nineteen eighty eight, Ellis County was picked for the Superconducting Super Collider, a fifty four mile ring of tunnel circling Waxahachie,…

  • Who Was May Pearl? · 11.1 mi

    Before it was Maypearl, this place was called Eyrie, for an eagle's nest. The Handbook of Texas says the railroad renamed it for the daughters of two of its officials. But older Texas place-name books tell it another…

  • The Panthers' Run · 11.1 mi

    Maypearl's best basketball season came in nineteen ninety five. The Panthers went thirty three and four and made it to the Class Two A state tournament in Austin, where they beat Springlake-Earth sixty one to fifty…

  • The Last Resident of Boz · 11.1 mi

    Just east of Maypearl was the little community of Boz. Its Bethel Methodist Church was the set for several scenes in the movie Places in the Heart. Then, in the late nineteen eighties, the federal government chose Ellis…

  • The Pearl That Got Fried for Supper · 11.1 mi

    Maypearl was named for people, not for pearls, but here's a pearl story anyway. In the spring of eighteen fifty seven, a shoemaker named David Howell, who lived on the edge of Paterson, New Jersey, brought home a mess…

  • The Button Maker and the Mussel's Revenge · 11.1 mi

    Before plastic, pearl buttons were made from shell, and that's a story too. John Boepple ran a button shop in Ottensen, Germany, and when a box of American river mussel shells reached him, he saw what beautiful buttons…

  • There's No Such Animal as a Black Panther · 11.1 mi

    The Maypearl Panthers are named for a big cat, so here's the truth about black panthers: there's no such species. A black panther is a leopard or a jaguar with a trait called melanism that makes its coat look black, and…

  • Maypearl's Vice Presidential Candidate · 11.1 mi

    Pat Choate was born in Maypearl on the twenty seventh of April, nineteen forty one, and went to school in Red Oak. He studied economics at the University of Texas at Arlington and earned his doctorate at the University…

  • The Bluesman From Maypearl · 11.1 mi

    Ray Reed, a bluesman from Maypearl, played the clubs of Fort Worth in the nineteen sixties with his sister, Lady Pearl, and her guitarist husband, Clarence Pierce. Then he stepped away from music for years. Late in life…

  • Sixty Cents · 11.1 mi

    Late in December of nineteen sixteen, burglars broke into the Maypearl post office using tools they had taken from the railroad section house. They drilled into the door of the safe and set off a charge of high…

  • Brindley, Paul · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving near Maypearl, Texas, the birthplace of Paul Brindley, a pathologist and professor who earned the nickname "Uncle Paul" from his students. He was the last of seven children and went on to earn his M.D.…

  • The Town That Used to Be Gossip · 11.1 mi

    Up the road from Maypearl is Venus, a town that used to be called Gossip. By the middle of the eighteen nineties it was one of the most prosperous towns in Johnson County, with its own college. But by the early nineteen…

  • The Orphans Home at Files · 11.1 mi

    Not far from Maypearl is Files Valley, where, in nineteen oh six, the Southwestern Home and School for Orphans was founded. It lasted into the nineteen eighties, when it was known as the Presbyterian Children's Home.

  • Engineering a Town on the Prairie · 11.5 mi

    Maypearl exists because a railroad needed a stop here, and the name proves it. When the International-Great Northern laid its line across this stretch of prairie, the engineers were solving ordinary problems: keep the…

  • Staff Sgt. Felix M. Conde-Falcón Memorial Highway · 11.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Honors Staff Sgt. Felix M. Conde-Falcón, Puerto Rican-born Army NCO killed Vietnam 1969 after assaulting four enemy bunkers solo. Awarded Medal of Honor in 2014 'Valor 24' review correcting WWII/Korea/Vietnam-era…

  • Southwestern Presbyterian Home and School for Orphans · 11.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Southwestern Presbyterian Home and School for Orphans in Itasca. It all started in Dallas with a few church women caring for four children whose father had died. That act of kindness…

  • Blooming Grove · 11.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Blooming Grove, Texas, a town with a name that sounds like a wildflower meadow. But this place started out as a simple village called Gradyville back in the 1860s, named after two brothers who…

  • McKinney-Aday Farm House · 11.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the McKinney-Aday Farm House near Waxahachie. Henry McKinney, a former Texas Ranger, moved to Ellis County and bought farmland in 1903. By 1913, he'd hired a builder to construct this impressive…

  • The Marker That Tells the Whole Story · 11.8 mi

    At about 101 North Fordyce Street stands the Blooming Grove historical marker, and it's the cleanest place to start understanding this town. In a few paragraphs of cast aluminum, it lays out the arc that shaped…

  • A Steakhouse Built on the Cattle Economy · 11.8 mi

    If you want a meal that actually fits this place, the Rocking RD Cattle Company Restaurant at 104 South Fordyce Street is the strongest pick downtown. There's no continuously operating restaurant left from the railroad…

  • Blooming Grove, TX · 11.8 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Navarro County, and right here is Blooming Grove. This town has a unique origin story. After the Civil War, a store opened up, and when it was time for a post office in 1871, the citizens gathered…

  • The Nuclear-Box Treasure Hunt of 1956 · 11.9 mi

    On a farm between Blooming Grove and Frost, near Wolf Creek, the spring of 1956 turned into one of the strangest spectacles in Navarro County history. The story went that stagecoach robbers had buried silver or gold…

  • From a Blooming Grove Farmhouse to the Temptations · 11.9 mi

    One of the most unexpected names tied to this small Navarro County town belongs to Motown. Cornelius Grant was raised by his grandmother in Blooming Grove, where he taught himself guitar, and he carried that into the…

  • Blooming Grove, TX · 11.9 mi

    The name Blooming Grove carries a unique story, a blend of personal and natural history. It was a portmanteau of Dr. John Marion Davis' son's name, Price Blum Davis, and a grove of trees near Gradyville, which was the…

  • The Town That Walked North to the Railroad · 11.9 mi

    The community you're passing through started about a mile from here as a general store run by R. J. Grady and Sam Andrews after the Civil War, and everybody just called it Gradyville. A post office opened in 1871, and…

  • How a Cotton Boomtown Came Apart in a Few Years · 11.9 mi

    At its peak this was a humming cotton town. Blooming Grove ran four cotton gins, two gristmills, two lumberyards, two hotels, independent cotton buyers, banks, restaurants, churches, and a community fair, and the…

  • The Week Baseball-Size Hail Closed the Whole District · 11.9 mi

    On the night of September 24, 2023, a violent thunderstorm parked over Blooming Grove and dropped hail measured at roughly 2.75 inches across, about the size of a baseball. Roofs, windows, vehicles, and school buildings…

  • The Cemetery Where the Town Got Its Name · 11.9 mi

    Southeast of the modern town lies White Church Cemetery, and it holds a piece of Blooming Grove that downtown can't show you. This ground predates the railroad-era community, and tradition says it was here, at a…

  • Maypearl Cemetery · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Maypearl, Texas. This cemetery started in 1907 when landowner William P. Wilemon died and was buried on his farm. His widow Minnie later sold four acres to create a community burial ground, a…

  • Blooming Grove United Methodist Church · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Blooming Grove, where a church with a long history stands. It all started in 1869, when Richard and Susan Gowan donated land for a Methodist church and cemetery. A simple white chapel went up,…

  • Oak Branch Cemetery · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Oak Branch Cemetery, a place born from a pioneer's generosity. Back in 1875, William M. Claunch donated twenty acres of his ranch for a Methodist Church, a campground, and this very cemetery. The…

  • The Church That Began at White Church and Followed the Town · 12.0 mi

    The Blooming Grove United Methodist Church at 300 South Kerr Street carries a longer history than its 1913 building suggests. The congregation started as a Methodist mission back in 1869 at White Church, the older…

  • University Training School - Central Texas College · 12.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Blooming Grove, and right here, back in 1899, the Methodists wanted to get a jump on education. They opened a college prep school that, by 1900, became the University Training School. It even…

  • Boren Cemetery · 12.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Boren Cemetery, a final resting place for folks who settled this part of Texas. Michael Boren and his wife Mary Ann arrived here from Kentucky in 1847, bringing their children and enslaved people…

  • Blooming Grove Schools · 12.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Blooming Grove, a town that's moved and rebuilt its schools more times than you might expect. It all started in 1869, when Richard Gowan donated land for a small building that served as church,…

  • Tubb, Ernest Dale · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Ellis County, not far from where Ernest Tubb, the legendary "Gold Chain Troubador," was born in Crisp back in 1914. He learned guitar on his own, got a break from Jimmie Rodgers' widow, and landed…

  • The Cotton Town That Tried to Build a College · 12.2 mi

    It's hard to picture now, but for about a decade this small cotton town tried to make itself an educational center for Central Texas. In 1899 local leaders started a preparatory school, and the next year it became the…

  • Texas National Research Laboratory Commission · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Ellis County, near the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where a massive scientific endeavor once promised to put Texas on the map. Back in 1985, the Texas National Research Laboratory Commission was…

  • Burnham, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Burnham (Burnam) was on the Ascensión Gonsaba land grant six miles southwest of Ennis in southeastern Ellis County. In 1861 the House family received a portion of this grant in exchange for a slave called John. Edeline…

  • Lyman's Wagontrain · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    The five-day siege of Capt. Wyllys Lyman's wagontrain, sometimes known as the battle of the Upper Washita, was the longest and one of the most publicized engagements of the Red River War . During Col. Nelson A. Miles's…

  • Smith, Thomas Ingles · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Thomas I. (often J.) Smith, Texas Ranger and Indian agent, was born on May 30, 1800, in Montgomery, Virginia, the son of Bird B. Smith and Rhoda Ingles. He reportedly experienced his first combat as a young boy during…

  • Telico, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Telico is on Farm Road 1181 five miles east of Ennis in east central Ellis County. The site that became Telico was settled before 1856 and, as it lay near the banks of the Trinity River, was originally called Trinity…

  • Nineteenth Texas Cavalry · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, the heart of where the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry was formed during the Civil War. Fear of the draft pushed many men to join this mounted regiment in March of 1862, hoping to keep their…

  • Young, Harvey W. · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Ellis County, a place that saw a lot of action in the 19th century. Harvey W. Young arrived here in 1842 and quickly became a key figure. He served as the sheriff of Ellis County in…

  • Forreston, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Forreston is on U.S. Highway 77 and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas tracks eight miles south of Waxahachie in south central Ellis County. At first the site was called Howe's Settlement, after William R. Howe, who arrived…

  • Trumbull, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Trumbull is near Interstate Highway 45 and U.S. Highway 75 ten miles north of Ennis in northeastern Ellis County. The area that became Trumbull was settled in 1872, when the Houston and Texas Central Railway established…

  • Beall, James Andrew [Jack] · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Ellis County, near Mountain Peak, the birthplace of James Andrew Beall. Born in 1866, Beall became a lawyer and a politician, serving in both the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress. But his…

  • Auburn, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Auburn was sixteen miles southwest of Waxahachie in western Ellis County. Some of its first settlers were from a caravan of 105 covered wagons that originated in Arkansas in 1852. They were attracted by the water supply…

  • Avalon, TX (Ellis County) · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Avalon is an agricultural community located at State Highway 34 and Farm Road 55 about fourteen miles southeast of Waxahachie in southern Ellis County. Settlers began to arrive in the area along Chambers Creek in the…

  • Byrd, TX (Ellis County) · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Byrd was on Farm Road 985 near Clear Creek sixteen miles southeast of Waxahachie and eight miles southwest of Ennis in Ellis County. The original settlers to the Byrd area included H. L. Parker, Dan Faulk, Rube Warren,…

  • Oak, TX · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    The Oak community, also known as Oak Branch, was on the Oak Branch of Chambers Creek three miles northeast of Maypearl in the southwest corner of Ellis County. Oak was once a prosperous farming community with a cotton…

  • Elm Branch Cemetery · 12.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Elm Branch Cemetery, a quiet resting place for generations of Ellis County settlers. The earliest marked burial here is Martha R. Tidwell, who died way back on November 28, 1877. This rural community…

  • The Town That Followed the Railroad · 12.4 mi

    Bardwell began in the 1880s around a cotton gin built by a man named John Bardwell on the Blackland Prairie. But the town you would find today is not quite where it started. When a railroad was routed through Ellis…

  • Burgers and Barbecue on Sycamore Street · 12.4 mi

    A town of a few hundred people does not get many restaurants, so the couple Bardwell has, it earns. Out on Sycamore Street you will find the Bardwell Ice House, a local spot slinging burgers, wings, and cheesesteaks…

  • Bardwell, TX · 12.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Ellis County, not far from Waxahachie, and you're passing through Bardwell. This community got its start in the early 1880s, not with a town square, but with a cotton gin built by John W.…

  • Herring, Benjamin Oscar · 12.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Ellis County, and right here in Bardwell, Texas, is where Benjamin Oscar Herring was born in 1889. He became a Baptist pastor and a university administrator, but his biggest impact might be at…

  • Richardson Cemetery · 12.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Reagor Springs, a place named for a family whose descendants are buried right here. John I. Richardson, a surveyor and Confederate veteran, and his wife Ann Elizabeth, are interred in this…

  • The Boll Weevil Line · 12.5 mi

    The town of Bardwell owes its very existence to a railroad nicknamed 'The Boll Weevil Line.' In 1907, the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway laid its tracks right through here, and the town as you see it was born…

  • The Railway That Engineered a Town · 12.5 mi

    The grid of streets you’re driving through in Bardwell isn’t accidental; it’s a direct result of a major engineering project from 1907: the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway. Building a railroad isn't just about laying…

  • Bardwell, TX · 12.5 mi

    In the early 1880s, John W. Bardwell built a cotton gin one mile south of the present-day location, marking the beginning of the community. A school opened in 1892, and a post office was established in 1893. The town's…

  • An F4 hits a prosperous cotton town · 13.0 mi

    As you roll through Frost, picture the afternoon of May 6, 1930, when the sky over this prosperous cotton town turned a terrifying, unnatural color in the middle of the day. Shortly after four o'clock, a massive…

  • Anatomy of a Twister · 13.0 mi

    The 1930 Frost tornado wasn't just a tragedy; it was a terrifying display of physics. It touched down near Bynum on May 6th and tore thirty-five miles northeast through three counties, killing forty-one people — at…

  • Frost, TX · 13.0 mi

    Frost's most famous connection is to the man it was named for, Samuel R. Frost, a local politician and railroad attorney who was a well-known figure in Navarro County. When the St. Louis Southwestern Railway pushed its…

  • The Town That Moved a Mile · 13.2 mi

    As you cross the railroad tracks in Blooming Grove, know that you’re crossing the very reason the town sits right here. The original settlement, known early on as Gradyville for the man who kept the first store, grew up…

  • Why the Train Didn't Come to Town · 13.2 mi

    You might think the railroad would naturally go to an existing town, but in the 1880s, the railroad went wherever engineering and economics dictated. When the St. Louis Southwestern Railway—the Cotton Belt—pushed its…

  • Rosemont · 13.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Rosemont, a true Victorian gem in Waxahachie. Built in 1894 for a whopping twelve thousand dollars, this 20-room mansion was a statement. Notice the wide verandas, the ten fireplaces with carved oak…

  • Jackson Cemetery · 13.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Ellis County, heading past a piece of early Texas history. Dr. Henry L. Jackson, a doctor from North Carolina, was moving west with his wife Nancy in 1852 when tragedy struck. After Nancy's death,…

  • The Courthouse and the Sculptor's Revenge · 13.7 mi

    The magnificent building in the center of the square is the Ellis County Courthouse — cornerstone laid on the Fourth of July, 1895, and finished in 1897. It's a masterpiece, but the real story is in the stone. Look…

  • Catching Lightning in a Camera · 13.7 mi

    As you roll into Waxahachie, look toward the middle of the square, because you are about to see one of the most photographed landmarks in all of Texas. Rising over the downtown is the Ellis County Courthouse, a red…

  • Waxahachie, TX · 13.7 mi

    Waxahachie, a city in Ellis County, Texas, has a rich history that dates back to its founding in 1850. The city, which became the county seat, was incorporated in 1871. A pivotal moment in its development came in 1875…

  • Hollywood in the Heart of Texas · 13.7 mi

    In 1983, Hollywood came to Waxahachie, but it felt more like a homecoming. Director Robert Benton, raised right here, chose his hometown for 'Places in the Heart,' a Depression-era story about a widow fighting to keep…

  • Rogers Street Bridge · 13.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the old Rogers Street Bridge in Waxahachie. Built in 1889, this truss bridge was a crucial piece of infrastructure, connecting early settlers and a vital North-South commercial route.…

  • Aurburn Cemetery · 13.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Ellis County, near the site of what was once the thriving farming community of Auburn. Pioneer settlers used this cemetery as early as 1856, and it was later part of land deeded for a school and…

  • Bessie Coleman · 13.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the neighborhood where Bessie Coleman grew up and went to school, right here in Waxahachie. Born in 1892, Coleman dreamed of flying, but no American flight school would teach a black woman. So, she…

  • Thomas C. Neel · 13.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Ennis, where the town's name has roots right here. Thomas C. Neel, a Georgia native, settled near here in 1855 with his wife, Willia. Their cotton and wheat plantation became known as Will's Town,…

  • The Pink-Granite Castle on the Square · 13.9 mi

    Look up. The building dominating the square is widely called one of the finest county courthouses in Texas, and it's the reason people drive here. Architect James Riely Gordon designed it in the Richardsonian Romanesque…

  • The Faces of Mabel: A Courthouse Love Story That Probably Isn't True · 13.9 mi

    Walk the corners of the courthouse and watch the carved faces change. Near one entrance a young woman's face is serene and lovely; turn the corner and she sours, twists, and finally curdles into something demonic. The…

  • Oriented to the four compass points · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Ellis County Courthouse. Ellis County's first courthouse was made of cedar logs and built here in 1850. A second courthouse was built on this square in 1853 and a third in 1874. In 1894 Virginia…

  • Ellis County Courthouse · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    Ellis County's first courthouse was made of cedar logs and built here in 1850. A second courthouse was built on this square in 1853 and a third in 1874. In 1894 Virginia native and San Antonio architect James Riely…

  • Ellis County Courthouse · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie, a stunning example of Romanesque Revival architecture. Built between 1895 and 1897, it's constructed from Texas granite, limestone, and marble. Look closely…

  • Paul Richards Park · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Waxahachie's historic ballpark, known by many names over the years, including Jungle Park and Woodman Park. Back in 1914, locals dreamed of attracting a major league team, and by 1916,…

  • The Lodge Guillotine on Franklin Street · 13.9 mi

    Just off the courthouse square, at two oh nine West Franklin, there's a three-story cast-iron-front building from nineteen oh two. Bruce and Julie Webb started the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie in nineteen eighty seven.…

  • The Bullet Hole in the Sheriff's Door · 13.9 mi

    On the first floor of the Ellis County Courthouse, there's a door with a bullet hole in it. That room used to be the sheriff's office. Here's the story they tell. Sometime in the nineteen twenties, a deputy brought a…

  • Joshua Chapel, A.M.E. Church · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Joshua Chapel, an important landmark in Waxahachie's African American community. Organized in 1876, this congregation was named for its first pastor, the Reverend Joshua Goins, a man who started many…

  • Waxahachie Cemetery · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Waxahachie Cemetery. The first burial here was on New Year's Day, 1852, for Silas Killough, a pioneer merchant and one of the town's founders. The land itself was donated back in 1858 by Emory…

  • Hancock Building · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Hancock Building in Waxahachie, a Victorian commercial structure built in 1890. Look for the decorative brickwork and cast iron columns on the facade. It was purchased in 1907 by William Pitt…

  • 1889 Masonic Lodge Hall · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the 1889 Masonic Lodge Hall in Waxahachie. Look at this three-story brick building, topped with a tin cornice decorated with Masonic symbols. It was built in 1889 for Waxahachie Lodge No. 90. The…

  • Ellis County Woman's Building (Davis Hall) · 13.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Ellis County Woman's Building, also known as Davis Hall, in Waxahachie. Designed by Dallas architect Bertram C. Hill and built in 1925 and 1926, it was intended as a public park and a place for…

  • A Native-Derived Name With Uncertain Language · 14.0 mi

    You're in Waxahachie, Texas, so here's the Indigenous place-name tangent behind the name: Waxahachie shares its name with the local creek and is traditionally said to come from an Indigenous word connected with cow or…

  • North Texas Before Modern Towns · 14.0 mi

    You're in Waxahachie, Texas, so here's the Indigenous place-name tangent behind the name: North Texas was homeland, hunting country, travel corridor, and contested territory for multiple Indigenous peoples across…

  • Disease, Removal, and Living Nations · 14.0 mi

    You're in Waxahachie, Texas, so here's the Indigenous place-name tangent behind the name: European-introduced epidemics caused catastrophic population loss before many detailed written records were made. Warfare,…

  • Corn Villages and Buffalo Hunts · 14.0 mi

    You're in Waxahachie, Texas, so here's the Indigenous place-name tangent behind the name: many Southern Plains communities combined farming with seasonal hunting rather than choosing one lifestyle. Corn, beans, squash,…

  • Trade Before Highways · 14.0 mi

    You're in Waxahachie, Texas, so here's the Indigenous place-name tangent behind the name: Indigenous trade networks moved salt, food, horses, hides, pottery, shell, pigments, stone, metal goods, and information across…

  • Bessie Coleman - Aviator · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    Bessie Coleman was born in a one-room cabin in Atlanta, Texas in 1892 and grew up picking cotton in the fields outside Waxahachie. She walked four miles to a one-room schoolhouse for Black children, and every year the…

  • The Real Marshal Behind Places in the Heart · 14.0 mi

    Places in the Heart opens with a sheriff called away from Sunday dinner and shot dead. Robert Benton didn't make that up. His great-grandfather, John H. Spalding, was Waxahachie's city marshal. On Sunday, December…

  • Waxahachie - Gingerbread City · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    Waxahachie still has a large number of ornate Victorian homes, a legacy of the cotton boom that made Ellis County one of the wealthiest in the state during the late 1800s. The decorative woodwork on the porches and…

  • The Fireproof Hotel With Spring Water and Spring Training · 14.0 mi

    On the northeast corner of the courthouse square stands the four-story Rogers Hotel, built in 1912 on the very lot where town founder Emory Rogers raised his log cabin back in 1847. Designed by architect C.D. Hill, it…

  • Through the Wall of the Rotary Jail · 14.0 mi

    The old Ellis County jail, at the corner of Rogers and Water Streets, was finished in eighteen eighty eight with a rotary cage, put in to keep prisoners from escaping. The cage was a cylinder of cells that turned inside…

  • Ellis County Jail, Old · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Old Ellis County Jail in Waxahachie, completed in 1888. This impressive brick and stone building housed the sheriff's family on the first floor and twenty cells upstairs. Look for the distinctive…

  • Bonnie and Clyde Started in Waxahachie · 14.0 mi

    The movie Bonnie and Clyde opens with Faye Dunaway glancing out a bedroom window. She's Bonnie, and she's watching Warren Beatty, as Clyde, nose around her mother's car. A North Texas film-location blog says the house…

  • The Marfa Song About Waxahachie · 14.0 mi

    Yes, there really is a Miranda Lambert song called Waxahachie. She wrote it with two other Texans, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, the same trio that wrote her award-winning song Tin Man. Near the end of two thousand…

  • Oak Lawn School · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the former site of Oak Lawn School, a beacon for Black education in Waxahachie. It started in 1887 as an elementary school, moving to this very location in 1893. By the turn of the century, high…

  • Thompson, Dr. D.G., Homesite of · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the homesite of Dr. D.G. Thompson, a prominent physician right here in Waxahachie. After studying medicine in Kentucky and training in the East, Dr. Thompson married Rufa Jones in 1882. He built this…

  • Hawkins House · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Hawkins House in Waxahachie. This home started as a simple, one-story structure built in 1851 by Benjamin Franklin Hawkins, a key figure in organizing Ellis County as part of the Peters Colony.…

  • First Presbyterian Church Building · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waxahachie, and right here is the First Presbyterian Church building. Organized way back in 1871 by Reverend J.A. Smiley with just 16 members, this congregation has seen a few buildings. The first…

  • Grange Hall Cemetery · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Grange Hall Cemetery, established around 1872 to serve the Cryer Creek farming community. It likely got its name from a local chapter of The Grange farmers' organization. Among those resting here are…

  • The Marble Library a Dead Man Paid For · 14.1 mi

    At 515 West Main stands a small marble temple of a building that owes its existence to a will. Nicholas P. Sims, a Virginia native who settled in Ellis County in the 1830s and grew rich as a farmer and investor, died in…

  • Site of a Confederate Powder Mill · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a Confederate powder mill, erected back in 1862 by William Rowen. Just a year later, on April 29th, 1863, a massive explosion rocked this spot. The blast destroyed the mill and tragically…

  • Hawkins, Eddy P., Home · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising past the Eddy P. Hawkins home in Waxahachie. Hawkins, from a pioneer Ellis County family, built the first two rooms of this place right after he married Netta Carson in 1878. Fast forward to 1900, and he…

  • Mahoney - Thompson House · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Mahoney-Thompson House in Waxahachie, a solid piece of local history. Built between 1902 and 1904 by Dennis Mahoney, a contractor who first came to Texas to build Trinity University. He laid the…

  • N.P. Sims Library and Lyceum · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waxahachie, and right here in Getzendaner Park, you're passing a building that was a pioneer among privately endowed Texas libraries. Captain W.H. Getzendaner donated this park back in 1895. But…

  • Strickland - Sawyer House · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waxahachie, and right here is a house with a story of Texas industry. In 1888, a widow built a home on this spot. Just one year later, it was bought by J.F. Strickland. He was a big deal—a…

  • The Field of Dreams That Reinvented Drag Racing · 14.2 mi

    Out on U.S. 287 south of town sits a piece of motorsports that changed its entire sport. The Texas Motorplex, at 7500 U.S. Highway 287, was built in 1986 by former funny-car driver Billy Meyer, and it was the first…

  • How the Purple Heart Trail Grew Across Texas · 14.2 mi

    This highway is part of the Purple Heart Trail, a symbolic trail that runs through all fifty states to honor those killed or wounded in combat while serving in the armed forces. In Texas it started with one road. In two…

  • Running Deer and the Spirit of Madness · 14.2 mi

    There's another wampus cat legend, and in this one, she's the hero. It's told today as a Cherokee story from the mountains of North Carolina. The legend says a demon called the Ew'ah, the spirit of madness, was…

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