Travel
Places in their Hearts
A weekend in Waxahachie brings encounters with a historic courthouse, lovely houses and a handful of movie sites.
IT’S FRIDAY MORNING on the Waxahachie downtown square, and the parking spots around the massive Ellis County Courthouse are mostly occupied. A smattering of foot traffic flows sporadically here and there.
This town and my boots are made for walking, and that’s what I plan to do this weekend.
The massive courthouse, one of the most photographed in Texas, stands ready for its close-up. I’m glad to oblige.
James Riely Gordon’s approach to the nine-story structure is a study in elegant yet funky detail — Romanesque Revival Style crafted from pink granite, limestone from Burnet County and Pecos red sandstone from far West Texas.
Original courthouses on the grounds — built of East Texas hardwood brought in by wagon in the late 1880s to early 1900s — burned to the ground.
Local lore maintains that a visiting mason enlisted to work on the courthouse stayed with a family while here, falling for one of the daughters, Mabel, in the process. He was reportedly so smitten that he decided to carve her face above the building’s four entrances. When she spurned his advances, the bitter mason’s portrayals of her gravitated from the beatific to garish.
Maegan Lanham | TPWD
I cross the street and enter the Ellis County Museum, where volunteer George Cole greets me. The retired federal employee and his wife, Ginger, are active in the community. The Coles are also beekeepers (Hachie Honey), and are part of a close-knit group of local beekeepers who sell their honey from their homes, in shops and at the Saturday Farmer’s Market (April to October).
The stop proves a font of information on local history.
Founder Emory W. Rogers built a log cabin here in 1846. The Shawnee Trail, part of the cattle trail from South Texas to meat packers and trains in Kansas City, ran through what is now in the center of town.
Cole explains that “white gold” — cotton — had the lead role in unprecedented prosperity after the arrival of railroads opened expansive markets in the 1870s. When the county produced 187,499 bales of cotton in 1912, the Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide reported it was the “greatest cotton producing county in the world.” The town’s rich architectural legacy and charm was a byproduct of rail access and the cotton boom. Local efforts have so far preserved some of the state’s finest concentration of late 19th and early 20th century commercial architecture, he notes.
This town of more than 43,000, located about 30 miles south of Dallas, offers community slogans galore: the Gingerbread City, after its galaxy of homes finished in a blend of Gothic stonework and carpentry using intricate, detailed wood ornamentation; the Crape Myrtle Capital of Texas, because of its prodigious supply of the blooming trees; and the Best Little Hollywood in Texas, tracing back to the 1967 filming of Bonnie and Clyde here. Sprinkle in the large heart sculptures in the downtown area that play off the 1983 locally filmed Places in the Heart, and the town radiates charm and hosts numerous annual themed festivals.
Armed with Historic Waxahachie’s Downtown Walking Tour pamphlet, I search for detail, both historic and immediate (local historical sources also offer a detailed driving tour pamphlet and the CVB website offers a movie site tour primer).
The tour starts across from the Citizens National Bank building at 200 N. Elm St. The bank, which tracks its origins to 1868, is home to a modest money museum that includes a collection of American currency — such as 1776 Philadelphia printed continental currency and a Republic of Texas bill, and checks signed by big names such as Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Maegan Lanham | TPWD
I venture into Meat Church on Main, a treasure trove of rubs and sauces and equipment. Next door, I check out a coming-attraction notice in the window of the neon-signed Texas Theater, the latest iteration of various movie house and entertainment venues on the square. Singer Miranda Lambert reportedly made her first stage appearance in her teens in a previous incarnation of the hall. Lambert honored the town in Waxahachie, a song co-written with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall.
Waxahachie, are you still on 35?
Are you still an all-night drive from Louisiana?
Waxahachie, I can be there by 4 a.m.
Looking for a long-lost friend
That’s what you’ve always been
Waxahachie
Locals purchased the theater and restored it in 2022. It has hosted a private event featuring Robert Earl Keen and shows by Jack Ingram, the Gatlin Brothers and the Bellamy Brothers in recent months.
I spend a couple of hours hoofing about. Then, my legs stretched and my head alive with new information, I make the short trip to the Dove’s Nest restaurant, featuring soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch and broader weekend evening fare.
The Dove’s Nest black-and-white checkerboard floor, which occupies what was the saddle and tack room of a former hardware store in the circa-1913 structure, is abuzz with lunch activity. I settle on the last available cup of today’s twice-baked potato soup and a BLT that celebrates all things pepper — pickled jalapeños, jalapeño bread, a slathering of peach habanero jam — and enjoy some people watching before heading to check in at my B&B.
Maegan Lanham | TPWD
My local accommodations — the English Merchant’s Inn — have a bit of history as well.
Lawyer Howard Baskin and interior designer/European tour operator Mary Baskin found Waxahachie so appealing that they twice bought the same home, constructed in 1915 by English cotton merchant James Wright Harrison. They first moved from the Dallas area in the 1980s. Howard commuted to downtown Dallas, and they raised a family here before moving back to Dallas in 1995.
The people who bought their home converted it into a B&B, which they operated for about 15 years until the wife died and her grief-stricken widower lost interest in it.
“Somebody sent me the real estate listing that our old house was for sale,” Howard says. “I showed it to Mary, and she said, ‘Let’s do it, let’s get into the bed & breakfast business.’”
Mary redesigned and outfitted the interior in a manner befitting its original owner, the English merchant. My room is upstairs, in a corner off a common room that includes a cupboard lined with fine china cups and saucers laid out for morning coffee. The well-appointed, poster bed-equipped room has a balcony that looks out on the front yard.
The next morning, I rise and head to White Rhino Coffee, using my English Merchant’s Inn voucher toward a bagel and coffee that I take my time eating on a bench under the crape myrtle trees in the 33-acre Getzendaner Memorial Park.
I venture to the Waxahachie Creek Bike and Hike Trail, a concrete trail that runs 3.75 miles past a historical cemetery, parallels the town, crosses the creek on the Rogers Street Bridge (which, according to its historical marker, was made in Ohio and shipped by rail to Waxahachie) and ends in the massive Lion’s Park.
When I return to Getzendaner, I pass the octagonal, 1902-constructed Chautauqua Auditorium, an open-air issues forum listed on the National Register of Historical Buildings and Sites, and Richards Park, a baseball field, before crossing back into town. Richards Park, I learn, is named after major-league manager and native son Paul Richards and was home to three major-league teams for spring training in the early 20th century.
I keep with the British connection by lunching at the 20-year-old College Street Pub, a Texas-style British place (burgers, wings and taco salad are also on the menu). And, no, there is no connection to English Merchant’s Inn — founder Wayne Strickland’s parents are from England. I pass on the kidney pie and nosh on fish and chips. I enjoy the food, but an enormous portrait of Winston Churchill that seems to be staring at me spooks me a little.
The day is starting to draw long, and I return to the English Merchant’s Inn to rest and clean up.
Courtesy English Merchants Inn
Paul Ayers
I later drive out Howard Road, past a rodeo complex, to Spring Park, which fronts the 656-acre Lake Waxahachie, to read while waiting for the sun to set. The lake’s clear water is home to a plentiful population of largemouth bass, white bass, blue catfish, channel catfish and crappie.
The sunset does not disappoint. I return to the Merchant’s Inn by way of Atkin’s Seafood on Main for a delightful dinner of crabcake, shrimp and sauteed vegetables. The seafood offerings are extremely fresh.
I check out the next morning, heading out on South Rogers Street past the twin turrets that announce the grounds of the Scarborough Renaissance Festival, the long-running annual medieval-style festival, which occurs April-May.
I once again understand why so many here keep these places in their hearts.
Dallas writer John H. Ostdick first visited Waxahachie in 1975, when its population was less than 15,000
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