Just when you think you can live the rest of your life without taking another road trip on Texas highways, you find out differently. I have been adventuring out on new roads—to me anyway—and I don’t mean metaphorically. Although, come to think of it, there’s some of that, too. My son is engaged to a perfectly wonderful young woman from College Station so the trek down there has become our newest well-traveled path.
I’m way too familiar with Texas’s Interstate 35 corridor and could drive Interstates 20 or 10 or US 67/90 in my sleep, but put me on Interstate 45 and its arteries and tributaries, and I begin fighting to unfold and fold the ancient paper map while opening Google Maps on my phone. (Forget the car’s GPS and I offer Toll Road 49 outside Tyler as evidence. It will not show up on your GPS, even as you barrel up toward Interstate 20.)
Here lies George Washington Toby, 1817-1850. A veteran of the Army of the Republic of Texas, he is buried in the Burns Cemetery, Leon County. Photo by Jim Little.
Being a sixth generation Texan—my husband thinks it’s elitist to point that out—I have finally connected with part of Texas where my ancestors settled in the 1820s. Last fall, I wanted to visit a family cemetery at what the records say is at the intersection of the OSR and Navasota R. Deciphered, that means Old San Antonio Road and Navasota River. But my visit was not to be. The cemetery is on snake-ridden private property, and a tree had just fallen across the gate. I am thankful to cousins with better connections and thick boots who have visited and provided photos.
All this traveling in central east Texas has put me in new environs, such as Groesbeck, Mexia, and Madisonville, where one of my great-grandfathers knew Sam Houston, or that’s the family story anyway. As we drove through Mexia for the first time, my husband remarked how often Mexia is mispronounced. And I’m sure we were both guilty at one time, but years of watching Waco TV set us straight.
In Far West Texas, I was not unfamiliar with hard-to-pronounce Texas towns, and the superior feeling you get when someone trips up on Iraan or Study Butte. Or Balmorhea and Marathon. I see that smug smile on Austinites’ faces when they hear people stumble over Buda. East Texans: I’ll see your Palestine and raise you Burnet and Coahoma.
Back on Texas highways, I have a suggestion for the state Commissioner of Agriculture, who I assume, like everyone in the food industry, wants us to feel connected to our food sources: Put up signs explaining what’s growing on the farmland beside the roads. My father was always good at pointing out, say, a field of melons, but in this urban-centric world, few of us recognize anything but the most obvious such as cotton or sunflowers. And I’m curious. Is that the same crop I see growing on Groesbeck-area fields also sprouting near Lamesa? Looks similar. But how can that possibly be?
Trees in winter, northeastern Oklahoma. I didn’t think my readers needed to see another mesquite tree. Photo by the author.
For a real education, I recommend seeing our highways through the eyes of a non-Texan. When I first brought my college roommate to West Texas, we rolled into Big Lake around midnight. A good ways into the moonlit trip, she had started bugging me about “the bushes” on the roadside. I had no idea what she was talking about. In the light of the next day, she pointed and asked again.
“Those are mesquite trees,” I said.
“Those aren’t trees,” said she-who-hails-from-wooded-and-forested northeastern Oklahoma. And I suppose to her, they weren’t. In the ensuing years, she’s learned a lot about Texas highways, especially East Texas where she clued us in on the unmapped Toll Road 49.
Love that new toll road 49. It’s cut 15 minutes off our trip to visit family. And did you notice Collins Street Bakery on I-20? I think it’s one exit west. Yum!
Yes, we do love 49. There are lots of new toll roads around Austin, too, haven’t explored those yet! Thanks for reading!
Been everywhere, huh? How about Hwy 349 from Dryden to Sheffield? Let’s sit here on your porch a spell and I’ll tell you an interesting, and slightly humorous, story about traveling that road. It’s a long story; you got time?
Some thirty odd years ago when my wife and I married, she had never been any farther west than Gatesville, Texas. I know some of the stories I told her about Big Lake and west Texas seemed far-fetched, especially the ones about my 200 mile a day bus trip to the El Paso Natural oil camp in the northwest end of the county, or the three and four hundred mile trips to football games you guys in the band endured. I suspect that she thought I might be interjecting some fiction into my description of that part of Texas.
As soon as it became possible, I planned a trip to show her what Texas looks like when you cross the Leon River in Gatesville and continue west on down Hwy 84. We did that, then drove on to Big Lake with an occasional comment from her about the countryside, the cactus, the caliche, the ‘smell’, and an occasional, “What’s that?” We spent the night in Big Lake with my sister and her family, then got an early start the next morning on the road to Balmorhea and Ft. Davis. We visited the fort ruins, took the McDonald Observatory loop, visited Indian Lodge, finished the loop and headed to Marfa. That night we looked for the Marfa Lights, journeyed on to Alpine the next day, and passed thru miles of nothing on our wandering way over to Marathon, Sanderson, and into Dryden. My wife was driving and she really wasn’t sure if we were in Texas or on the moon. I’m sure that now with the oil activity going on in that part of Texas, there is a considerable amount of traffic in that area, but thirty years ago traffic was pretty thin; like maybe one car every 50 miles.
We had about used up our time so I decided to go north into Sheffield on our way back to my sister’s home in Big Lake. We left Dryden and I told her it was about 50 miles to Sheffield. She drove and drove and drove and finally asked how far to the next town. I had been watching the odometer as well as my watch and told her that we weren’t halfway yet. So, she drove and drove and drove some more. We had not seen a house, a person, a cow, horse, not even a mailbox: maybe a few buzzards flying above us. After about another 30 minutes, she asked again if we were almost there. I’m sure she must have thought we were really lost and that I was lying to her when I told her we still had a ways to go.
My wife is an avid reader. She loves historical novels, especially about Texas. She had just finished one a week or so back that told about a family that lived up near Bronte that traveled in their wagon to a party down near Sonora. The party lasted a week. About the time we arrived in Sheffield, without ever meeting a car, seeing a person, a house or anything living (except the buzzards), she remarked that she now understood why parties back in the days of the ‘old west’ lasted so long. She said it took three days to get there, one day to party, and three days to get back home.
The trip was a very real experience for her. She had no idea that you could travel fifty miles in Texas and not see even one car.
We have been back to Big Lake a number of times since then and she now knows what to expect along the way. BUT, she will never get used to that Reagan County/Big Lake oil field smell. Come to think of it—-does anyone?
I don’t remember ever being to Sheffield. I know my dad talked about it a lot, as a place with power issues. Was there an oil or gas field there? Way south of there, I think, is Pandale, where Mother lived on a ranch and taught a couple of kids in the 1930s. When she described it, I always thought that sounded like the worst place to ever be. Thanks for writing your road trip story! Great tale.