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1-2-3 Farm to Market roads; stop & smell the roses -- a sister thread

Dennis, your post really hits on one of the things I love about this game (and the FM roads themselves). Passing through all these old town, I always try to imagine what they must have looked like in their heyday. I always try to look up the town's history on Handbook of Texas Online: Link

I also love seeing courthouse photos from central/west tx. It seems the courthouses out there are so much prettier. I grew up in Lufkin, and Angelina Co used to have a beautiful courthouse that burned long ago. The current one looks like an early 60's department store. Even Nacogdoches, The Oldest Town in Texas (TM), has a brand new, butt-ugly courthouse :thpt:

Yes there are some ugly ones out there--the one in Van Horn looks like suburban house. I understand some burnt down or were damaged, but you have to wonder what some people considered progress in the past. There is one courthouse out west that was beautiful and sometime in the 60s it was "updated" to look like a glass and marble office building. I'llhave to find it.
 
Why would you want to replace this?

NuecesCountyCourthouseCorpusChristiTXDoT1939.jpg


with this?

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and let this rot?

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or remodel this

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into this?

ScurryCountyCourthouseSnyderTexas1972Remodeled806TJnsn3.jpg


or remodel this

BrownCountyCourthousePreRemodel1900sTOPtb.jpg


into this?

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or take this

MortonTXCochranCountyCourthouseTOPtb.jpg


and make this out of it?

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The original

GainesCountyCourthouseTXDoT1939.jpg


The remodel

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It just seems like people went crazy in the 50s and 60s
 
I was updating the game site and came across a photo I hadn't noticed before:

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We're going to have to have an intervention for Dennis. He won't even let them finish the road!


:duck:
 
I spent today riding the area I grew up in, its amazing how much your perspective changes in 40 years. I noticed things today that I just blew by when I was 18 and tearing up these roads.

BlancoCountyCourthouseJohnsonCity.jpg


I stopped in Johnson City and snapped a pic of the courthouse. This is the second one, the first is in Blanco, but Johnson City got the county seat in a special election in 1890, only four years after the one in Blanco was built.

BurnetCountycourthouseBurnet.jpg


My second stop was in Burnet, I didn't even know it was the county seat when I was growing up and going to Inks Lake. Its not as old or ornate as some, but it does have some charm.

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Third stop was Lampasas, I grew up 16 miles from here between Lampasas and Copperas Cove. I went to HS in the Cove, but we used to shop in Lampasas. There used to be a JC Penney and Winns 5 an 10 on the square.

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This was Izoro. One of my friends had an aunt who lived just down the road from this Texaco. I remember buying soft drinks and candy here.

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I don't remember it being a post office.

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This is all that's left of Slater, well this and the cemetary. This was the school, I don't know when it was built, but it looked like this when I was a kid in the 60s.

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Part of the downspouts are still there and I think it had part of a roof the last time I saw it.

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The next stop was Gatesville, Coryell County seat. Gatesville was our main rival in high school and I spent a lot of time on FM116 in a school bus!

I met an elderly gentleman while I was photographing the courthouse and he was kind enough to provide a little background information and direct me to a couple of neat pieces of the past.

CoryellCountyCourthouseGatesville8.jpg


He told me about these owls. There is only one and its on the right side (when exiting) of the east entrance of the courthouse. He said his grandather told him the Scottish masons who built the courthouse put one there on all the courthouses they built and he thought they also built the one in Comanche county. I'll have to check that out.

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These are all that's left of what used to be common in most towns in Texas.

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Here's a closer look. These used to be in front of all the buildings in downtown. He said there was a strap that ran down the back of the horse and connected to the wagon harness, they would disconnect the strap from the harness and attach it to the rock.

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The old jail. Prisoners flooded the jail in the 1950s by clogging up the drains and turning on the water. Wonder what they wanted besides out?

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This bridge was built in 1904 and was the only way across the Leon River until the 1940s when Hwy 84 was finished. This was the main drag in Gatesville and the courthouse faces Leon street which looks odd today since Hwy 84 goes in back of the courthouse.

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The next stop was Clifton. This old bridge was built in 1884 and served as the main way across the Bosque River until 1941 when TX 6 was built.

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Bosque county courthouse in Meridian. I remember schools from Clifton, Meridian, Ogletree, Jonesboro, and Evant being at track meets when I was in Junior high.

The next two county seats were under repair so I didn't take any pictures in Hamilton or Goldthwaite. I just realized I've mispronounced Goldthwaite my whole life. Everyone pronounced it Goldwaithe when I was growing up. Same for Pedernales, everyone pronounced it Perdernales.

HamiltonCounty.jpg


The cows were enjoying the weather.

SanSabaCountyCourthouseSanSaba.jpg


The San Saba county courthouse. We played the Armadillos in football and basketball when I was in Junior high, but by the time I got in to HS we had outgrown them and moved up to 3A.

SanSaba.jpg


They still back the 'Dillos.

LlanoCountyCourthouseLlano.jpg


Finally, Llano and the courthouse.

LlanoTheater.jpg


Something you don't see much any more--a open movie theater on the square...

LlanoSquqareNorth.jpg


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along with some other stuff.

I need to go through some of the other towns I remember like Topsey, Rumley and Pidcoke.
 
I took one last ride before I have to go back to work next week.

Brownwood was home to a major AT&SF terminal and maintenance yard when I was growing up. It was also home to a pretty good football coach, Gordon Wood, whose teams won state chanpionships in 1960, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1978, and 1981.

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They are restoring their old theater downtown. More and more of these are being saved.

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It's also a county seat and has a pretty nice courthouse, but its not on a square, but at the east end of downtown.

BrownCountyCourthouseBrownwoodTX.jpg


Then it was on to Baird, another railroad town and home to this fine Texas and Pacific depot. This was unusual since most depot's are single story structures.

Picture008-3.jpg


And county seat for Callahan county. This is a pretty plain courthouse.

CallahanCountyCourthouseBairdTX4.jpg


I ran across this church on FM 604 north of Abilene. It was built on land owned by S. M. Swenson, who underwrote Swedish Immigration to Texas in the 1800s. A building of this magnitude took a lot of a community's meager resources in the 1800s.

BethelLutheranChurch8.jpg


The next stop was Stamford. I thought this was a county seat, but it turned out the building on the square was the post office. Sorry, no pic.

Another old theater.

Stamford2.jpg


and a very large Methodist Church of unusual design. I wish I could look at a building and determine its architectural style.

Picture045-1.jpg


On the way home I passed two unusual ghost towns. Crewes prospered around the turn of the century and had this neat gym built by the WPA in the 1940.

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The old schoolhouse. These two buildings are all that's left of the town.

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Talpa was just as dead, but had a few more buildings standing. This used to be a garage I expect.

Talpa3.jpg


This building was probably a drugstore by the looks of these signs.

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A few more derelect buildings.

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Talpa8.jpg


It was a great day for a ride, the evening seemed to stretch on for hours as the sun slowly went down and the shadows lengthened. It makes the August heat worth living in Texas.
 
While I was out road sign hunting today I stopped at Moore's store in Ben Wheeler for one of the gourmet burgers. As pulled up I spotted several old military vehicles parked out front. I got to talk briefly to one of the drivers and he said they were a club that collected and restored old army vehicles. They were having a meeting and decided to pile into some of them and go to lunch.

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That's cool Craig. I wonder what the parts availability is for those old vehicles.
 
I would think that for the WW II vintage WC 62 Dodge truck in the last picture you might end up making some parts. The jeep on the left in the first picture is also WW II vintage but there are a lot of after market suppliers for parts on it. The other jeep in the first picture is 60s vintage and was also sold as a civilian CJ model so parts would be easy to come by. The M151 Mutt with the M2 machine gun mounted on it in the second picture was never very widely sold to the civilian market so parts might be hard to come by for it.
 
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