Small Texas Towns

I have a larger treatise about small-town-USA that I'm getting to later on this blog, and our trip from Austin to the Texas panhandle region helped bring about those ideas. Corrie's family's farm is about seven hours away from Austin, and the drive is along the US HWY routes and not interstate highways. Passing through small towns means you have to slow down, watch for lights and pedestrians, since the highway is also the town's main street.

Being from California, you get used to the large population centers, (SF-San Jose-Sac triangle and LA-San Diego-San Bernadino triangle) where almost 85% of the state's vast population lives, surrounded by swaths of deserted wilderness.

Texas certainly has large cities (Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, San Antonio), but there are tiny towns popping up in every direction. Along the route we took to the Farm, there was a town every fifteen miles it seemed. In Texas, each county has a town that serves as the county seat, and probably a few decades ago, the county seats were the towns with the power--and the courthouse. County justice and county law was meted out at the county courthouse. We passed through so many towns that had signage that said they contained populations under two-thousand, and the ones with courthouses were noticeable.

If you want to talk about county seats, small town-Texas, and courthouses, you have to begin with Anson. Anson is the county seat for Jackson County. Jackson County is named for Anson Jackson. Creative, huh? The real funny thing is that Abilene, a city with over 100k people, is also mostly in Jackson County (quite far away, as it is) and tipped the power scales away from Anson many years ago. As a driver, when you approach Anson, you get a sense of the courthouse's importance to the area, since the driving route is just a paved horse and cart route. Check out the view as you approach: (you may have to magnify it...)



The road splits right where I take the next picture, and lets on the other side. This gives you a nice picture of the courthouse itself.



Since the power was drained from Anson, the endemic decay and rot of the small-town USA swept through, and allowed the following scene.



Seriously, I could have stuck around that lot and snapped pictures all day. The main downtown street, with original names still painted on storefronts, faded but still visible, obstructed now by signs, tells the tale.

Another town is Hamlin. Hamlin, to the best of my knowledge is not a county seat, did have this interesting "sculpture" going on. I pulled over specifically to get a picture of it.



The town that the Harrison Farm is technically a part of is called Clarendon, and Clarendon is the county seat for Donnelly County. Here's a picture of their courthouse. To get family and land oriented documents for her senior project, Corrie had to spend the better part of a day visiting the various offices and clerks inside.



Clarendon might have been a little bit bigger in its heyday or boomtime, as there were a few offshoots from the main street. This next picture is one of those. There is a push to save the Mulkey Theater. On the corner on the right and side is a hotel that, according to Corrie's Grandma June, used to have a cafe on the first floor and a dance hall on the second, before a level of rooms on the third. Now the spot is mostly just a shell, burned out and collapsed inside. Also, notice that the streets are paved with bricks, a dangerous nuisance in the rain I'm told.



The next two pictures are of the same grain silo in Clarendon, taken from different spots in town. From the first moments it rose above the Methodist church during its construction phase, this silo has been the tallest building in town, and visible from most anywhere.

To me, that in a small town in America the tallest point and the thing visible from almost anywhere should be a grain silo (and not a church spire like in many tiny European towns) is some kind of defining characteristic.

I'm not sure if that makes sense...