A year into the pandemic, I started itching to get traveling again, but it wasn’t considered safe yet, and many of the destinations we wanted to go to weren’t feasible. We decided to spend my Spring Break visiting a couple of the state parks near us, and enjoy some time outdoors. We found ourselves up in Hood County, Texas, enjoying the lake and the quaint downtown. I snapped a picture of the historic old courthouse in the town square. I didn’t know it then, but a four-year quest had just begun.
A couple of days later, we had lunch with a friend in Weatherford. “Let’s stop by their courthouse, it’s such a pretty one” I said. We drove over, parked, and I took a picture. At the time I had no intention of going to every county courthouse in the state. I just took a picture because we happened to be there.
On the way home from our state park vacation, we passed through Hillsboro and Waco. It was only a short detour off the highway to see their courthouses, plus I thought it would be nice to get an ice cream or a coffee at a cute little town square shop. We took some pictures and headed home. The next weekend, we visited a couple of the counties near Austin, where we were currently living. It was nice getting out of town and going for a short drive, when so much of the usual entertainment venues of our state were still closed.
That summer, Chris hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, and I forgot all about my courthouses for a while. But in the fall, I started thinking about them again. I thought about how I would love to show my husband, who was not a Texan, all the beautiful corners of my home state. There were probably parts of the state even I had never been to- Texas is, after all, a very big state, bigger than France or Germany in Europe, and bigger than the northeast US states combined. We used some of our fall weekends to take long drives to the piney woods of east Texas, and down to the Gulf coast of south Texas. We’d start out on a Saturday, visit two or three courthouses, stopping for coffee or ice cream, and then another one or two courthouses, and look for a local spot to eat dinner. We’d stay the night, and then pick another four or five counties to visit on the way home. It was fun to look at the different styles of courthouses, and guess which decade and which century they’d been built in.
Once I looked it up and realized that Texas has 254 county seats, each with its own county courthouse, we realized we had to get strategic with our drives. We started plotting out on the map the most efficient route to take in 8-9 courthouses in a weekend. We didn’t want to do more than that, because after a while they all start to blur together and the project would become less enjoyable. Our main goal was to see and enjoy our beautiful state. We made time for stays at nearby state parks, short hikes, and local restaurants. We took back roads and stayed at family-owned motels. We visited as many Texas Monthly BBQ Award winners as we could. We learned that “courthouse tourism” is a thing- many small, dying towns have started revitalizing their town squares with weekend farmers’ markets, movies on the lawn, food fairs, and holiday light shows. As people moved out of dense urban centers during the pandemic, many of them looked to smaller counties in Texas to move to- counties like Bastrop, near Austin, saw huge growth when the Tesla Gigafactory was built in Del Valle. We started to see pop up weekend boutiques selling chic Texas styles, and more and more Airbnbs for people who wanted to get out of the city for a night or two.
As 2022 turned into 2023, we continued visiting courthouses when we could, but the world was opening up and we wanted to travel abroad as well. We put our project on hold and went to South America for a year. But when we returned, we plotted out another drive across our state to nab some more courthouses. We drove through Littlefield, Texas, and met Waylon Jennings’ brother James, who owns a small liquor store and memorabilia museum dedicated to his brother and friends such as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, and Shooter Jennings. We learned why several courthouses up in the plains area have Comanche Trail arrows displayed, a project created by artist Charles A Smith. And in Silverton, we met Rowdy, the county’s only blind barista, and his guide dog Trevor. Even in the midst of a contentious election season. we enjoyed chatting with Texans of all stripes as we visited county seats and their lovely courthouses.
After four years to the day, I can say I have now been to every corner of my state. We visited our last courthouse over my Spring Break in March of 2025. From the windy llano estacado of the panhandle, to the bayous of east Texas, down to the coastal waters, the Mexico border towns, the rolling hills of central Texas, and the dry desert west, this state has so many interesting places. We boast 89 beautiful state parks (hmmm maybe another project in the making) as well as 14 national sites, including Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Of course you can spend an entire weekend in just San Antonio alone, enjoying the River Walk and learning abut the Alamo, seeing the Bear County Courthouse, or getting out to tiny Helotes to see a show at the John T Floore’s Country Store. Fort Worth has a beautiful courthouse, built in 1895, but while you’re there, be sure to get out to the Trinity River Trails, or the Stockyards, or see who’s playing at Billy Bob’s Texas. And of course you can look for the “Marfa” lights, or just stargaze at Big Bend, one of the International Dark Sky Parks, and even take a very short boat ride to Mexico after you’ve visited the courthouse. In all honesty, you can visit the 254 Texas county courthouses in just a few weeks- or you can visit them one at a time, and take in all the diversity of this state. If you’re interested in hearing more about some of my favorite parts, leave me a comment below!
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