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Each holiday, a hay bale north of
Bethany, on the Texas-Louisiana line, wishes travelers on U.S.
Highway 79 its good wishes for the reason. The last time I was
there, the hay bale was celebrating. St. Patrick’s Day. The hay
bale, of course, is decorated by the landowner.
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 Lufkin’s
Ellen Trout Park Zoo owes it existence to a hippopotamus given
to Walter Trout as a Christmas gift. Trout casually mentioned to
a friend that Lufkin was interesting in starting a children’s
zoo. The friend sent Trout a hippo for Christmas.
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Texas’ oldest remaining gallows,
still in place after nearly 100 years, is in the four-cell jail
of the Sabine County Jail in Hemphll. The gallows, however,
haven’t been used in eighty years.
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The best lookout in East Texas is
likely from Love’s Lookout north of Jacksonville. Contrary to
popular believe, the lookout wasn’t named for the lovers who
often park there. The hill top was named for Mr. and Mrs. Wesley
Love, who donated the site as a roadside park in the l930s.
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Coldspring originally stood in a
low-lying area known locally as the “gullies.” When the county
was built there, rainwater kept flowing down the hill, washing
away the buildings’ foundations. The town eventually moved to
the top of the hill, leaving behind a jail and courthouse. The
courthouse burned in the 1920s and it, too, was rebuilt on the
hill. The old jail, now a museum, still stands in the gullies.
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John Winfred Bowen, a farmer in
East Texas, was born in 1885 with the remarkable ability to
store facts and figures with the dexterity of a computer.
“Believe It Or Not” cartoonist Robert Ripley once called him
“the human computer.” A physician who examined Bowen said he was
born with an extra brain cell which functioned much like a
computer’s bank.
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Mission San Francisco de los
Tejas, near Weches, is not only the only Spanish Mission left in
East Texas; it was the first. The original log building was
constructed in 1690 and, if it were still standing today, would
be Texas’ oldest landmark.
(Excerpted from Bob Bowman’s books)
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