Texas County Courthouses

yes – Tarrant County.   I know – but Tom, you’ve already done Tarrant County.  Well, go back and read my comments on the original Tarrant Courthouse posting.  This courthouse was BEGGING to have us come back to get interior photos.  We travel via train between San Antonio and Ft. Worth a few times each summer as part of the Trails and Rails program – a cooperative between the National Parks and Amtrack.  So we recently did one of our stints and I took the chance to go inside Tarrant County.  and it is just as beautiful on the inside as outside.

Also – walking up to the courthouse from the hotel, I took the chance to get cityscape photos of Ft. Worth.  A lot of history, architecture, and new city building.  Enjoy my walk through downtown Ft. Worth.  On that walk, I stumbled across St. Patrick Cathedral.  Small, but a stunning altar.

What a great ride this year!!  Maybe for one last hurrah – but here they are on the brink of one more Championship Series.  I know many outside of San Antonio don’t appreciate the Spurs – but I truly believe that’s the result of consistently winning for so many years.  But if everyone who loves basketball and the NBA are asked to really think about the Spurs and their players – most would come up with something about class – class players, class organization.  Go SPURS Go

Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to best coordinate my Facebook with this site – and to be honest, I may be just too old for Facebook – but I’ll keep trying.  I posted to FB yesterday with links to my new site pages, and then was told that people don’t do that – that you put the photos on FB’s Photo Album page.  So, will I then be up keeping two photo sets?  Who knows – like I said, I’ll keep trying.

Meanwhile – my May update.  Due to a serious illness to one of our family members, and also to the wild success of the Spurs this season – we’ve not been able to leave town for any courthouse junkets.  We should have some time this summer – though we already have a lot of non-courthouse travel planned.  We’ll see.  And once the Texas summer sets in, it makes traveling less enjoyable.

So – no new courthouses to post.  We did, however, take a short trip to Blanco for my birthday and a dinner at Onion Creek Kitchens @ Juniper Hills.  The recent rains have given some flow to the Blanco River (that’s not been true for some time now) and the flowers were in full bloom.  Take a look at the photos from the Blanco trip and my Birthday @ Onion Creek here.

Also, we accidentally came across a wonderful classic car show in the Blanco State Park while we were there.  I’ve posted all my photos from that show here – so enjoy.

Classic Auto Show
My Birthday and Blanco in May

I haven’t put anything on since early March – so I thought I should get something out.  Of course, having posted all the counties we already visited, I’m running low on things to share.  But not to despair – we recently revisited Lake Corpus Christi State Park.  The lake was WAY down – compared to the last time we visited in 2007.  So I’ve posted a small comparison of the lake full and how it is now under drought conditions.

We also took a day trip to revisit Comal County Courthouse (restored).  There were actually two reasons for this visit.  One, on our first visit – we did not go inside.  And two, the courthouse has recently been restored and was rededicated this past January.  So what you get is 2 for 1 – photos of the restored interior.  Also, since the town square is so pleasant – I’ve added town square photos of New Braunfels and the surrounding early 20th century buildings.

Let me first apologize if any of my pages ‘leak’ out into Facebook – like I think one did yesterday or the day before.  It’s not my intention to flood Facebook with my website page by page.

Anyhow – here it is – the BIG UPDATE.  That is – any counties that we’ve photographed that have not been posted are being posted now.  There are some true gems in this group   – including Victoria, Wharton and Tarrant.  For the lover of the moderne/art deco style there’s Travis, Washington and Van Zandt.  And then there’s some real duds – including Tyler and Zavala. There’s a lot of extras as well – so if you’ve got anytime, stop in and hit on some of the new pages being added.

Courthouses – Jim Hogg, Tarrant, Webb, Washington, Van Zandt, Trinity, Uvalde, Tyler, Travis, Zapata, Wilson, Webb, Waller, Walker, Victoria, Zavala and Val Verde.  There were also some revisits to – McMullen, Dimmit, Medina,

Historic Jails – Dimmit, Jim Hogg, Trinity, Val Verde, Medina, Victoria, Walker, Waller and Wilson.

Town Squares – Uvalde, Victoria, Del Rio, Floresville,  and Wharton

Other – St. Mary’s & Nazareth Academy (Victoria), Our Lady of Guadalupe & Scottus College (Hebbronville), I-35 Highway Visitor’s center (Laredo), the Victoria Art Car Show,  Crystal City Hall, Hotel Viggo (Hebbronville).

Got to visit mother and take of other business – plus, with all the Spurs games in March – it will probably be a month or two before we can start adding to the collectino.  Until then….Enjoy!

I’ve added a few more updates to my website – so hope you’ll stop in and enjoy.  First, I created a page for Sacred Heart Church in Palestine.  Very historic church with a beautiful interior.

Second – I’ve set up a page to provide information on the architectual styles and the some of the more prominent architects in Texas County Courthouse design.  Click here to jump to that page.  The information provided here comes from other sites and sources.

Third – I wanted to emphasize the Texas Map page that I’ve now provided.  This is a new means to get to the individual county pages.  Just go to the Texas Map page, the map will pop up and you can see what counties have been uploaded by me.  All you have to do to go to one of those county pages is click on the county in blue.  If it’s not in blue, I’ve not uploaded it yet (pink) or we’ve not visited it yet (white).  I know the map is big – but you can use your mouse to move the map around.

Fourth – We revisited Harrison County Courthouse in Marshall.  Well worth the visit to the Harrison County Courthouse Revisited page, as we were able to get into the stunning interior this time.

Finally – I have some new counties to upload – and hopefully they’ll be following soon.  Happy New Year!!

It’s been awhile – but I have added some new counties – Brazos, Burleson and Madison.  I’ve also posted some photos of Madisonville.  They were photographed on a recent trip to Houston.  To be honest – not too exciting.  The Burleson Courthouse did have some interesting detail inside – but the other two were fairly devoid of anything that would call out to you to visit.

Big News – I’ve added an interactive map showing the counties that have been photographed,  the ones that have been posted and the ones that will soon be visitied.  Go to Texas Map to see the results..  This has been a long time in coming and many hours of frustration.  And while it’s not the prettiest of maps – it is functional.  But only if you use Internet Explorer.  For some reason – it’s not working with Firefox Mozilla.  Someday I’ll try to figure out why.

And as mentioned in the post title – we’ll soon be taking a big trip to East Texas.  I’m excited about this trip because there are so many counties in a fairly close area (unlike West Texas or the Panhandle).  We should be able to work in up to 17 county courthouses – weather permitting.  Check back soon as I hope to be blogging on the road.

To my legion of fans – I send apologies.  I’m sure you’ve been thinking I’ve forgotten my Texas Courthouse website, but that’s not the case.  It’s just been a long period of illnesses, death, loss of dog, various trips, work and general mayhem  Mostly, we’ve not been traveling as we planned, so there’s not much to share.  Having said that – there are still courthouses we’ve already visited that have not been posted yet.  So today – I present to you the following counties:  San Saba, San Jacinto, San Patricio, Smith, Somervell, Sterling, Schleicher and Sutton.  Visit one or all of these newly added courthouses.  Let me know what you think, and where you think we should be visiting next.  I know there’s a few little ‘holes’ in the eastern part of the state we might try to fill up this fall.

I’ve also added the towns of Sonora, San Saba, Glen Rose, Eldorado and Coldsprings and retired county jails from San Jacinto, Sutton, Sterling and Schleicher counties.  There was also a replica of the original San Patricio county courthouse and pictures from the famous Regency Bridge (ever watch The Texas Country Reporter on Sunday mornings)

Know it’s been awhile, but come on in and visit a little.

Between trying to work, health issues, holidays and a visit to Mother, I’ve just not kept up.  In addition, we really haven’t done any county road trips lately.  Hopefully, that will change soon.  We’re trying to get into the Trails and Rails program with the National Parks, so we’ll see how that slows down the county courthouse march.

Regardless, I still have more counties to post, and I’ve just completed the addition of seven more counties – Rusk, Rockwall, Robertson, Refugio, Real, Orange and Polk Counties.  No real standouts here.  The Robertson Courthouse is a work by one of the Ruffini brothers, but has been severely altered.  There are 3 moderne-style courthouses (Rockwall, Rusk and Orange) that are good examples of that architecture.  Enjoy and check back from time to time.  I will continue to add counties I have photos on and we will be hitting the road – soon or later.