Texas County Courthouses

Sorry – I’ve been tied up with other things (not necessarily more or less important), and I’ve neglected the website.  I am in the process of update the ‘Courthouse Collection’ table, so that you are given one page – with all of the alphabetical tables on that one page.  You will be presented with the option to go to a particular letter table or scroll through all of the letters.  This will be taking a little while.  I’ve already started building the ONE table concept under the letters A-B, if you want a sneak preview.

I’ll be somewhat out of pocket for the next few weeks, though I hope to be updating the data on various county pages that currently have nothing but the slideshow.  Just to let you know I haven’t forgotten the site.  If I have any time later today, I’ll try uploading a few more county slideshows.  I still have over 60 counties I’ve not uploaded.

Maybe – in early to mid-August, we’ll be able to take a short road trip to add a few more counties.  Honestly, we’ve just been trying to avoid the heat outside and that limits any visits to outside areas – like county courthouses.

Keep checking in – I will be adding and updating.

Tom

Lots of problems with links – so it took me awhile to follow through on the latest additions to the Courthouse Collections.  With the problems resolved, I’ve added 14 more courthouses plus some old jails and town squares.

Here are the 14 new counties:  Falls, Frio, Guadalupe,Grimes, Gonzalez, Freestone, Hartley, Henderson, Hays, Fayette (photo to the left), Houston, Howard, Hamilton, and Harrison. 

The jails added are: Hartley, Frio, Guadalupe, Gonzalez and Fayette.  The town squares added are San Marcos, Anderson and Goliad.  Fayette County is actually posted on 2 pages – before and after restoration.  I’ve also added some videos from YouTube – a couple having to do with courthouse restoration (Fayette and Wharton County Courthouses.)

With this addition, there are now over 40 County Courthouses presented in slideshows.  Plus numerous historic jails, town squares, a few churches and an Iwo Jima replica.  If you haven’t visited lately – time to do so now.  We’ve photographed over 100 of the 254 Texas Courthouses – so I’ll be continuing to add to the collection from our archives.  As for actually going out and adding to the collection?  May have to wait for cooler weather.  It’s way too hot for this old codger!

Sorry – been out of pocket for awhile.  I did prepare a group (I think it’s about 10) of new counties before I went on this hiatus.  Look for updates later today!

I’ve taken a break, after uploading the photos from our Valley trip.  I’m thinking I’ll do the Victoria trip next.  We’ll see – takes lots of time, and there are a few other things to get done – like working with our puppy – Sophie, to make sure she doesn’t forget any of her training.

One problem I am working on is my SEO score – trying to make my site friendlier to search engines.  I had a program through my host – Bluehost (which I’m very pleased with) and it tells me what my SEO (search engine optimization?) score is and where the problems are.  Well, knowing the problems and fixing the problems are two different things – you know?  I have two big areas of issues – meta description too long and duplicate titles.

The meta description problem was looking dire, but I found a plug-in called Greg’s SEO plug-in, or something like that.  It seems to be working pretty well, so overtime I should be able to resolve those issues.  It does take a lot of page by page work, but it is effective.

I’m not too sure about the duplicate title issue.  It’s coming up with all these duplicate titles because my NextGen galleries get the same name as the page.  I’m trying to mess with something called the permalinks – but I don’t know what I’m doing and don’t know if it’ll help.

Oh  I found a really neat video of the restoration process for the Wharton County Courthouse.  We photographed this courthouse on our Victoria trip – so it hasn’t been added yet.  Just click the link to see how they did this massive project.

We got back on Sunday, and I’ve been working on the pictures for uploading ever since.  I’ve found that I need to be aware of the resolution setting on my cameras (Clem’s as well since I use his pictures too).  You see, when I upload into NextGen, I start having problems if the photo is over 10mb.  Honestly 10mb is plenty big enough for almost anything I’ll ever want to do with these photos (unless I think I’ll start making big County posters).  So I go through all of the pictures (Clem’s & mine) and try to reduce them to a manageable number.  Then I have to go to another program – I’m using Adobe Photoshop – and reduce the resolution of each individual picture.  Sure can take a lot of time.  And then I have to create the thumb, and then I have to create the index file so that you can easily find each county, and then I have to document any impressions or stories associated with each county, and then…and then… and then..

Hope you get the idea – it takes a lot of time and effort to get each county ready – so that’s why I’m so slow in uploading counties we’ve already done.

Speaking of that – we’re not at 100!  That’s right.  We’ve photographed 100 of the 254 counties in Texas.

The Valley trip was nice.  It’s just so HOT!!!  Everywhere in Texas.  The RV park we stayed at was OK – but they didn’t have cable, and they didn’t have wi-fi.  Without wi-fi, it’s difficult to blog daily while on the road  It’s not impossible, but difficult.  So I did blog some, but not as frequent as I would I wanted.  The courthouses were a mix-bag.  Hidalgo is very modern and easily skipped.  Starr and Willacy counties are sadly in disrepair – though the visit to Willacy was special (go to the Willacy page and see for yourself).  Both Cameron and Brooks Counties have early 1900’s courthouses that have been renovated and sparkle.  Do not miss the Cameron County Courthouse if your looking for the best of Texas.  The interior is absolutely spectacular!

Sorry about this long blog – but I do have one other item I want to share today.  I have friends and family that have been checking into the site through Facebook.  One of Clem’s cousins suggested adding churches.  Check under ‘Other’ and you’ll find different things we’ve encountered in our travels.  Historic jails, abandoned courthouses, etc.  I’ve added churches now.  We did some in the Valley.  I also have a photo collection of the ‘Painted Churches’ I hope to add later.  You’ll find other interesting topics there as well.

We did Cameron County today. Brownsville is the county seat, and it’s a pretty interesting community to visit. Lots of history, good zoo, near South Padre Island – you could spend a few days in this city alone. Did you know that the last battle of the Civil War was fight in Brownsville?

Anyhow – the County has 2 historic jails and 2 historic courthouses still standing. With Cameron County completed – we’ve added Hidalgo, Starr, Willacy and Cameron counties. We will stop and take some pictures of the Brooks County courthouse.

What I hope to do while still on the trip is to go ahead and create pages for these counties and document my ‘impressions’. I have a few thoughts and stories to share and want to get the ideas down while still fresh in my mind.

I also want to start putting together lists of some of the famous architects of the historic courthouses. I bring that up because we were so impressed with the 1912 Cameron County Courthouse designed by San Antonio architect – Atlee Ayers. The style, the detail – it really is awe-inspiring.

Tom

We arrived in the Valley (lower Rio Grande Valley) a few days ago. Just like in Victoria and San Antonio – it’s HOT. Regardless – we’ve already been to Starr County, Hidalgo and Willacy county courthouses. We have some impressions and stories to share – but I’ll wait on that until tomorrow.

Just wanted you to know we haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.

Looks like a trip to the Rio Grande Valley (better known as The Valley in Texas) is upcoming. We will be visiting with our friend and neighbor – Dora, who is staying with her mother. Check back in and see what’s happening. I don’t know that the Valley has many interesting courthouses – though they do have some retired courthouses to take in as well. And if we want to hit the beach – South Padre Island’s not far off.

Tom

I’ve added a few more counties – Calhoun, Edwards and Dewitt. Dewitt County was a lot of work. I’ve finally figured out that I had my Minolta SLR set to a high photo level – and the resulting pictures were too large for uploading (they generally set a 10mb limit per photo). And then, we had so many pictures of the courthouse – I at first uploaded over 70 of them!

So, I used photoshop cs, and downsized all the photos, and then I picked over the pics until I got them down to around 45. The problem with the Dewitt Courthouse was that it really was a very interesting courthouse – inside and out. However, outside, taking pictures of the front of the courthouse you were looking into the sun – so probably overcompensated by taking too many. Hope you enjoy it regardless.

I’ve overcome the next/back page problem by doing it page by page. I think it looks OK and does what I want it to. You can go to the Courthouse collections and go from one page to the next using the links on the bottom of each page. I don’t know if anyone would ever do it – but go can go from table to table – without returning to the Courthouse Collection homepage. Just trying to make it more user friendly.

We spent the last day in Victoria relaxing, not really doing too much.  We did visit St. Mary’s – the second oldest parish in Texas (behind San Fernando in San Antonio).  We also tried to take a historic home auto tour – but the signs were not helpful enough.  Suffice to say, Victoria is full of historic homes and buildings.  Well worth a visit (along with its’ super courthouse).

 

 

 

While driving back, we noticed an event of some kind going on – something to do with cars.  We stopped and walked over.  It was art cars.  Pretty amazing really.  I’ll post pictures later.

Back home tomorrow.