A Drive Along The County’s Edges

The late, great Leon Hale wrote all sorts of wonderful columns in Houston newspapers. But he had two recurring ones that I especially remember.

Annually he would drive south with a buddy to “look for spring.”

In another repeated idea, he would sometimes drive the entire length of Houston’s 610 loop (in those days it formed the edge of the town!) and write about the city’s growth and change.

Inspired by those stories, myself, reporter Andy Behlen, and Record retiree H.H. (Pancho) Howze set off Monday in my pick-up truck to circle Fayette County and enjoy the sights of the already-arriving spring here.

It was Spring Break after all, and any excuse to get out of the office in weather like Monday’s was a good one.

Seven hours and 171 miles later we got back – and it was a day well-spent.

Hop in, we’ll take you along for the ride: About 8:30 a.m. we pulled this gigantic three-foot by four-foot map of Fayette County off the wall in the newsroom.

We picked up Pancho at his house in La Grange shortly thereafter and spread the map out on the bed of the pick-up.

It was decided we would head north and circle the county in a clockwise manner, trying to stay as near as we could to the county line – and also trying to go along backroads when possible.

I would drive,Andy would navigate and take pictures and Pancho would provide the colorful commentary.

We left La Grange going north on Highway 77 and just past the closed-up St. Mark’s hospital we took a right onto FM 2145 towards Nechanitz. A little before the shuttered Chicken Ranch Dance Hall, we meandered onto the aptly named Bear Creek and Owl Creek Roads.

The trees were tall and the creeks were flowing.

We took Goehring Road into Ledbetter, stopping to see if Stuermer Store was open, but the cardboard sign on the front said it was only open seasonally now in conjunction with the Lane of Lights events around Christmas. It’s a shame we couldn’t have popped in. That place was like going back in time to the general stores of yesteryear.

The fields along Round Top Road were covered with brilliant yellow flowers, eventually giving way to the red barns of Leonhardt Road north of Round Top.

For a while Andy tried to navigate with his phone, but eventually he went back to the big paper map.

We drove past Rick Perry’s house and the home of his neighbor, former County Judge Joe Weber - his Marine Corps flag proudly flying out front.

On Wunderlich Road we passed the prettiest bridge of our entire trip, the tiny span over Jones Creek. We all got out and probably could have sat there all day in the shade if we hadn’t had many more miles to go.

We passed through Willow Springs and Rek Hill and on the outskirts of Fayetteville saw a field of pink bluebonnets.

As we passed different locales, it seemed we all had tales of stories we had covered in the area – an old rancher we interviewed once at that house or a fire we covered at that place.

It was approaching noontime, so we ate lunch specials at Orsak’s on the Fayetteville town square.

While our backroads were mostly empty as we passed them, as we drove into Ellinger, we were reminded how many people pass through Fayette County’s bigger roadways.

It took a while to even make a right onto Highway 71 and Hruska’s and Peters BBQ looked slammed with people.

Having no other way to get over the Colorado River, we drove back into La Grange and up the bluff towards Mullins Prairie where the com was just coming up, and into Holman, along backroads where frequent gravel trucks were a reminder of what lay below the surface.

Now along the southern edge of the county, we passed near Dubina and zig-zagged our way towards Schulenburg on the roads Andy said he learned to drive on.

In St. John we pulled around the back side of the church to admire the view and could see the High Hill church steeple in the distance.

Then it was on to aptly named County Line Road, where for several miles Fayette County was on our right and Lavaca County on our left.

A few months ago we had a stoty in the newspaper about how there were more cows than people in Fayette County, and this trip certainly confirmed that.

South of Praha and Flatonia, in areas where oil money had flowed in recently, we saw lots of new houses.

By the time we were heading north again on FM 2762 west of Flatonia, the landscape of the county had changed so much from the Fayette we had seen at the start of our trip.

The live oaks were gone, replaced by mesquite and post oak.

Pancho napped in the back, but at the prospect of stopping at the Cistern Store for a beverage, he quickly roused himself.

Over a beer we decided that Eastern Fayette County places like Round Top and Fayetteville were the places to mb elbows with important folks - western Fayette County places like Cistern and Muldoon are the places to go if you want to disappear.

We headed north on Highway 95, turning right onto Old Lockhart Road, just before we hit the “Entering Bastrop County” sign.

Andy said Old Lockhart Road is one of the county’s longest roads - roughly parreling Highway 71, and stretching south of Kirtley, West Point and Plum.

We got back to the newspaper office with a new appreciation for just how big and diverse Fayette County is.

We had driven on gravel roads maybe 10-percent of the time. And even though I’ve lived in Fayette County most of my life, I bet half of the 171 miles we drove were on roads I had never been on before.

My only regret was that we didn’t make it up to the far northeastern comer of the county - the Winchester and Warda area.

But there’s always next year.