Why Visit Round Top?

Round Top is a long enough drive from Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Lots of construction and ill-tempered traffic to contend with.

Once you get here, you find a central square with a bathroom almost as big as the courthouse.

You find periodically overwhelmed restaurants, sometimes with long lines.

You find a lot of crafty things to purchase in addition to high ticket designer goods you could buy with a whole lot less trouble in any of the cities you come from.

Twice a year antique markets make the town impassable for weeks at a time, oozing out like an oil spill for several miles along 237.

Why make the effort? Charm, I think. Small instead of large. Gravel instead of concrete. Trees. Fewer people and they are nice.

Some of the town’s considerable charm survives. At less than one square mile inside the city limits, Round Top is small, indeed. Fewer than fifty people voted for the current mayor, Judith Vincent, in 2023, by posted unofficial tabulation.

The Town Council, however, has big city ideas. Currently, by a vote of 3-2, it’s attempting to implement a “strategic plan” declaring that the town’s number one priority need is more parking.

Paved parking. Off-street parking. A need that takes for granted the desirability of continued growth at a rapid pace.

And so, soon, a paved parking lot may shove its nose into the grove of live oaks and grassy space where Bethlehem Lutheran Church holds its Easter Morning service beside a stone altar.

That church is one of the genuinely moving and emotionally valuable landmarks in Central Texas. Where so much of our culture is tawdry and false, Bethlehem Lutheran glows with authenticity.

The town, however, holds a platted street right-of-way to the proposed location. They would entertain a swap, the Mayor suggested at a recent meeting.

But the whole idea is based on a faulty premise—like a golden egg balanced on a wall that should be solid brick but isn’t. And the egg is teetering on its pointed end.

Round Top’s growth has reached its own limit, or should have. It has already gone too far in undermining what attracts visitors.

It’s what I call developers’ myopia. Blurred by yesterday’s profits, they replicate beyond the market’s capability to respond.

We call it Boom and Bust, in the oil business. In real estate it results in replacing charm with urban sprawl. Check out examples of ugly along 237, beyond city limits, where clutter vies with entrances to proposed subdivisions. Check out the little white sacks of trash that festoon our county’s formerly pristine roadways after big weekends.

Of course, there’s a good chance another location for that parking lot may be found. Supporters of Bethlehem Lutheran made sure that could happen by attending a public meeting with the mayor at the courthouse. Standing room only.

Most of them can’t vote for her, however. Because they live outside the city limits.

I can’t help but wonder who the town council does represent. There aren’t enough people in Round Top to support local merchants. Weekend hordes are necessary. But will they continue to make the trip if all they find is more of what they have ten minutes from home?

Parking lots will either bring more cars or stand empty during the half-weeks when shops and restaurants are largely closed. In either case, they will be an eyesore.

I came here to breathe clean air, see cows and rolling hills and wildlife and to feel rural peace.

Isn’t that what most people are longing to find when they come—for more than a weekend?

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com.