NACOGDOCHES — Now that I've brushed the soft red dust of East Texas from my garb, it's time to revisit the perennial question: Is Nacogdoches really the oldest town in Texas?
In 2016, this small, undeniably historic city of 32,000 souls celebrated its tricentennial. Clearly, civic leaders were harking back to the start of the nearby Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches Mission in 1716, not the founding of a municipality around a Spanish-style square by Don Antonio Gil Y'Barbo in 1779.
Either way, the place is old. As a wise local historian once quipped when asked the same question: "It depends on what you mean by 'oldest' and what you mean by 'town.'"
I recently spent the better part of five days in Nacogdoches, which rests on sandstone-ribbed hills under pines, oaks, pecans and magnolias above Lanana and Bonita creeks.
It was named for a local band of the Caddo tribe. Traces of ceremonial Caddo mounds can be found in the middle of town.
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The people I encountered in Nacogdoches proved to be uniformly open and helpful — more on that subject in a future column about places where the community meets to eat and drink. Two of the sites that I visited — Caddo Mounds State Historic Site and the upper reaches of El Camino Real de los Tejas — were so charismatic that I plan to write individual columns on them in the future.
Meanwhile, make way for 10 reasons to visit Nacogdoches:
1. Caddo Mounds State Historic Site
Waco boasts the Waco Mammoth National Monument, and Lubbock is rightly proud of the Lubbock Lake National Historic Landmark. Add to these priceless Texas prehistoric stops Caddo Mounds State Historic Site (1649 Texas 21, Alto), recently reopened and located 30 minutes west of Nacogdoches.
While I will describe my late May visit to the site in greater detail during the coming weeks, suffice it to say that it has healed from an April 13, 2019, tornado that severely damaged the interpretive center and other elements on this prairie above the Neches River. In fact, the new light-filled interpretive center, shaped like a Caddo grass house, is more inviting and instructive than the previous one.
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Do visit the historically minded garden, the three grass-covered Caddo mounds — ceremonial, burial and social — as well as an area devoted to the Spanish El Camino Real. While in the neighborhood, visit Mission Tejas State Park, which includes a CCC-era version of a mission church, and Weeping Mary, the post-emancipation freedom colony with an unforgettable name that grew up next to the mounds.
2. Fredonia Hotel
One of the best hotels in Texas, the redone Fredonia (200 N. Fredonia St.) has elevated tourism and the local social life in Nacogdoches. Built in 1955 in high midcentury modern style, it includes a six-story tower of luxurious rooms, a central swimming pool enclosed by a curving set of cabanas and a matching café. An events center provides a stylish space for gatherings, such as the Nacogdoches Heritage Festival, which populated the hotel with tuxes and gowns during our stay.
The Fredonia hosts three restaurants, the centerpiece 1st City Café, along with the 9 Flags Bar & Grill (a handy saloon with food from the café's kitchen) and the Republic Steakhouse (a cozy, high-end restaurant open on the weekends). Naturally, the hotel's soundtrack is often set to the Frank Sinatra channel.
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Two quick anecdotes: On our first night, a "derecho" storm hit downtown with high winds and horizontal rains that scattered the heritage street festival below our fourth-floor window and turned the Fredonia lobby into a community refuge.
On the next day, we looked down from the same window to see a crowd cheering a newly engaged couple, Alana Culpepper and Van Robertson, who popped the question in the middle of Hospital Street.
"We first kissed in the middle of a street," Robertson later explained. What did Culpepper think of the surprise party, which drifted into the hotel lobby and poolside? She joked: "I thought he was cheating on me."
3. Historic City Center
Few Texas historic downtowns combine so much deep history with plenty of up-to-the-minute liveliness. The first thing the visitor notices are the red-brick streets. Then one begins to visualize all the traffic that has passed this way since the 18th century, as well as the city's role in three significant rebellions before the Texas Revolution.
On closer inspection, the town square was laid out on the Spanish pattern. In the middle of this square is the Charles Bright Visitors Center (200 E. Main St.), a big, welcoming and informative place that nevertheless disguises the square's original function as an open space.
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We spent hours walking these streets because the buildings are filled with classy restaurants, shops and other businesses, such as the Red House Winery and, not far off, Fredonia Brewery. On North Street (Business U.S. 59) we found a handy used-book store, which helped with our local historical research. Directly downtown, we encountered an old opera house (329 E. Main St) — with anecdotal ties to the Marx Brothers from their early touring days — that now serves as a modern gallery for SFA's art school.
4. Stephen F. Austin University campus
The campus of SFA (1936 North St.), which recently joined the University of Texas System, has changed dramatically over the past few decades. In a good way. New or renovated buildings hold classrooms, a STEM center, dormitories and a performing arts complex. Pines and other greenery shade the open spaces between old and new structures.
We spent the most time at the Micky Elliott School of Fine Arts, where our friend Professor Scott Shattuck teaches in the school of theater and dance. The labyrinth of first class studios, labs, classrooms, performance venues and community spaces rivals that of UT in Austin, this for a university of perhaps 9,000 students.
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Why did the UT System acquire SFA? More than one Nacogdoches faculty member mentioned the school's forestry program, which adds a missing card to UT's always strong hand. The merger is a good deal all around, I think, because the system can open doors to donors and research money while SFA continues to define itself for the 21st century as one of the premier schools in East Texas.
5. Zion Hill Baptist Church and Sterne-Hoya House
Surely, Nacogdoches competes for the title of "most historic buildings per capita" in the state. We were offered plenty of choices to explore these places during our five days there.
Our first stop was at Zion Hill Baptist Church (324 N. Lanana St.), the Gothic and Victorian miracle that German immigrant Diedrich Anton Wilhelm Rulfs designed in 1914 for the town's African American community. It is built in an "opera house" style with a curved balcony supported by thin columns and a raked set of pews downstairs. Zion Hill,beautifully restored, now serves as an events center, including for gatherings of the congregation that moved to another structure when Zion Hill was in bad repair.
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Just blocks away is the Sterne-Hoya House (211 S. Lanana St.), built circa 1830 by Adolphus Sterne, immigrant, colonist, merchant, legislator and financier of the Texas Revolution. His personal accounts of early Texas are among the most valuable sources for that period. (Just now, I am rereading "Hurrah for Texas: The Diary of Adolphus Sterne, 1838-1851," edited by Archie P. McDonald. Every page is a Texas history lesson.)
One place to find a large number of old buildings at one time is Millard's Crossing Historic Village (6020 North St.), an independent museum put together by late U.S. Rep. Lera Millard Thomas, a Nacogdoches native and widow of longtime U.S. Rep. Albert Thomas, an LBJ ally. She collected about a dozen structures, several of them related to her family's history, filled them with period objects and decor, and strung them along two rows. It serves as an invitation to children to explore, or for planners to imagine an evocative background for their events. It could use a good deal more context.
6. Old Nacogdoches University
For me, this architectural artifact was an unexpected find: The main building of a public university (515 N. MoundSt.) chartered by the Republic of Texas on Feb. 3, 1845, more than 75 years before SFA got its start in 1923. That makes it likely the first nonsectarian institution of higher learning in Texas. The impressive Greek Revival structure for Old Nacogdoches University (515 N. Mound St.) was built by local hands just before the Civil War to serve white male and female students.
During the war, parts of the campus were turned into a hospital and then were occupied by federal troops. It later became a private university, at one point run by the Congregation of Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. It closed as a college in 1895.
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Strangely situated away from current street fronts, it is found on a campus of the public school district, but isoperated as a museum, recently refurbished, by a local chapter of the FederatedWomen'sClubs. The lower floor, where male and female students were separated, is decorated in period styles. The upper level includes some private quarters, but the main section holds exhibits, especially about historical education and health, that could use more analysis and interpretation.
7. Oak Grove, Old North Church and other cemeteries
You might figure that a historic city like Nacogdoches would know how to handle old cemeteries. You would be right. The main cemetery, Oak Grove (North Lanana St.), is in great condition under ancient shade trees above Lanana Creek. It holds the remains of several major figures of the Texas Revolution, including Thomas Jefferson Rusk, a soldier and statesman involved in just about every aspect of the Texas Republic. A short distance away from Oak Grove is the Zion Hill Cemetery, segregated for African Americans.
A different sort of Black graveyard can be found attached to the Old North Baptist Church (332 County Road 205). Its two cemeteries are generally segregated, and the one for enslaved African Americans and their descendants is undergoing an astonishing renaissance. About three years ago, neighbor Wyatt Ordway noticed that Old North Church Afro-American Cemetery was in severe disrepair and that many graves were simply unmarked. He organized volunteers and class groups to document the gravesites and honor them respectfully.
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8. Pineywoods Native Plant Center and other oases
It rained every day during our visit to East Texas. According to some locals, it might rain throughout the month of June. So compared to much of Texas, this land is a vast garden that can quickly turn into a jungle.
To learn about the local flora, visit the Pineywoods Native Plant Center (2900 Raguet St.), where we ran into SFA Professor Emeritus David Creech. He explained the serious scientific work of the center, including propagation of multiple varieties of Japanese maple. The center is home to a tribute garden named for Lady Bird Johnson as well as fairly well-tended asphalt trails through wetlands above Lanana Creek.
A note to any potential UT System donor who wants to make an immediate improvement to SFA: Consider replacing the deteriorated interpretive signs that identify for the public which native plants we are seeing.
My road-trip companion and I did some light birding in other local green spots, including the Mize Azalea Gardens, Oak Grove Cemetery and Old North Baptist Church Cemetery. Mostly cardinals, crows, chickadees, etc., but we did hear a pileated woodpecker, one of the largest birds on the continent. (I've seen only one, in Davy Crockett National Forest).
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9. Stone Fort Museum
This is a building you want to celebrate. Yet it is important to know what is real and what isn't about the Old Stone Fort. The original building held down one corner of the old Spanish square in downtown Nacogdoches, right on the lip of El Camino Real de Los Tejas. It served as a trading post, fortification, government office and home to founder Dón Antonio Gil Ybarbo (1729–1809), whose statue rises nobly next to the Visitors Center.
Eventually, however, the stone structure stood in the way of roadway progress, and locals were less than enthusiastic about preserving what had become a saloon. While some of the sandstone blocks from the fort, demolished in 1902, were used for a monument and fences, others were transported to the SFA campus (808 Alumni Drive North), where a nice-looking museum on local history was formed. (It was closed because of a lack of personnel each time we tried to visit the museum.)
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This would be a good time to explain the "Nine Flags Over Nacogdoches" theme, which one encounters all over town. Besides the traditional six flags of Texas (Spanish, French, Mexican, Republic of Texas, U.S., Confederate) — a false reduction that leaves out the Native American nations that actually controlled the region until the mid-19th century — locals here recognize three brief East Texas freebooting entities.
They would be the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition (1812-1813), the Dr. James Long Expedition (1819-1821) and the Fredonia Rebellion (1826-1827), all of which attempted to take advantage of Nacogdoches' remoteness from Spanish or Mexican authorities to set up independent polities in the region.
10. El Camino Real de los Tejas
Again, I'll return to this subject in a future column, but the area around Nacogdoches is a target-rich environment for the Spanish royal road that grew out of Native American trails more than 300 years ago.
Nacogdoches sits on the northeastern end of the road from Mexico City, about 100 miles from its terminus at Natchitoches, Louisiana. One can spot signs that identify the route on Texas 21 and other highways and byways. But look closer.
SFA Professor Chris Talbot took us on a tour of sites east of Nacogdoches that included "swales," rutted evidence of the camino's track. Outside nearby St. Augustine, we explored the tiny park owned and operated by the El Camino Real de Los Tejas National Trail Association, for which Talbot formerly served as board president.
It is open to the public, and if you are a "rut nut," you will be astounded by the profound physical remains of this road that connected communities across a wide swath of Texas for centuries.
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Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@gannett.com. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter, Think, Texas, at statesman.com/newsletters, or at the newsletter page of your local USA Today Network paper.
