The Traveling Fool
Traveling off the tourist path. Talking about those places most tourists just don't know about because, well, nobody ever told them. Also travel tips and news about travel and tourism to make your trip a little easier, cheaper and more memorable.
The Traveling Fool
10 Best Underrated Places in Texas You Need To Visit
What happens when you venture beyond the bright lights of Austin, the packed River Walk of San Antonio, or the urban sprawl of Dallas-Fort Worth? Texas reveals itself in ways no guidebook fully captures—through towns with characters as big as the state itself but too often overlooked by travelers chasing the obvious.
From Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas that has flown nine different flags across its 300-year history, to the Victorian charm of Waxahachie with its perfect replica of the Munsters' mansion, these ten destinations showcase the authentic spirit that makes Texas truly special.
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Hi and welcome to the Traveling Fool, the show where we explore the most intriguing aspects of travel, culture and history. I'm your host, Bob Bales, retired military, been to over 30 countries and I'm always chasing places that don't come with a tourist trap attached. Today I'm talking about 10 Texas destinations you might not have heard of. Forget Austin's trendy bars or San Antonio's crowded river walk. These are some of the places I visit when I'm after something real, something that doesn't need a billboard to prove it's worth my time. There are towns and corners that don't get the attention they deserve, but they've got history, character and a quiet pool that makes you wonder why they're so overlooked. So settle in and let's get started. You know Texas is a big state. You got Houston, Dallas, Austin taking up all the space in people's heads, but I'm not here for the usual. I'm interested in places that don't make the cut for most travelers, the ones you'd miss out on if you just stuck to the main highways. Well, this list is 10 destinations in Texas that don't get their due, and I'm going to lay out why they're worth a visit More than just a quick glance. Today I've got a little bit deeper history people who left a mark here and odd things to see and do. We're going to go through them one by one, talk about what's there, why they're ignored and why I'd like to spend a day or two there. In fact I have. I've been to these places, so just hold on and we're going to get right into it.
Bob Bales:First up is Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas. It's out in the piney woods of East Texas and people skip East Texas for the hill country or West Texas. It's just too far off the beaten path for most people. Now, this place started in 1716 with Spanish missions to block the French from moving in. Over 300 years of history are packed into those brick streets. It's flown nine flags. You know you got six flags over Texas, but you got nine over Nacogdoches, including Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and a few more. More than anywhere else on the state.
Bob Bales:Now the Stone Fort Museum's a rebuilt outpost from the 1700s. It was originally set up by this guy named Antonio Gil Y'Barbo. It doesn't sound right with my Texas accent, but that's his name. He ran the show back then, traded with the Caddo Indians and kept things humming along. Sam Houston got baptized here in 1833. Yeah, that same Sam Houston, Texas legend. He dodged getting baptized for years but they dunked him in Penn Creek supposedly because he lost a bet.
Bob Bales:Here's an unusual one that's out there, the Stern Hoya House. This house was built in 1830 by Adolphus Stern, a merchant who helped fund the Texas Revolution. It's still got its original furniture and little creaky wood floors Looks like time stopped. If you visit , you got Lake Nacogdoches nearby, calm water, tall pines and great fishing. I'll tell you how I know that in just a minute. There's also the Ruby M Myers Azalea Gardens. Eight acres of flowers.
Bob Bales:East Texas has their gardens, man, and they do love their flower gardens. It blooms in the spring. It was started by a local lady who just loved the quiet beauty of the area. Now Nacogdoches isn't loud or crowded. It does have a university there, but you know it's really not a university town, it's just a place that kind of hang out waiting for you to notice it. I lived in Nacogdoches for a few years. In fact my youngest daughter was born there. That's how I know about that little lake up there. It's got some great fishing, I'll tell you A lot of good outdoor activity, good, friendly people. It's just a cool place to visit and you can say that you visited the oldest town in Texas.
Bob Bales:Now next up is San Angelo. It's on the other side of the state. Out in West Texas, Marfa and Big Bend get all the notice out there, but this place doesn't even pop up for most people. It started as a trading post across from Fort Concho, built in 1867 to guard the frontier after the Civil War. Yeah, you see, Apache raids were just going rampant and they were a big problem back then and it was a rough stretch of nowhere. So the fort still there, got wooden barracks, stone walls and even a parade ground where the soldiers drilled, plus a chapel where they buried a few who didn't make it. The Concho River kept it alive. Back in the early 1900s, folks there dove for fresh water pearls. You didn't think of Texas producing pearls, did you? Turning mussel shells into buttons for clothes, that lasted up until the 1940s. A fellow by the name of Elmer Kelton, big western writer, was born there. He wrote the Time it Never Rained, knew to the dry plains he described. He died in 2009, but he left a mark.
Bob Bales:Now, one unusual site is Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum, a preserved brothel from the 1900s. It ran for many, many years. In fact. They shut it down in 1952 after the Texas Rangers raided the place, but it's still got the old beds and wallpaper. It gives you a peek into a little bit of the wilder side of town. Add in, you got the San Angelo State Park, which is 4,000 acres. It's got bison roaming around on it and you got a place that's more than just a pit stop. Then there's the Chicken Farm Art Center. It's an old farm turned to artist co-op. Got an odd mix of sculptures and chickens running around, but it's simple and honest and doesn't need to shout to get your attention. I'll tell you. You can't go wrong visiting San Angelo for a weekend. Destination three Gonzales.
Bob Bales:where the Texas Revolution kicked off in 1835. Everybody knows about the Alamo, but this is where it all started. First shots fired over a cannon that the Mexicans demanded back. They had had this cannon in that little town just to ward off raids from Indians and stuff. But the Mexicans, now that Texas wanted independence, they wanted their cannon back. So October 2nd, which is the day they still celebrate. Locals raised a flag saying come and take it and 32 men held off 100 soldiers. After the settlers fired several shots, the Mexican officer just decided the cannon wasn't worth it and he retreated. It was a small fight but it had a huge spark. Now they've got the Memorial Museum there. It's got the cannon story plus a bunch of old rifles and letters from those days. It's real stuff, not replicas, including a flag sewn by a local woman.
Bob Bales:Herman Marion Sweat grew up here, the first black guy to challenge segregation. At University of Texas Law School. He won a Supreme Court case in 1950 that cracked open education laws. Now an interesting site you got. The Eggleston House, built in the 1840s, survived the revolution, wooden frame, bullet scars still standing, like it's dared you to forget. The Guadalupe River is right there. Real cool place. Got smooth water, old trees, great place for picnics and tubing down the river. Gonzales College started here too. An 1850 school, trained some of the state's first teachers. It's shut down now but it still has legacy.
Bob Bales:Gonzales is a great little town to visit. I went there. I spent the majority of the day looking over everything. I tell you the museum is really, really cool If you like history and you like Texas history, it's got a lot of it right there and there's just a lot of other things to see too. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff right around the town square where they still have a huge come and take it flag flying every day. Let me ask you have you ever been to a Texas spot that most people don't visit but should Send me a note at editor@thetravellingfool. com or message me on Facebook. I'd love to hear about it. Might even bring it up on the next podcast. All right, let's keep going.
Bob Bales:Number four Palo Pinto. It's between Fort Worth and the Hill Country, kind of tiny. It doesn't connect to anything really big, so people drive right past it. But back in the 1850s it was a stagecoach stop on the Fort Worth to El Paso run. You had cowboys, outlaws, the whole deal. It got a post office around 1858. Palo Pinto Mountains State Park opened in 2023.
Bob Bales:1,400 acres of hills, empty trails. It's got a view over Lake Palo Pinto, where they found arrowheads from Comanche camps that go back centuries. The courthouse is from 1882, and it's a standout. It's got red brick clock tower. It was built when the cattle money flowed through that area. It's still got a jail cell in the basement. There's no real famous names from there, but the jail museum is right next door with its original cells, iron bars and stories of horse thieves that got locked up in the 1890s. Now while you're there, check out Lover's Leap Bridge. It's an old iron span over the Brazos River, tied to a local tale about a couple jumping off of the 1900s. It's rusted but it's still standing. You got the Mineral Wells Fossil Park. It's close by. It's free, full of 300 million year old sea critters that you can dig up yourself.
Bob Bales:This is a really cool place to visit. It's authentic Texas. Nobody's rushing around, not a lot of bumper to bumper traffic. It's just a cool place to visit. That's why it's good. Number five you got Cuero Texas. Now San Antonio and the coast take up all the spotlight. This place doesn't even register for most people.
Bob Bales:It was a cattle hub in the 1870s, shipping beef up the Chisholm Trail up to Kansas. Thousands of head of cattle moving north. Big money back then. But they have the Turkey Festival which started in the 1960s. Wild turkeys were everywhere. The locals turned it into a thing. It draws several thousand people every October with turkey races and everything.
Bob Bales:It's got some cool museums. You've got the Pharmacy Museum from the cattle era. Old bottles, tools, even the soda fountain that the old cowboys used to use, and it's even got a display on smallpox vaccines from the 1880s. They've got the Chisholm Trail Museum there, which I visited. It's a fantastic museum. There was a fellow by the name of Fred Gibson. You may not know who he is, but he wrote Old Yeller, turned it into a movie, real famous. He grew up nearby. He was born in 1908, just outside of town.
Bob Bales:One unusual sight in Cuero is the DeWitt County Courthouse clock tower In 1886, it stopped at 2:47 one night in 1894 when lightning hit it. It's still a little off kilter. I'll tell you, if you've never visited Texas courthouses, when you get out of the big cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, you go to these smaller areas and you go to these little county courthouses. They're really architecturally something to look at. They're really, really cool. And Cuero, the DeWitt County courthouse that they have there, it's a really beautiful-looking courthouse. They always sit in a little town square. You got little cafe's and stores and everything all the way around these things and they're almost all identical settings. They're all in a town square. It's really something to check out. You've also got the Cuero Heritage Museum which has got arrowheads, ranch gear. It's a small town but it's got a lot to say and, like I said, you've got the Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum with replica check wagons and stories about the drovers who died on the trail. I stopped by and visited a couple of years ago and it is a great little museum. Cuero is often overlooked but it's well worth a visit.
Bob Bales:Now, as you notice, we're skipping over a lot of the big cities, a lot of the big landmarks. We're hitting those little out-of-the-way places that have interesting stuff and interesting things to see and do. So let's keep going. Destination number six Albany. Not New York, but Albany, Texas. It's in West Texas. Lubbock and the big parks get all the focus out in West Texas.
Bob Bales:This one's too small to even matter to most people, but Fort Griffin was nearby 1870s. The outpost had soldiers, gamblers, even Buffalo Bill Cody passed through there in 1877 to hunt buffalo for the army. The old jail art center is in an 1877 jail with stone walls. It's now holding paintings and sculptures instead of inmates. It feels kind of strange but it works. The center was started by a local who wanted art in the middle of nowhere, a fellow by the name of Robert E Nail, started what they call the Fandangle here in 1938. It is the oldest outdoor musical in Texas, still going on every June, with locals acting out the frontier days, and it was based on his family's ranch tales.
Bob Bales:Now, when you're there, make sure you visit the Ledbetter Picket House. It's at the Fort Ruins. It's a cabin made out of vertical logs moved from a pioneer's land. It looks like it's ready to fall, but it won't. You add, in the Aztec Theater, which is a 1930s movie house, still shows films. And you've just got layers and layers of history. The Albany News Office has a wall of old headlines. It talks about fires and droughts and bank robberies from the 1900s. It's history you can touch and too often ignored.
Bob Bales:Albany is definitely worth a stop. Well, we're halfway down Six down four to go. So what do you think so far? Any of these places pique your interest in visiting? Let me know and let's keep going.
Bob Bales:Number seven, from West Texas, let's head down south. We're going to go to Port Isabel on the Gulf Coast near South Padre Island. South Padre gets all the spring break and beach crowds, but this place stays kind of in the background. Used to be an old fishing village and then it was a Civil War port. Confederates ran guns through here in the 1860s dodging Union ships, lost a few scooters to storms. The lighthouse is from 1852. It's still standing, 72 feet, 57 steps, the best view of the Laguna Madre that you'll get. It was lit until 1905 when it just went out of service. Didn't need it much more.
Bob Bales:Jean Lafitte, the pirate legend himself. He hung around those parts. Some say he buried gold nearby in the 1820s. It's still lost and treasure hunters are always out there poking around looking for it. One unusual sight is the Treasures of the Gulf Museum. It's got shipwreck relics like cannonballs and coins from a 1554 Spanish fleet that sank off the coast, three ships that sunk in a hurricane, and then you add in the Queen Isabella Causeway which has got great fishing, Pelicans and birds all over the place. It's a solid stop. Port Isabel Historic Museum is in an old store with fishing gear and photos of the town when it was just shacks. It's coastal without all the clutter. It's definitely worth your time visiting. Number eight, Glen Rose, north of the hill country and south of Dallas.
Bob Bales:Dinosaur tracks are one of the big draws here but it's too far off for most. In 1908, they found footprints in the Paluxy River of sauropods and theropods 110 million years old, preserved in limestone. They were first spotted by a kid that was out there fishing and now Dinosaur Valley State Park got them, five miles of trails plus fossil casts from the 1930s when they dug up a dinosaur for the American Museum of Natural History. Moonshiners used the caves around there during the Prohibition. They're still hidden up in the hills. They were busted in the 1920s but they left the barrels behind. You can check out Bernard's Mill, an 1850s gristmill turned into an art museum, got the water wheel still running and everything. It was built by a guy who fought at San Jacinto, the battle where Texas defeated the Mexican general Santa Anna and won independence. You add in the Somerville County Museum with Civil War gear, old photos and it's got a lot more going for it than just dinosaurs.
Bob Bales:The Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant is nearby. You take a tour of that place. It'll show you how it powers half of the state. Odd contrast to the fossils. It's old history meets Texas slow time. There's nobody rushing around in Glen Rose. It's a cool little town to visit. You ought to check it out.
Bob Bales:All right, we're almost done. Just two more to go Number nine Luling. Luling is on the way to San Antonio. People just don't stop unless they smell the BBQ. It's just like a little small blip in the road. Oil struck in 1922, and the town went from nothing to a boomtown in months, rigs popping up like weeds. Luling peaked around 400 wells. I believe it was in the 1930s.
Bob Bales:There's a place called City Market. It's been smoking brisket there since 1958. And being good, texas proper BBQ, there's no sauce, it's just meat which stands alone. The fellow there will tell you. Well, if you need sauce then somebody didn't know what they were doing barbecuing that meat. It was started by a local family there and that family is still running it. I've been to City Market many times. They have a fantastic BBQ. Now, William Taylor, which was a rough rider with Teddy Roosevelt lived there. He fought in Cuba. He came back a tough old man and worked as a cowboy. He died in 1931 after years of ranching there.
Bob Bales:If you visit the last full weekend in June you can enjoy the Luling Watermelon Thump Festival. It's been ongoing since 1954. Live music, got a carnival, vendors set up a market to sell their wares. It's got a car show and, of course, watermelon judging and auction, a watermelon eating contest, and now this is just for some of you, the World Championship Watermelon Seed Spitting Competition. Now how often do you get to see world champion seed spitters in action? They've also got the Zedler Mill.
Bob Bales:It's an 1880s cotton gin on the San Marcos River. It's now a park where the old gear is rusting away. the Luling Foundation Farms is a big surprise. It's a 1920s experiment in better cotton. Grow a lot of cotton down in South Texas and they are still growing test crops there today. It's small, it's got something often overlooked and Luling is a nice little stop and don't ever forget to stop at City Market for lunch. You will not regret it.
Bob Bales:And that brings us to number 10, Waxahachie, just south of Dallas, and Dallas and Fort Worth, of course, get all the attention and this place just stays kind of quiet. It boomed in the 1890s with cotton. Cash built all those Victorian homes in the red sandstone courthouse in town. It was finished in 1897 with carvings of faces some say were modeled after the architect's exes who dumped him mid-project. Ginger Rogers danced here as a little kid. She was born in 1911 in Waxahachie. She won a contest at age 14, went to Hollywood and became a star with Fred Astaire.
Bob Bales:One unusual sight in town, and something that I know a lot of you would love to visit, is the Munster Mansion. It's a replica of the old 1960s TV show the Munsters. Relying solely on show footage, these people have recreated this mansion. It replicates everything to exact detail and some of the items were actually used on the show and they've got them. You can take a tour and they also hold a monthly murder mystery dinner. It's something to see. You add in the Ellis County Museum. It's got old jail cells and cotton scales and a lot more. It's a step back in time. Take a walk through historic downtown. Make sure you also stop at the restored MKT Train Depot.
Bob Bales:Waxahachie just has style and history. It's a great place for a weekend trip. A lot of great shopping there. Old Victorian homes, historic area downtown and of course you got the Munster House. You got to check that place out. So that's your 10.
Bob Bales:Nacogdoches to Waxahachie All underrated, all worth checking out. These aren't the Texas spots you see everywhere. There's no bright lights, no overpriced nonsense. They're just places I stop at when I'm tired of the usual and want something that feels solid. It's got history, from revolutions to oil booms, people who shaped it. Weird stuff that keeps it interesting. Each one's got more than you'd expect from a dot on the map.
Bob Bales:Texas is bigger than the famous names, and these show you how much more there is if you're willing to look past the obvious and you know what. It doesn't matter what state you're in or what country you're in If you get away from those big touristy attractions. Every place has these little nooks and crannies with interesting history, odd things to see and do and big surprises around every corner. The smaller the town, the more it's got to tell you. Gonzales sparking a war, Luling's oil rigs still pumping, Waxahachie's Hollywood tie, even Glen Rose's dinosaur tracks it's all these little places that keep catching me off guard with what they've got packed in. They don't need any hype and that's why I pick them over the crowds every single time. There's always something else to find.
Bob Bales:So that's it for this episode. If you like this, leave a review wherever you're listening to this, or drop me an email at editor@ thetravelingfool. com, and tell me about a Texas spot I might have missed. And, who knows, maybe I'll mention it next time. And if you haven't noticed by now, you don't get some high, slickly polished podcast on this thing. It's just me talking to you, but I appreciate you listening. Thanks for joining me and until next time, safe travels.
