Art or Artifice?

Early settlers likely chose Wichita Falls because of the river. It is one of the few north Texas rivers to flow all year, although in its current state it certainly would leave much to be desired from a drinkability standpoint. It meanders slowly through town, about waist deep, and thick as molasses with silt and color.



At one time of course, there was actually a falls at Wichita Falls, hence the name of the town. But about 100 years ago, the falls got washed away. Now I have never heard of this ever happening to a waterfall before so it must have been quite a flood. I guess that must have presented the town with a problem; a namesake that no longer deserves the name….So, in 1986 the original falls was replaced with this 54 foot man-made falls, which sits alongside the freeway in 170 acre Lucy Park. It is about a ½ mile walk down a curvy concrete pathway to reach the falls and I had it to myself during my short visit today.

The Magnificence of Wichita Falls

There is a section of older homes near Marc’s jobsite lining tree draped winding streets that just seems plain incongruous in this hot dusty town. Many of these date from the roaring twenties, when big oil was just making its huge debut up the road in Burkburnett, so you’ve got to figure that likely many of the elite of Wichita Falls lived here. The subdivision is known as Country Club Estates and in fact it does abut the current 18-hole golf, tennis and swim complex known as Wichita Falls Country Club.

The homes in this neighborhood are lovely and some actually quite stunning in their monstrosity, going to over 10,000 square feet. Most are on large lots with carriage houses in the back which many have turned into separate apartments over the years. The neighborhood is quiet and serene (basking under its canopy of big old oak trees) save for the army of landscaping companies maintaining its pristine appearance; a glimpse into and a vestige of the original wealth of another time.

For those of us from the west, the current prices are ridiculously cheap—place these homes in any state west of Nevada and they would command four times their price here. Dirt is dirt is dirt. Isn’t it funny how its value can change so drastically from one place to another even if it does sit atop a sea of black gold?

Wichita Falls Railroad Museum

The Wichita Railroad Museum (http://www.wfrrm.com/) is an open air collection of Pullman cars, two engines and two cabooses in a state of on-going renovation and development. It doesn’t cost but they do request donations and one has the chance to wander at will in most of the cars. Restoration seems haphazard, some parts of the cars are done quite well yet another portion might have a jumble of modern junk just lying about. We can now cross one of our four things to do in Wichita Falls off the list.

Just two blocks down the empty streets from the railroad museum we took time to snap a few pictures of the world’s littlest skyscraper, currently having been expanded to house an antique store. Built in the 1920’s during the oil boom, it was to have been Wichita Fall’s first skyscraper and the solution to much needed office space. It was however, the result of a $200,000 stock fraud in which the architect presented the blueprints measured in feet but actually built it in inches. The building measures 10 feet wide, 18 feet deep, 30 feet tall with access to the four floors only by a ladder-like staircase. The thief absconded in the night and the much beloved building has been placed on the Texas register of historical structures.



We finished up our Saturday foray with lunch at a pizza joint and have been hiding in the room under the a/c ever since.

Downtown Wichita Falls

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Legend has it that the land on which Wichita Falls sits was originally won in a poker game by J.A. Scott of Mississippi in 1837 but it wasn’t until his heirs laid out the town site with a survey in 1876 that it started attracting immigrants and settlers. With the arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad in 1882 it took off and boasted 1000 population. Even though it attracted nationwide attention by the early 1900’s it took the first discovery of Texas tea in nearby Burkburnett to bring a new surge of growth, increasing the population to more than 40,000 by 1920. By the 1930’s Texas’ entire economy was powered not by agriculture but by petroleum.
Despite oil’s continued importance and the city having a major university and Sheppard Air Force base just north of town, the historic downtown section has seen much better days. On Saturday we decided to take a drive, look it over and go through the fledgling railroad museum even though temperatures were pushing 100 by noon when it opened.


The first thing that struck us was the lack of traffic and activity for a Saturday. Like a modern day ghost town of hulking low rise skyscrapers, both streets and buildings appeared totally empty. What wasn’t empty though obviously in use, was empty and boarded up. Don’t forget: Wichita Falls is now a town of over 100,000 population. It was quite sad and nothing like the old photo which had showed such activity and life.




Despite that, there were some vestiges of grandeur left. In April of 1933 the city newspaper brags of the opening of the new “Federal Building”, aka post office, at a price of $500,000. Today it is still used.

There are a couple examples of some stellar hotels, though whether still in use is up to conjecture.

What You Can Expect

With apologies to Texans, but everyone who knows us well knows we dislike this state. As we like to say, our mail may live here (at Escapees in Livingston) but we're sure glad we don't! Yes, the people are nice, but the topography is flat and featureless, the cities (for the most part) decayed, old, and uninteresting, with a total lack of things to do; it's hot and muggy uncomfortable. There are two redeeming features that I've discovered about Wichita Falls so far--the highways and freeways are surprisingly traffic free and flow at the speed limit at all times of day, and there is one area of town that stands out far and above the norm with historical examples of architecture that are simply amazing in this location. I will be writing more about the latter in another post.

We hold out hope we may find enough to do here to write about! Perusing tourist information we have about four choices to occupy our upcoming weekends: there is the Pecan Shed, an orchard location which sells fresh &/or adorned and shelled paper shell pecans; a railroad museum; a local winery; a historic downtown filled with some antique stores which may offer some good photo opportunities. That my friends, is about it. Oh, I did forget the local indoor shopping mall which does feature a Penny's and Dillard's and enough teen clothing shops to put a major dent into any parent's wallet.

So far, our temps have mostly been in 100+ range, which has occurred for over 34 days running. Having come from the coast's 65 max, this is a killer for us. What fun is it to go outside and swelter? Consequently, we live under air conditioning 24/7 which is not our idea of fun.

I hope to update this blog on at least a weekly basis, maybe more, so encourage you to bookmark this spot and check in with us as you can. Once we are in a position to add it to our main website it should get easier to access. As always, we appreciate any comments or questions.

The Road to Texas

To bring many of you up to speed, Marc has been required to jump around troubleshooting various projects since he returned to work in June after his knee replacement surgery. Construction financing has been a hard hit sector of the ever-tightening credit crunch and Marc's employer seems to be having difficulties obtaining needed credit for new projects. For the most part, since he was only weeks at a time in any given location, I stayed behind in Coos Bay while Marc stayed in hotels.


However, the latest location had him asking if I might be able to accompany him since the duration was to be nearly two months. In late July Marc flew out to Wichita Falls, TX to start an insurance rebuild of fire damaged apartments units owned by the company's owner. They are billing his services out to the insurance company, who is actually the one providing the financing for the rebuild.

About a week after Marc's arrival, I packed up the Saturn, the cat, said goodbye to my folks in Bend after packing up more of our clothing from the RV, and I hit the highways for the 1800 mile jaunt to join him. It was four days of uneventful driving after which I arrived at our new "home", an upscale and newly built suite hotel which features a full kitchen, separate bedroom, weight room, and free laundry. The company had decided that it did not want Marc to take the time to haul the RV here, nor did they want to pay for the fuel for this short of a duration. Motel life isn't great as compared to living in our RV but this place has it over most in that we are comfortable with lots of space and they accept pets too! It's also nice that that there is a barbecue area with two gas barbecues for guest use so we have been taking good advantage of that nearly every night.

Beginning the blog

Our website has been woefully neglected of late due to Marc's being gone so much of the time. Mechanically, the software we do our updates in is located on Marc's desktop computer, which resides in the RV with no internet connection. Growing frustrated that we can't keep people updated on our locations I decided to start my own blog that we can later link directly to our site.