By all appearances, Huntsville, Texas is a sleepy college town; it is the home to Sam Houston State University, alma mater of Dan Rather. If you poke around a little, however, you can find some interesting and even bizarre features behind its genteel Southern facade.
Instructions
1. Start out by taking a look at the Big Sam statue at 7600 Highway 75 South. The world's tallest free-standing statue of an actual human being--Mount Rushmore being mountain-bound and the Statue of Liberty being merely an artistic figure--this concrete image of General Sam Houston, Huntsville's most famous citizen, stands 67-feet tall on a ten-foot base.
2. Learn more about Sam Houston at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum at the corner of Sam Houston Avenue and Nineteenth Street. It's open Tuesday to Saturday 9am to 4:30 pm and Sunday noon to 4:30pm. Admission is free. The complex includes two of Houston's homes, a museum building, exhibition halls and several acres of beautiful park land.
3. Commune with the dearly departed at Oakwood Cemetery at Ninth Street and Avenue I, last resting place of Sam Houston and author/illustrator John W. Thomason. Check out the "Black Jesus," a tarnished statue in a grove off the north end of the cemetery. Older college students love to take freshmen here late at night and scare the wits out of them. If that's not creepy enough for you, pay a nighttime visit to Bowden Road west of town. Better-known as "Demon Road," it's been the supposed site of Satanic and paranormal activity for decades. The Joe Byrd Prison Cemetery, also known as Peckerwood Hill, is on Bowers Boulevard behind Sycamore Avenue. It features hundreds of graves--many marked only with convict numbers.
4. Satisfy your morbid curiosity by going past the Walls Prison at 815 Twelfth Street, a few blocks east of the courthouse. Now mostly a processing facility for the inmates of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, it's long been the site of executions. Famous residents include gunfighter John Wesley Hardin and (briefly) singer David Crosby.If you're a true aficionado of penology, you'll not want to miss the Texas Prison Museum on 491 Highway 75 North. It's open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm and Sunday from noon to 5pm. Admission is charged. There are eight prisons in the Huntsville area, so there's no shortage of material to display. There are exhibits on prison history, contraband found on prisoners and convict artwork. The most popular artifact here, though, is an electric chair called "Old Sparky."
5. Savor some excellent chicken-fried steak and local gossip at the Cafe Texan at 1120 Sam Houston Avenue, right on the courthouse square. This place has been open since the 1930s and is full of small-town charm.
6. Fill up on some of the very best barbecue in Texas at New Zion Missionary Baptist Church Barbeque House on 2601 Montgomery Road. Years ago, two members of this church cooked up some barbecue for a fund-raiser and it proved so popular the congregation turned the Sunday School building into a restaurant. Ask for the all-you-can-eat platter and you'll be full the rest of the day. New Zion is closed Sunday and Monday.
Tags: Houston Avenue, Huntsville Texas
