The Travelling Toe: Day Trip to Decatur, TX

Wise County Courthouse

Recently The Travelling Toe and the Day Trip Divas drove about an hour northwest of Fort Worth, to visit the neighboring town of Decatur, which is the county seat for Wise County.

Wise County was named after Virginian, Henry A Wise, around 1856. The city of Decatur was named in honor of a Revolutionary War naval hero, Stephen Decatur, Jr. (it doesn't appear he ever came to Texas and is buried in Philadelphia)

Stephen Decatur, Jr

The Wise County Courthouse sits on a lovely square in downtown Decatur. It will be featured in a separate post.

Surely you have heard the expression "Eighter From Decatur". In 1949, It was even a title of a popular C&W song by Bob Wills. It seems that the true meaning of that phase has to do with a local cowpoke named Will Cooper. When he rolled the dice for his sweetheart Ada, he would call out, "Ada From Decatur, County Seat of Wise". Others eventually took up the expression and it was somehow changed to "Eighter From Decatur" meaning a hard eight dice roll. Now we all know!

Wise County Heritage
Museum

Decatur Baptist College sign

Wise County Heritage
Museum sign

Designation of the building as a
Texas Historical Landmark and
the National Registry of Historic Places

After visiting the Wise Courthouse, we drove a short distance to tour the Wise County Heritage Museum. It sits on a hill and it a beautiful old building. It was formerly the home of Decatur Baptist College. There were lots of interesting exhibits of early life on the Texas prairie. One of the fun things we saw was this old switchboard. OK, we could not help ourselves, we had to laugh thinking about the old "Laugh-In" show with Ernestine and her "one ringy dingy".

old switchboards

wagon wheel made from
different types of barbed wire

restored log cabin
on the grounds

After we finished at the museum, we decided it was time for a

little retail therapy at the cute antique shops on the square. By then we were ready to have some grub. We decided to eat at "Sweetie Pie's Ribeyes". Ok, we really did not not have any ribeyes, we all had chicken salad sandwiches with fries, which were mighty good. There were several tables filled with men ordering a humongous ribeye pot pie. The 3 of us could not have finished one of those even if we had shared it. Their popovers were yummy too. Since we had walked a spell, we decided that dessert was required and we each ordered an apricot fried pie. It was served pipping hot and was so delicious. The only thing that could have made it better was a big ole scoop of vanilla ice cream....oh well, one can dream!

After dessert, we decided we better mosey on home and took off. We did make one quick stop to get some photos of the Waggoner Mansion that sits at the end of Main Street. The mansion was built by Dan Waggoner, a well know cattle man. A separate post will describe this once beautiful but now rather derelict family mansion.

Waggoner Mansion

One more stop on our way to hitting highway 287 was the Petrified Wood Gas Sation. It was built in 1927 by EF Boydston and in 1935, he covered it's exterior with chucks of petrified wood. The cafe next door was also covered as well as the motor court that sits behind the gas station. A grandson of Mr. Boydston restored the buildings to it's former glory.The cafe is still a thriving business based on all the pick-up trucks parked there at lunch time. And it looked as if some folks were staying in the motor courts as well.