The Echols School-Echols, TX

Behold the ruins of Echols School, along side US Hwy 84 in Limestone County.  I can't find anything about the school or the former town of Echols, TX other than this blurb from the Texas State Historical Association:

"Echols was near Farm Road 2310 and U.S. Highway 84, eight miles west of Mexia in northern Limestone County. Two churches, a school, and several houses represented the community on county highway maps in the 1940s. The school was consolidated with the Mexia Independent School District in 1960. Only one church remained at Echols in the 1980s."

We think this was the bathrooms, which were added on later after indoor plumbing was available. 

Keystone Hotel-Lampasas

The Keystone Hotel, located on 2nd Street in Lampasas.  

There's not much written about this place.  Apparently a few murders have happened here back in the late 1800s.  

Each room I looked into had a fire place.  

It was used as a savings and loan at one point.  It looks like this was the bank counter and teller windows.

Lampasas School for African Americans when segregation was legal and socially acceptable

This is probably about all the supplies it was provided when it was in use...

Hostess House Lampasas

Kinda boring...But cute.

I did manage to find this ghost story about the park:

In the 1800's the only daughter of the richest man in the town fell in love and got pregnant by one of there slaves. She told her father and he had the slave hung. After she had the baby she went and jumped into the Sulpher springs with her newborn baby and drowned. But the body mysteriously floated up to the top of the springs 15 years later. It is now said that the ghost walks around the grounds were her house used to be but is now a Intermediate school and wandering around the old slave house with her baby looking for her lost love to show him the baby.

Lometa Santa Fe Depot: In desperate need of historical commission's protection

Located in Lometa, TX right off of US Hwy 183.


According to the Texas Santa Fe Company History:

"Because it was a junction point with a branch line, the Lometa station had many more structures than most of the similarly remote country points.  Structures other than the depot which were listed in the 1921 inventory include a freight platform (32 feet wide, length 83 feet, extended 76 feet in 1921), a cotton platform (25 feet by 84 feet),a stock yard (one chute and one pen, located immediately west of the Potts warehouse), several water closets, coal house, coal bin, several tool houses, oil sump, two Otto water cranes, several water tanks and pump houses, an oil tank, 4 stall engine house, turn table, storehouse, sand house,  engineer’s bathhouse, foreman’s office, car knocker’s shed, gate house, coal bin, two section foreman’s houses, and three bunkhouses for the section crew.  As was the case for all engine terminals, there were also considerable facilities buried in the ground for the movement and storage of fuel oil and water.  At the beginning of the 21^stCentury there remain few visible traces at Lometa of any of this infrastructure."

This is what intervention looks like-the Santa Fe Depot in Lampasas, TX: