A Texas Road Trip 1.4 - Coryell County Courthouse (Texas No. 7) Revisited

Stop four on my road trip took me from Waco  40 miles west to Gatesville so I could take another look at the Coryell County Courthouse.  Like Waco I had been through here in the past but was not all that pleased with my photo of this beautiful courthouse (see original photo).  As I stopped on the north side of Main Street it looked the same as it had four years previously: pecan trees hiding the details, a washed-out sky, that bright while sunlight that caused overexposure problems and turned the white statuary into ghosts.  I kept looking for a better angle so I got back in the car and decided to check out another view.  As I drove past the south entrance the scene was completely different.  It was more open and visible, clouds suddenly appeared above to give some definition, and at this point I decided that the entrance on Leon Street had to be the main entrance and the north side was actually the back of the courthouse.  I wondered why the official address on Main is not the front of the building.  A short while later I found the answer.  Keep reading.

Constructed: 1897
Architectural style:  Beaux Arts
Materials:  limestone and red sandstone

Since my last trip I had discovered the many Post Office murals in Texas and I had learned that Gatesville had one, so the next stop was to see Joe DeYong's "Off to Northern Markets" painted in 1939.  In the foreground the cook drives his chuck wagon along the trail while the cowboys are driving a herd of horses and a much larger herd of cattle.  De Yong was a real life cowboy and western artist, a protege Charles Russell at his Montana studio, and also worked on a technical advisor in the movie industry.  At the time he produced the mural he was also working with Cecil B. De Mille on the set of Union Pacific.

As I was taking my photograph, a gentleman stopped and asked if there was anything about this big painting (10 feet long, 5 feet high) that bothered me.   I told him I loved everything about it but for some reason the mules pulling the cook's wagon seemed a little off.  He explained that the mules are depicted as pacing where both legs on the same side of the animal move forward together, rather than a trot where two legs diagonally from each other move forward together.  He said only horses pace, not mules.  I thought the mule bodies looked a little more like horses than mules but otherwise I had no complaints.  We discovered he had grown up in Nacogdoches near where I live and I explained why I was driving through town and mentioned my dilemma about the address of the post office seeming to be on the back side of the building.  That's when I learned that what is now Leon Street was once Main Street but many years back when a major U.S. highway came through the town the town fathers felt that the main road should be called Main Street so they reversed the names of the streets but the courthouse kept the same address so today the back side of the courthouse is believed by many to be the main entrance when in reality it is not.  Strange!

As I headed out of Gatesville to my final destination much further south I crossed the Leon River.  Texas has some beautiful very wide rivers and they are very difficult to photograph from the roadway.  As I drove off the bridge I noticed a paved road to the right which led to a small parklike area with a boat ramp so I stopped for a few snaps and spotted a white egret.  He waited very patiently while I took several photos, seemed to be oblivious to my presence, and we both eventually went on about our day.

I hope you're all having a pleasant weekend now that autumn is official here.