Weird history29.2898° N, 103.3747° W
Big Bend National Park, TX
Ruins and surviving windmill equipment mark a small homestead where desert settlers attempted to farm and ranch in the early 1900s.
- Access
- Open to visitors
Weird history in Texas
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Weird history96
Suggest a stopReal events too strange to have made the textbook.
- Weird history31.5834° N, 106.2722° W
San Elizario, TX
A tiny adobe jail preserved in the historic district is linked by local legend to a daring Billy the Kid rescue.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.7499° N, 95.0806° W
La Porte, TX
A towering memorial marks the battlefield where Texas won independence in 1836, with a museum and observation level inside the monument.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.6993° N, 101.3121° W
Comstock, TX
A desert canyon park preserving some of the Lower Pecos region's most extraordinary prehistoric pictographs.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.8194° N, 104.3041° W
Shafter, TX
Abandoned silver-mining buildings, ruins and a small cemetery survive in this near-empty Presidio County settlement. Much of the surrounding land is private.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history32.7160° N, 100.9172° W
Snyder, TX
This roadside Texas historical marker on Snyder's courthouse square identifies the site of Dr. Alonzo Orrin Scarborough's early sanitarium. No sanitarium attraction remains to tour; the value of the stop is the plaque and its short piece of local medical history.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history31.8468° N, 102.3687° W
Odessa, TX
A Texas historical marker in downtown Odessa identifies the former site of an early sanitarium that opened in the 1880s and later became part of the city's civic history. The sanitarium no longer survives as an attraction, so this is a roadside plaque stop rather than a building visitors can enter.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history32.2337° N, 97.7560° W
Glen Rose, TX
Snyder Sanitarium is a historic Glen Rose medical building associated with early local health care, with a Texas historical marker explaining its story. Travelers should treat it primarily as a roadside historic-site/exterior stop unless a current occupant specifically permits interior access.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history30.7231° N, 95.5469° W
Huntsville, TX
This Huntsville stop is a roadside Texas historical marker describing the state penitentiary's role in Confederate-era manufacturing during the Civil War. It is not an abandoned prison attraction or paranormal tour, so visitors should expect a plaque and exterior historical context rather than building access.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history31.6018° N, 94.6553° W
Nacogdoches, TX
An 1830s house associated with Adolphus Sterne and Sam Houston, furnished with period artifacts and one of the city's oldest surviving domestic interiors.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history25.9032° N, 97.5062° W
Brownsville, TX
One of Brownsville's oldest surviving houses preserves the story of early merchants, border development and the Stillman family.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.7886° N, 97.3489° W
Fort Worth, TX
A historic Stockyards hotel connected to Western-film stars and outlaws, including a Bonnie-and-Clyde-themed suite built around the pair's local legend.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.3192° N, 103.6123° W
Terlingua, TX
A weathered desert cemetery filled with hand-built graves, wooden crosses and mining-era burials. It is especially associated with Terlingua's Day of the Dead traditions.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.3212° N, 103.6166° W
Terlingua, TX
Ruins of the Chisos Mining Company settlement remain scattered around modern Terlingua, including stone walls, mine-era structures and desert streets.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history30.6211° N, 96.3383° W
College Station, TX
A solemn circular memorial marks the site where the university's 1999 bonfire stack collapsed and killed twelve students.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history30.2653° N, 97.7279° W
Austin, TX
A landscaped state cemetery holding governors, legislators, soldiers and notable Texans, with monuments ranging from restrained markers to elaborate memorials.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.7435° N, 96.8257° W
Dallas, TX
The historic movie theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after the Kennedy assassination remains an operating cinema and cultural venue.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.2461° N, 103.4629° W
Big Bend National Park, TX
Volcanic rock spires along the Chimneys Trail contain Native American petroglyphs and evidence of long human use in the Chihuahuan Desert.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.7798° N, 96.8085° W
Dallas, TX
The former Texas School Book Depository preserves exhibits about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the investigation that followed.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.5037° N, 98.4150° W
Thurber, TX
The cemetery of the vanished coal and brick company town preserves graves from an ethnically diverse industrial community once numbering thousands.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history35.2267° N, 100.2488° W
Shamrock, TX
A restored 1936 Art Deco gas station and cafe whose dramatic tower made it one of the most recognizable surviving Route 66 buildings in Texas.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.5046° N, 98.4238° W
Mingus, TX
A museum on the former Thurber townsite interprets the coal-mining, brick-making and company-town history of a once-thriving settlement that largely disappeared.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history29.6243° N, 101.1806° W
Comstock, TX
A protected Lower Pecos rock-art site containing the famous White Shaman mural, accessible only through scheduled guided hikes.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history32.3861° N, 94.8759° W
Kilgore, TX
A downtown block once packed with producing oil wells is now marked by a forest of restored derricks recalling the East Texas Oil Boom.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry