Back in the olden days, when country folk got married, they usually couldn’t afford a trip to Hawaii or Cozumel, so they just went home for their honeymoon. Their neighbors, with a mixture of mischief and affection, would often go to the young couple’s house bearing food and drink and stand outside singing songs.
These days, the people in Gatesville aren’t celebrating anyone’s marriage. They use the word “shivaree” to mean “everyone get out from in front of the television, visit, and have a good time.”
This event, attended by about 3,000, features arts and crafts, live entertainment, games, food booths, fun runs, and live music. Gatesville native Johnny Gimble and the Dick Gimble Band play the festival just about every year.
Moody celebrates the green month of June with a parade, arts and crafts fair, barbecue cook-off, a pie baking contest, music all day by local bands, and a variety of games for kids and grown ups.
STOCKDALE
This tour includes six historic homes and three museums, but that’s not all there is to see. Waxahachie boasts a town square with every building listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
You can take a tour bus that visits places seen in the many films shot in the Waxahachie area, including the Bethel Community, where parts of Places in the heart were filmed. Other activities include a street dance on Saturday night, contests, arts and crafts, a stage show, and food booths.
Founders Day takes place on the grounds of heartland mall, the largest shopping mall in a small town in Texas. Outdoor activities include a horse show, and horseshoe, washer, and golf pitching tournaments, Indoors you’ll find arts and craft booths, a senior citizen domino tournament, antique tractor display, contests, and food booths.
Grand Saline means “big salt” in Spanish, and the folks in this town hold a festival in appreciation of the great salt deposit underground that’s always played a part in their history.
The Cherokee Indians obtained salt by evaporating water from a salt marsh that lies over the salt dome. Settlers did the same thing by boiling the marsh water in kettles.
Later, entrepreneurs drilled shallow wells for salt brine and used large shallow pans for evaporation. Today, Morton Salt operates a rock salt mine 750 feet below the surface. The salt dome itself is 20,000 feet tall and 1.5 miles in diameter at one point. Trucks and conveyor belts remove the salt, leaving large, hollowed out “rooms.”
The festival features a parade, dance, arts and crafts, a rodeo, a fiddling contest, and live entertainment. While you’re in town, you can see the salt palace, the only building in the United States built entirely of salt. Of course, a corrugated awning stands over the little house to protect it from the eroding effects of rain.
This family event takes place n Lucy Park, where the waterfall is. Attractions include big name and local musical entertainment all three days, handmade arts and crafts for sale, food booths, a carnival, a fun run, and a bicycle ride.
For kids, there’s a special recreation area and games, including a cookie eating contest.
The Ice Cream Freeze-Off, sponsored by the Agricultural Extension Service on Saturday, draws contestants from far and wide to churn their frozen delights for the honor of the winning title. Flavors vary from the basic to the exotic, and visitors get to taste the creations for free after the judging.
Other activities include a parade, dairy related arts and crafts show, contests, food booths and a dairy cattle show.
The Ugly Pickup Truck Contest may be the most interesting aspect of this event. Contestants pay an entry fee, park their ugly truck on the town square and wait anxiously for the judge’s decision.
“We get some ugly ones, too,” said Shirley Cannon of the Chamber of Commerce.
Other attractions include a Saturday parade, a Friday night dance, contests, a flea market, arts and crafts, food booths, and an old-time fiddler’s contest. You can also enjoy a rodeo, mock bank robbery, and fire pumper races.
This festival began as a fund-raiser for a city library, and now helps support the arts, historical preservation, and other community projects.
It features a dance, arts and crafts, a stage show, food booths, a courtyard cafe, an auction, fun run, tour of homes, petting zoo, trolley rides, and historic building open to the public.
Celebrating Lake Cypress Springs, this festival includes a parade, contests, ski show, diving tournament, skydiving, sports tournaments, children’s games, arts and crafts, a stage show, and food booths. It’s held at Guthrie Park on Lake Cypress Springs.
Known as the Vegetable Capital of North Texas, Knox County celebrates its varied produce with this event. Some of the primary crops are potatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, cantaloupe and watermelon.
You’ll find a farmer’s market, vegetable judging and a contest in which people make faces and other forms out of vegetables. Home gardeners participate with a flower show and a home canning competition. Other attractions include the arts and crafts fair, stage show, and food booths.
The Crazy Water Festival gets its name from the mineral water that made the city a leading health resort in the early 1900s. In those days, hotels offering mineral baths abounded not only in town, but also in other parts of the country.
The first well in the area was drilled by a settler, James Lynch, in 1877. His wife, who suffered from rheumatism, is said to have been cured by the water. After a public well was drilled in town, a mentally ill woman who drank of it became her old self again, as the story goes. So well water of the area was coined Crazy Water and became famous nationwide for its curative qualities.
Now, all the mineral wells are capped but one, inside the building of the Famous Water Company, which still sells Crazy Water.
The festival features a 10K run, bike rally, volksmarch, arts and crafts, live entertainment, a community Theatre performance, and food booths.
This festival begins when horseback riders from old Fort Richardson State Park ride into town, parade around the square and fire a cannon. Other activities include several bike races: 100 mile, 65 mile, 35 mile, 25 mile, and the 5 mile Little Smokie.
A dance, an arts and crafts fair, a melodrama, cloggers, singing, and wagon rides also entertain visitors. you can visit nearby Fort Richardson. This fort was the northernmost of federal frontier forts built after the Civil War.
This starts on Thursday with a parade, barbecue and gospel singing. Friday features kids games. Saturday you’ll find arts and crafts exhibits, various contests, foods, and a fiddler’s contest. Other activities include rodeo for three nights and dances on Friday and Saturday nights.
The Chisolm Trail, which cattle drivers followed to Kansas in the late 1800s, is said to have passed near Decatur. The cattle drives from Texas to railroads farther north helped bring Texas out of financial hard times. One trail led from Fort Worth, passing Decatur on the east on its way to Red River Station, the official intersection with the Chisolm Trail on the Red River.
Now, the people of Decatur celebrate this legacy with a parade, dance, barbecue meal, 5K and 10K runs, an arts and crafts fair, and food booths.
New Boston remembers its heritage with a parade, dances and entertainment. One unique event is the men’s beauty pageant, held on Thursday night. Most of the men dress up to look like beautiful women in serious evening gowns, but some, dressed in hilarious get-ups, send the audience into fits of laughter.
Activities include an arts and crafts fair, street and rodeo dances, music, a pancake breakfast, a barbecue supper, flea market, salon show, and games.
New Boston lies within a few miles of towns called Boston and Old Boston. This confusing geographical name game started in the early 1800s, when settlers first came to northeast Texas from the United States.
The people named their town Boston, and in 1840 it became the county seat of Bowie County.
In 1876, the first railroad through the county missed Boston by four miles, prompting everyone to pick up and move closer to the railroad. The new settlement, made up mostly of the same people, was called New Boston, and Boston eventually became a ghost town.
In 1885, the county seat was moved to Texarkana, a much bigger city, but not in the center of the county. People fussed for several years over the proper location of the courthouse, with all kinds of haggling and fighting and stealing of the county records. Finally, they put the county seat in the geographical center of the county, which happened to be halfway between Boston and New Boston.
By this time, the original Boston was just about empty, but still had an old post office the government wasn’t using. So, they moved the post office to the new county seat and named the new place Boston. Then they named the original Boston Old Boston.
Noonday, a little bitty town outside Tyler, is famous for growing the world’s sweetest, most delicious onions. You’ve probably heard of those onions from Vadalia, Georgia and Walla Walla, Washington that are supposed to be sweet. But they are nothing compared to the original Noonday Onion.
Activities include an arts and crafts fair, which features a special area arts and crafts from East Texas, an onion growers competition, food booths, a country kitchen, fresh sweet onion rings, live music, and children’s games.
Two popular events are the bald man and bald baby contests. Whoever has the shiniest head and looks the most like an onion head wins. In the tear-jerker storytelling contest, story-tellers try to make the judges cry with a story while peeling an onion. If you buy a bushel of the bulbs, they’ll hold them for you while you wander around the festival grounds.
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