10 Best Underrated Places in Texas You Need To Visit

Forget Austin's trendy bars or San Antonio's crowded river walk . These are some of the places I visit when I'm after something real , something that doesn't need a billboard to prove it's worth my time .

There are towns and corners that don't get the attention they deserve , but they've got history , character and a quiet pool that makes you wonder why they're so overlooked . So settle in and let's get started . You know Texas is a big state . You got Houston , Dallas , Austin taking up all the space in people's heads , but I'm not here for the usual .

I'm interested in places that don't make the cut for most travelers , the ones you'd miss out on if you just stuck to the main highways . Well , this list is 10 destinations in Texas that don't get their due , and I'm going to lay out why they're worth a visit More than just a quick glance .

Today I've got a little bit deeper history people who left a mark here and odd things to see and do . We're going to go through them one by one , talk about what's there , why they're ignored and why I'd like to spend a day or two there . In fact I have . I've been to these places , so just hold on and we're going to get right into it .

First up is Nacogdoches , the oldest town in Texas . It's out in the piney woods of East Texas and people skip East Texas for the hill country or West Texas . It's just too far off the beaten path for most people . Now, this place started in 1716 with Spanish missions to block the French from moving in .

Over 300 years of history are packed into those brick streets . It's flown nine flags . You know you got six flags over Texas , but you got nine over Nacogdoches , including Spain , France , Mexico , the Republic of Texas and a few more . More than anywhere else on the state . Now the Stone Fort Museum's a rebuilt outpost from the 1700s .

It was originally set up by this guy named Antonio Gil Y'Barbo . It doesn't sound right with my Texas accent , but that's his name . He ran the show back then , traded with the Caddo Indians and kept things humming along . Sam Houston got baptized here

in 1833 . Yeah , that same Sam Houston , Texas legend . He dodged getting baptized for years but they dunked him in Penn Creek supposedly because he lost a bet . Here's an unusual one that's out there, the Stern Hoya House . This house was built in 1830 by Adolphus Stern , a merchant who helped fund the Texas Revolution .

It's still got its original furniture and little creaky wood floors Looks like time stopped . If you visit , you got Lake Nacogdoches nearby , calm water , tall pines and great fishing . I'll tell you how I know that in just a minute . There's also the Ruby M Myers Azalea Gardens . Eight acres of flowers .

East Texas has their gardens , man , and they do love their flower gardens . It blooms in the spring . It was started by a local lady who just loved the quiet beauty of the area . Now Nacogdoches isn't loud or crowded .

It does have a university there, but you know it's really not a university town , it's just a place that kind of hang out waiting for you to notice it . I lived in Nacogdoches for a few years . In fact my youngest daughter was born there . That's how I know about that little lake up there .

It's got some great fishing , I'll tell you A lot of good outdoor activity , good , friendly people . It's just a cool place to visit and you can say that you visited the oldest town in Texas .

Now next up is San Angelo . It's on the other side of the state . Out in West Texas , Marfa and Big Bend get all the notice out there , but this place doesn't even pop up for most people . It started as a trading post across from Fort Concho , built in 1867 to guard the frontier after the Civil War .

Yeah , you see , Apache raids were just going rampant and they were a big problem back then and it was a rough stretch of nowhere . So the fort still there, got wooden barracks , stone walls and even a parade ground where the soldiers drilled , plus a chapel where they buried a few who didn't make it . The Concho River kept it alive .

Back in the early 1900s , folks there dove for fresh water pearls . You didn't think of Texas producing pearls , did you ? Turning mussel shells into buttons for clothes, that lasted up until the 1940s . A fellow by the name of Elmer Kelton , big western writer , was born there . He wrote the Time it Never Rained , knew to the dry plains he described .

He died in 2009 , but he left a mark . Now , one unusual site is Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum , a preserved brothel from the 1900s . It ran for many , many years . In fact . They shut it down in 1952 after the Texas Rangers raided the place , but it's still got the old beds and wallpaper . It gives you a peek into a little bit of the wilder side of town .

Add in , you got the San Angelo State Park , which is 4,000 acres . It's got bison roaming around on it and you got a place that's more than just a pit stop . Then there's the Chicken Farm Art Center . It's an old farm turned to artist co-op .

Got an odd mix of sculptures and chickens running around , but it's simple and honest and doesn't need to shout to get your attention . I'll tell you . You can't go wrong visiting San Angelo for a weekend . Destination three Gonzales

. where the Texas Revolution kicked off in 1835 . Everybody knows about the Alamo , but this is where it all started . First shots fired over a cannon that the Mexicans demanded back . They had had this cannon in that little town just to ward off raids from Indians and stuff . But the Mexicans , now that Texas wanted independence , they wanted their cannon back .

So October 2nd , which is the day they still celebrate . Locals raised a flag saying come and take it and 32 men held off 100 soldiers . After the settlers fired several shots , the Mexican officer just decided the cannon wasn't worth it and he retreated . It was a small fight but it had a huge spark . Now they've got the Memorial Museum there .

It's got the cannon story plus a bunch of old rifles and letters from those days . It's real stuff , not replicas , including a flag sewn by a local woman . Herman Marion Sweat grew up here , the first black guy to challenge segregation . At University of Texas Law School . He won a Supreme Court case in 1950 that cracked open education laws .

Now an interesting site you got . The Eggleston House , built in the 1840s , survived the revolution , wooden frame , bullet scars still standing , like it's dared you to forget . The Guadalupe River is right there . Real cool place . Got smooth water , old trees , great place for picnics and tubing down the river . Gonzales College started here too .

An 1850 school, trained some of the state's first teachers . It's shut down now but it still has legacy . Gonzales is a great little town to visit . I went there . I spent the majority of the day looking over everything .

I tell you the museum is really , really cool If you like history and you like Texas history , it's got a lot of it right there and there's just a lot of other things to see too . I mean , there's all kinds of stuff right around the town square where they still have a huge come and take it flag flying every day .

Let me ask you have you ever been to a Texas spot that most people don't visit but should Send me a note at editor@thetravellingfool . com or message me on Facebook . I'd love to hear about it . Might even bring it up on the next podcast . All right , let's keep going .

Number four Palo Pinto . It's between Fort Worth and the Hill Country , kind of tiny . It doesn't connect to anything really big , so people drive right past it . But back in the 1850s it was a stagecoach stop on the Fort Worth to El Paso run . You had cowboys , outlaws , the whole deal . It got a post office around 1858 .

Palo Pinto Mountains State Park opened in 2023 . 1,400 acres of hills , empty trails . It's got a view over Lake Palo Pinto , where they found arrowheads from Comanche camps that go back centuries . The courthouse is from 1882 , and it's a standout . It's got red brick clock tower . It was built when the cattle money flowed through that area .

It's still got a jail cell in the basement . There's no real famous names from there , but the jail museum is right next door with its original cells , iron bars and stories of horse thieves that got locked up in the 1890s . Now while you're there , check out Lover's Leap Bridge .

It's an old iron span over the Brazos River , tied to a local tale about a couple jumping off of the 1900s . It's rusted but it's still standing . You got the Mineral Wells Fossil Park . It's close by . It's free , full of 300 million year old sea critters that you can dig up yourself . This is a really cool place to visit . It's authentic Texas .

Nobody's rushing around , not a lot of bumper to bumper traffic . It's just a cool place to visit . That's why it's good . Number five you got Cuero

Texas . Now San Antonio and the coast take up all the spotlight . This place doesn't even register for most people . It was a cattle hub in the 1870s , shipping beef up the Chisholm Trail up to Kansas . Thousands of head of cattle moving north . Big money back then . But they have the Turkey Festival which started in the 1960s . Wild turkeys were everywhere .

The locals turned it into a thing . It draws several thousand people every October with turkey races and everything . It's got some cool museums . You've got the Pharmacy Museum from the cattle era . Old bottles , tools , even the soda fountain that the old cowboys used to use , and it's even got a display on smallpox vaccines from the 1880s .

They've got the Chisholm Trail Museum there , which I visited . It's a fantastic museum . There was a fellow by the name of Fred Gibson . You may not know who he is , but he wrote Old Yeller , turned it into a movie , real famous . He grew up nearby . He was born in 1908 , just outside of town .

One unusual sight in Cuero is the DeWitt County Courthouse clock tower In 1886 , it stopped at 2:47 one night in 1894 when lightning hit it . It's still a little off kilter .

I'll tell you , if you've never visited Texas courthouses , when you get out of the big cities like Dallas , Houston , San Antonio , you go to these smaller areas and you go to these little county courthouses . They're really architecturally something to look at . They're really , really cool .

And Cuero , the DeWitt County courthouse that they have there , it's a really beautiful-looking courthouse . They always sit in a little town square . You got little cafe's and stores and everything all the way around these things and they're almost all identical settings . They're all in a town square . It's really something to check out .

You've also got the Cuero Heritage Museum which has got arrowheads , ranch gear . It's a small town but it's got a lot to say and , like I said , you've got the Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum with replica check wagons and stories about the drovers who died on the trail . I stopped by and visited a couple of years ago and it is a great little museum .

Cuero is often overlooked but it's well worth a visit .

Now , as you notice , we're skipping over a lot of the big cities , a lot of the big landmarks . We're hitting those little out-of-the-way places that have interesting stuff and interesting things to see and do . So let's keep going . Destination number six Albany . Not New York , but Albany , Texas . It's in West Texas .

Lubbock and the big parks get all the focus out in West Texas . This one's too small to even matter to most people , but Fort Griffin was nearby 1870s . The outpost had soldiers , gamblers , even Buffalo Bill Cody passed through there in 1877 to hunt buffalo for the army . The old jail art center is in an 1877 jail with stone walls .

It's now holding paintings and sculptures instead of inmates . It feels kind of strange but it works . The center was started by a local who wanted art in the middle of nowhere , a fellow by the name of Robert E Nail , started what they call the Fandangle here in 1938 .

It is the oldest outdoor musical in Texas , still going on every June , with locals acting out the frontier days , and it was based on his family's ranch tales . Now , when you're there , make sure you visit the Ledbetter Picket House . It's at the Fort Ruins . It's a cabin made out of vertical logs moved from a pioneer's land .

It looks like it's ready to fall , but it won't . You add , in the Aztec Theater , which is a 1930s movie house , still shows films . And you've just got layers and layers of history . The Albany News Office has a wall of old headlines . It talks about fires and droughts and bank robberies from the 1900s . It's history you can touch and too often ignored .

Albany is definitely worth a stop . Well , we're halfway down Six down four to go . So what do you think so far ? Any of these places pique your interest in visiting ? Let me know and let's keep going

. Number seven , from West Texas , let's head down south . We're going to go to Port Isabel on the Gulf Coast near South Padre Island . South Padre gets all the spring break and beach crowds , but this place stays kind of in the background . Used to be an old fishing village and then it was a Civil War port .

Confederates ran guns through here in the 1860s dodging Union ships , lost a few scooters to storms . The lighthouse is from 1852 . It's still standing , 72 feet , 57 steps , the best view of the Laguna Madre that you'll get . It was lit until 1905 when it just went out of service . Didn't need it much more . Jean Lafitte , the pirate legend himself .

He hung around those parts . Some say he buried gold nearby in the 1820s . It's still lost and treasure hunters are always out there poking around looking for it . One unusual sight is the Treasures of the Gulf Museum .

It's got shipwreck relics like cannonballs and coins from a 1554 Spanish fleet that sank off the coast , three ships that sunk in a hurricane , and then you add in the Queen Isabella Causeway which has got great fishing, Pelicans and birds all over the place . It's a solid stop .

Port Isabel Historic Museum is in an old store with fishing gear and photos of the town when it was just shacks . It's coastal without all the clutter . It's definitely worth your time visiting . Number eight , Glen Rose , north of the hill country and south of Dallas .

Dinosaur tracks are one of the big draws here but it's too far off for most . In 1908 , they found footprints in the Paluxy River of sauropods and theropods 110 million years old , preserved in limestone .

They were first spotted by a kid that was out there fishing and now Dinosaur Valley State Park got them, five miles of trails plus fossil casts from the 1930s when they dug up a dinosaur for the American Museum of Natural History . Moonshiners used the caves around there during the Prohibition . They're still hidden up in the hills .

They were busted in the 1920s but they left the barrels behind . You can check out Bernard's Mill , an 1850s gristmill turned into an art museum , got the water wheel still running and everything . It was built by a guy who fought at San Jacinto , the battle where Texas defeated the Mexican general Santa Anna and won independence .

You add in the Somerville County Museum with Civil War gear , old photos and it's got a lot more going for it than just dinosaurs . The Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant is nearby . You take a tour of that place . It'll show you how it powers half of the state . Odd contrast to the fossils . It's old history meets Texas slow time .

There's nobody rushing around in Glen Rose . It's a cool little town to visit . You ought to check it out . All right , we're almost done . Just two more to go Number nine Luling

. Luling is on the way to San Antonio . People just don't stop unless they smell the BBQ . It's just like a little small blip in the road . Oil struck in 1922 , and the town went from nothing to a boomtown in months , rigs popping up like weeds . Luling peaked around 400 wells . I believe it was in the 1930s . There's a place called City Market .

It's been smoking brisket there since 1958 . And being good , texas proper BBQ, there's no sauce , it's just meat which stands alone . The fellow there will tell you . Well , if you need sauce then somebody didn't know what they were doing barbecuing that meat . It was started by a local family there and that family is still running it .

I've been to City Market many times . They have a fantastic BBQ . Now, William Taylor , which was a rough rider with Teddy Roosevelt lived there . He fought in Cuba . He came back a tough old man and worked as a cowboy . He died in 1931 after years of ranching there . If you visit the last full weekend in June you can enjoy the Luling Watermelon Thump Festival .

It's been ongoing since 1954 . Live music, got a carnival , vendors set up a market to sell their wares . It's got a car show and , of course , watermelon judging and auction , a watermelon eating contest , and now this is just for some of you, the World Championship Watermelon Seed Spitting Competition .

Now how often do you get to see world champion seed spitters in action ? They've also got the Zedler Mill . It's an 1880s cotton gin on the San Marcos River . It's now a park where the old gear is rusting away . the Luling Foundation Farms is a big surprise . It's a 1920s experiment in better cotton .

Grow a lot of cotton down in South Texas and they are still growing test crops there today . It's small , it's got something often overlooked and Luling is a nice little stop and don't ever forget to stop at City Market for lunch . You will not regret it .

And that brings us to number 10 , Waxahachie , just south of Dallas , and Dallas and Fort Worth , of course , get all the attention and this place just stays kind of quiet . It boomed in the 1890s with cotton . Cash built all those Victorian homes in the red sandstone courthouse in town .

It was finished in 1897 with carvings of faces some say were modeled after the architect's exes who dumped him mid-project . Ginger Rogers danced here as a little kid . She was born in 1911 in Waxahachie . She won a contest at age 14, went to Hollywood and became a star with Fred Astaire .

One unusual sight in town, and something that I know a lot of you would love to visit, is the Munster Mansion . It's a replica of the old 1960s TV show the Munsters . Relying solely on show footage , these people have recreated this mansion . It replicates everything to exact detail and some of the items were actually used on the show and they've got them .

You can take a tour and they also hold a monthly murder mystery dinner . It's something to see . You add in the Ellis County Museum . It's got old jail cells and cotton scales and a lot more . It's a step back in time . Take a walk through historic downtown . Make sure you also stop at the restored MKT Train Depot . Waxahachie just has style and history .

It's a great place for a weekend trip . A lot of great shopping there . Old Victorian homes , historic area downtown and of course you got the Munster House . You got to check that place out . So that's your 10

. Nacogdoches to Waxahachie All underrated , all worth checking out . These aren't the Texas spots you see everywhere . There's no bright lights , no overpriced nonsense . They're just places I stop at when I'm tired of the usual and want something that feels solid . It's got history , from revolutions to oil booms , people who shaped it .

Weird stuff that keeps it interesting . Each one's got more than you'd expect from a dot on the map . Texas is bigger than the famous names , and these show you how much more there is if you're willing to look past the obvious and you know what .

It doesn't matter what state you're in or what country you're in If you get away from those big touristy attractions . Every place has these little nooks and crannies with interesting history , odd things to see and do and big surprises around every corner . The smaller the town , the more it's got to tell you .

Gonzales sparking a war , Luling's oil rigs still pumping , Waxahachie's Hollywood tie , even Glen Rose's dinosaur tracks it's all these little places that keep catching me off guard with what they've got packed in . They don't need any hype and that's why I pick them over the crowds every single time . There's always something else to find .

So that's it for this episode . If you like this , leave a review wherever you're listening to this , or drop me an email at editor@ thetravelingfool . com , and tell me about a Texas spot I might have missed . And , who knows , maybe I'll mention it next time . And if you haven't noticed by now , you don't get some high , slickly polished podcast on this thing .

It's just me talking to you , but I appreciate you listening . Thanks for joining me and until next time , safe travels .