How did you find your way to San Angelo?
This is a common question when I reveal that I'm a tourist. Unlike some other cities of a similar size, such as Abilene and Las Cruces, San Angelo is not on a major interstate route. There are no popular songs written about it. If I heard of it before I saw it on the map last week, I don't recall. I found it by looking for a place to stop East of Pecos that wasn't where I stopped before, and it was in about the right location. TripAdvisor listed enough activities that sounded interesting to make it sound attractive.
There's something about driving across West Texas that makes the first city of any size that I encounter shine a bit more brightly than it would otherwise. That happened a bit with Las Cruces on my way West, and it happened again here. When I arrived at my hotel in San Angelo, it felt like I was in Disneyland. The sun was shining. The hotel staff was perky instead of sullen, and the hotel was a different brand than I was used to and the colors used to decorate were new-to-me and cheerful.
Then I tried to drive across town. That didn't feel much like Disneyland. People who know the city drive through it fast. There are some odd intersections with streets coming in at funny angles. I drove through two of them on my way downtown. Then there are the five-lane one-way streets that cross downtown. The river that runs through the city curves several times as it meanders through, so just noting that the place I was headed to was "across the river" turned out to be very useful. There are a lot of streets that cross the river and a lot of bridges (looking at the map, I count 19 although 2 of them are for highway 67 -- one for each direction). Because of all the river curves, some bridges are perpendicular to other bridges, and some cross at other odd angles. It's easy to get confused about where the river is and what side of it I'm on.
I did do a bit of exploring downtown, including a tour of Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum. The museum occupies the building that used to house the bordello of that name, which was in business until 1950 when it was raided by the Texas Rangers and put out of business permanently. Where else but Texas do you hear a story like that? Much of the original furnishings were either spirited away or confiscated in the raid, but they have decorated with as much original stuff as they can, and stayed true to the period with replacement furnishings. There are tunnels into the building from more respectable businesses in the area. The generation that would have stories to tell about the business is dying off and the museum would like more information, but people have remained reluctant to talk, all the way to the grave. So it goes. Here are some photos I took there.
The hallway:
There's something about driving across West Texas that makes the first city of any size that I encounter shine a bit more brightly than it would otherwise. That happened a bit with Las Cruces on my way West, and it happened again here. When I arrived at my hotel in San Angelo, it felt like I was in Disneyland. The sun was shining. The hotel staff was perky instead of sullen, and the hotel was a different brand than I was used to and the colors used to decorate were new-to-me and cheerful.
Then I tried to drive across town. That didn't feel much like Disneyland. People who know the city drive through it fast. There are some odd intersections with streets coming in at funny angles. I drove through two of them on my way downtown. Then there are the five-lane one-way streets that cross downtown. The river that runs through the city curves several times as it meanders through, so just noting that the place I was headed to was "across the river" turned out to be very useful. There are a lot of streets that cross the river and a lot of bridges (looking at the map, I count 19 although 2 of them are for highway 67 -- one for each direction). Because of all the river curves, some bridges are perpendicular to other bridges, and some cross at other odd angles. It's easy to get confused about where the river is and what side of it I'm on.
I did do a bit of exploring downtown, including a tour of Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum. The museum occupies the building that used to house the bordello of that name, which was in business until 1950 when it was raided by the Texas Rangers and put out of business permanently. Where else but Texas do you hear a story like that? Much of the original furnishings were either spirited away or confiscated in the raid, but they have decorated with as much original stuff as they can, and stayed true to the period with replacement furnishings. There are tunnels into the building from more respectable businesses in the area. The generation that would have stories to tell about the business is dying off and the museum would like more information, but people have remained reluctant to talk, all the way to the grave. So it goes. Here are some photos I took there.
The hallway:
An original piece, the fainting couch:
And a shoulda-been-there-but-wasn't-really loveseat:
The downtown has a number of Old West buildings preserved:
And then there is the sheep thing. Wool has been an important part of San Angelo's history. In 2007, to commemorate the Miss Wool of America Pageant (which doesn't exist anymore, and which was a competition among female humans, not female sheep), a local group had a whole bunch of sheep statues made and they were painted to advertise local businesses. You can't miss the sheep if you're in San Angelo. Here are a couple that I ran across:
Okay, that's enough about San Angelo, Texas.
Eastward Ho!
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