Famous for Old South Flavor : Sleepy Texas Town Ready for the Races

Listen to the wind rustling the moss-draped trees that shade antebellum mansions. Hear the Southern drawls and the clip-clop of carriage horses. The fifth-oldest town in Texas doesn’t sound like a Texas town.

Dubbed “Belle of the Bayou” in its pre-Civil War splendor, Jefferson could be the westernmost Southern town in America. This East Texas hamlet never caught the fever of tearing down the old to make way for the new.

Antique houses, gracious ways and a sense of place draw thousands of visitors to events such as the spring Pilgrimage, a celebration of Jefferson’s checkered past.

But the talk in the Marion County seat this spring was of Jefferson’s future and whether, perhaps, quarter-horse races could attract more visitors than the historic hotels, 23 bed-and-breakfast inns, antiques shops and fanciful folklore.

Tourism Main Industry

“If it wasn’t for tourism, we wouldn’t survive,” said Gary Dinsmore, bakery proprietor and immediate past president of the Marion County Chamber of Commerce.

But some businessmen and promoters think the town’s charm isn’t enough: That’s why some of its 2,700 residents argued for the race track, which Dinsmore says could bring in as much as $8 million a year.

Others were less sure.

“I’m in a position where, as a Methodist minister, I have a certain stance--from a moral aspect,” said Steve Turner, who runs a downtown jewelry store and a bed-and-breakfast when he isn’t preaching at a rural church. “The advantage would be to bring more tourists. As long as it doesn’t affect our children or their lives in a moral sense, I think people have a right.”

Many residents share Turner’s mixed emotions, an eagerness for a stronger economic base along with anxiety about the race track’s impact on the quality of life.

Track Option Passed

In January, the desire for more income won out as the voters overwhelmingly approved a local option on parimutuel betting. A group of investors is ready to put up as much as $15 million to build a track.

Dinsmore, speaking for investors he would not name, said the track would be built within 12 months after the state issues a license for it. The Texas Racing Commission, however, may not license small tracks--such as the one proposed for Jefferson--for some time.

Meanwhile, local leaders are looking to the past to sustain Jefferson’s future.

The town’s fabled fortunes came quickly after its 1841 founding and stemmed from its geographical location, shrewd business sense and a freak of nature that made it a vital port of call for the steamboats that carried East Texas cotton and timber to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans.

As the farthest accessible point upriver from Shreveport, La., Jefferson quickly became the state’s largest inland port. But its prosperity evaporated in 1873, when the Army Corps of Engineers dynamited a 200-mile, natural logjam in the Red River and the water level at Jefferson subsided several feet.

Railroad Spite Legend

Legend has it that railroad baron Jay Gould, knowing the town would be destroyed, had ordered the river cleared because Jefferson’s leaders wouldn’t let his rail line come through the central business district.

Though the dates of Gould’s visits to Jefferson and the clearing of the river do not coincide with that story, his notoriety is undiminished. His rail car is preserved here and a room in the landmark Excelsior House hotel is named and decorated in his honor.

After the logjam explosion, what had been Texas’ fifth-largest city languished for nearly a century, until the community situated between Lake O’ the Pines and Caddo Lake began making money on its past.

In the 1960s, the local garden club bought and restored the Excelsior House, a downtown hotel continuously operated since 1858. In 1964, the Jefferson Historical Society turned the old federal courthouse into a museum, and residents knew they were on to something.

“Tourists never did fool with us until the garden club bought the Excelsior,” said Betty Lake, a 70-year-old native who now keeps Jefferson’s Carnegie Library. “It’s always been a quiet town.”