Anderson County Road 404

June 27, 2025

I’ve written about Epic and Beautiful things. Today I am writing about Lovely things.

In late June and early July, we took what I have started thinking of as an “anti-vacation.” It was supposed to be a three-week break from work to recharge and rest. For myself, I hoped to use the time to recover from my work burnout, do some exploring, and dive back into my astronomy hobby.

But the time off had mostly the opposite effect on me. It took me more than two weeks to stop worrying about my backlog at work–the worrying turned out to be justified–and we were both too tired to deal with the hassles of a long trip. Add to that, the weather was horrible nearly the entire time and the tragedy in Central Texas weighed heavily upon us. Kristi and I know the heartbreak of suddenly losing a child, especially during a time that should have been joyful and exciting for them. The sudden loss of so many children and the grieving of their families is overwhelming to contemplate.

But the world isn’t a joyful place by its nature. It’s also not a sad place. It just is. In his novel, The Light That Failed, Rudyard Kipling eloquently expressed this thought:

The world is very lovely, and it’s very horrible–and it doesn’t care about your life or mine or anything else.

I admit that I’ve never read the book, and probably never will, but that quote has stuck with me in the many years since I learned of it. (Say what you will about Kipling–there is much to argue regarding his character and the mindset of his time–but he excelled at poetic expression.)

The “lovely” of the world is still here, but sometimes we have to look past the “horrible” to see it. Furthermore, we must embrace the lovely despite the horrible.

It has taken me a while to settle down from my “horrible” vacation so that I may reflect on the “lovely” things that happened during that time. Despite not doing much vacation-wise, Kristi and I did get to spend a lot of time just enjoying being together. That in and of itself is lovely because she is my best friend and I am hers. Nearly any time we spend doing things as a couple is a joyful time. And so here I sit on a Sunday afternoon nearly a month later writing this blog post, trying to put my thoughts together in some sort of coherent fashion to document one of the lovely experiences we had.

We managed to go on a few adventures to new places during those three weeks. This is a chronicle of a trip that we took down a road in Anderson County, north of the county seat of Palestine. (For those of you not familiar with Texas towns, Palestine is pronounced “PAL-uh-steen.”)

Route: Anderson County Road 404

A couple of days prior to taking this trip we had driven up to New York, Athens, and Palestine. They are part of what I call the Texas World Tour, which is a list of destinations in the state with the names of foreign cities (mostly European and North African). Sadly, I was suffering from exhaustion and a clouded mind and so documented very little of the trip. But I did take note of the beautiful landscapes, and it sparked my curiosity about any backroads in the area. Kristi got some pictures of the Henderson and Anderson County courthouses, which will be published in another post.

The area around Athens and Palestine is sometimes called the East Texas Hill Country. It is, in our opinions, a very beautiful region. While the hills are not as dramatic as those in the Central Texas Hill Country, they do excel in one particular aspect: trees. Real, honest to goodness trees–not those large bushes that cling to the few moist layers on the limestone hills of the Edwards Plateau. The downside is that it is more difficult to see the hills for the trees. Despite this, however, the area offers some lovely scenery.

Our trip started in Palestine with a brief visit to see the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Anderson County was founded out of part of the land that had formerly been granted by the Mexican government to empresario David G. Burnet in 1826. Early colonization efforts failed to meet expectations and population growth was slow. But by 1843 a trading post had been established in what would eventually become Palestine, and in 1846 the site was incorporated by the Texas Legislature to be the seat of the newly established county.

The success of Palestine and Anderson County was assured with the arrival of the International and Great Northern Railroad in 1874, establishing Palestine as a major shipping hub in the region. St. Joseph Catholic Church was built to serve the railroad workers and the growing population of the town. That building burned down in 1890, and was replaced with the present building, constructed from locally sourced mud bricks, and named Sacred Heart.

The Redlands Hotel sits across the street from Sacred Heart, a couple of blocks north of the original location of the I&GN depot. It was constructed in 1914 to serve visitors to the city and then rebuilt sometime in the 1970s to early 1980s. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and continues to serve the community and visitors.

While viewing the church and hotel I came across an oddly misplaced water meter cover. It appears to be for the meter that serves the Palestine Area Chamber of Commerce building. Labeled “City of Plano,” it was the only one I saw in the area that was not labeled “City of Palestine,” but the pattern imprinted on it was the same as the others.

I reached out to the Palestine utilities department, the Palestine Area Chamber of Commerce, the Plano Chamber of Commerce, and the maker of the cover, DFW Plastics, to inquire whether there was an interesting story behind this. DFW Plastics responded that they did not know how the lid ended up in Palestine and that there “could have been a number of different scenarios” to explain it. The lady I spoke with at the Palestine Area Chamber of Commerce (who was very nice, by the way) was not aware of the unusual lid. The lady I spoke to at the Plano Chamber of Commerce seemed a bit dismissive of my inquiry and was not aware of any lid shenanigans. She, in fact, deflected any discussion of the water meter and kept reminding me that the Chamber was not associated with the city government or the management of its utilities (duh). This, of course, seemed mighty suspicious to me. The Palestine utilities department had not responded as of this writing.

The image from Google Street View of the water meter located next to the building that houses the Plano Chamber of Commerce shows a similar lid, but with a different pattern imprinted upon it. So, it does not appear that someone swapped the lids.

At present the mystery remains. Was it a shipping mistake? Is someone playing a prank? We may never know, but I’m sure that The Truth is out there…somewhere. If I discover any further details of interest, then I will post about them later.

There is a retaining wall between Sacred Heart and the parking lot on its west side. The wall is composed of large chunks of limonite, a variety of iron ore. “Iron ore” rock was very common where I grew up, so it always catches my attention. I’ll talk more about limonite and other rocks in a future post where Kristi and I went rock hunting in Houston County.

Moving on from Palestine, we drove up TX-19 past the community of Montalba to Anderson County Road 404. The road starts just south of the Henderson County line and heads east a short way before turning right and heading south. Soon, it opens up into a beautiful vista across wide pastures with low hills in the distance on three sides.

Like many East Texas county roads, CR 404 runs in and out of forests, pastures, and hedge rows. The pasture below opened up to our left. I had to stop and take in this idyllic scene that could have come out of the opening sequence to Little House on the Prairie.

Long before we met, Kristi coined the term “Pretty Hay” to describe golden-brown hay bales on a green pasture. On the way to church one day before we got married, she introduced me to the term as we passed a field of golden bales. Ever since then we look for Pretty Hay together.

Pretty Hay must be golden brown (not gray and moldy) and sitting on a well-kept pasture of green grass (not patchy or brown). There are a lot of pastures with hay bales, but Pretty Hay is very rare. During this drive, though, we spotted two pastures of Pretty Hay!

CR 404 climbs, descends, and skirts several hills. The trees block the view of the landscape, so except for a few twists and turns and cut throughs, the layout of the terrain is not always obvious. Topographical maps, however, reveal the contours of the hills and valleys.

Concord Baptist Church is located at the intersection of CR 404 and CR 4040 (which dead ends on private property). It has been the heart of the local community for a very long time. The name “Concord” may have been given to the church by settlers from a community of the same name in Louisiana.

The community was originally named Fitzgerald, after the families who settled in the area in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century the town had a post office, two general stores, barber shop, grist mill, cotton gin, metal foundry, and a school. The post office closed in 1903, after which the community slowly lost its identity as Fitzgerald and began to assume the name of Concord, after the Baptist church. The town seems to have faded rapidly after the closure of the post office, and by the 1930s it was no longer labeled on highway maps.

Elda Gatlin Parrish compiled a great deal of information on the fascinating history of Fitzgerald/Concord. I highly recommend visiting her website (beware of the popup ads, though).

One of the stories relayed by Ms. Parrish from the oral history of Fitzgerald is that of the origin of a holly tree that stands in the middle of Concord Cemetery. We did not explore the cemetery, so I cannot attest as to whether the tree is still there. But according to her account, it was still standing as of 1997.

The story describes a young couple who passed through the area heading west with a group of settlers in the 1870s. The couple had planned to marry, but the young woman fell ill and passed away. Her heartbroken fiancé buried her in Concord Cemetery and planted a holly tree as a headstone. In 1997 the tree was measured at 60 feet tall with a crown spread of 57 feet, and a circumference of 110 inches. That placed it among the largest known holly trees in Texas. So, a little bit of lovely from the horrible…

After our brief stop in Concord, we continued south on CR 404.

Not far from Concord we came across the second pasture of Pretty Hay! Note the hill in the background–this was one of the few places where a hill was clearly visible along this road. The storm clouds were somewhere between I-69 and the Louisiana border, as I recall.

We didn’t take a lot of pictures from this point forward. The drive was quite beautiful, and we were simply living in the moment. But we did have to stop and circle back to take some pictures of an unexpected vista we encountered from a hillside near the intersection of CR 404 and FM 321.

This view goes for miles and miles across the Mound Prairie Creek valley. It is difficult to tell from the image, but the hillside slopes steeply about 20 feet to the ground below and then continues sloping another 120 feet to the far tree line. That’s pretty high by East Texas standards. I envy the folks who live in the houses on the other side of the road. They have a spectacular view!

There are other areas along this road that have similar vistas, but none were as easy to photograph.

CR 404 ends at CR 403, also named Link Street. Turning left onto CR 403, we drove to where it ends at Loop 256 near Davey Dogwood Park.

We ended our trip with a very nice dinner at Mario’s Mexican Grill in Palestine.

So, there was much lovely in that trip, and I highly encourage you, dear reader, to explore the area if such things interest you. We plan on going back to drive some more Anderson County roads when the opportunity presents itself. I suspect there are many more interesting and lovely things to see.