In historic Navasota, the ‘Little Easy’ gets set for a growth spurt
NAVASOTA — My friend Annie Gowen of the Washington Post flew to Texas last week to cover the George H.W. Bush funeral train and found herself in this historic Grimes County town near a bend in the Navasota River. Strolling around downtown and talking to people on the street, standing beside the tracks with respectful residents as the train passed slowly by, the native Kansan and current D.C. resident fell in love with the place.
“Navasota was so charming I may move there when I retire!” she proclaimed via email. Retirement may be some years away, and yet her enthusiasm got me thinking: Can you get a feel for a place just by hanging around a little while?
My wife says you can (and I tend to agree). Laura reminded me that when we were thinking about becoming country gentry a few years ago — in the Fayetteville area maybe or La Grange or Round Top — that Navasota had “a good feel.”
She’s right, as I discovered earlier this week, although I had to think about what goes into the good-feel mix. For Navasota, it would seem to be a busy downtown that evokes a sense of history; leafy residential neighborhoods with well-kept older homes; a healthy economy; a community that cares about good schools, museums and libraries; a lively local newspaper; and a diverse mix of people who seem to get along with each other (despite the town’s Old South past).
A town’s well-being — particularly a small town — is no accident, Mayor Bert Miller told me. A Navasota native who’s been in the insurance business for many years, Miller has been mayor since 2006. He remembers a time not that long ago when the town was on a downhill slide.
“Things were stagnant,” he recalled as we sat in a meeting room at City Hall, a handsome brick structure that replaced an older City Hall in 2011. “Our schools were struggling. Our downtown was barely hanging on. The city had financial problems.”
Miller credits an able, experienced city manager and a forward-looking city council whose members tend to nuts-and-bolts details — taking care of infrastructure, streamlining the permit process for new construction, trying to get ahead of inevitable growth and development.
“We’ve been huge on shoplocal,” the mayor said. “We pound and we pound and we pound.”
Plans for a Walmart that have yet to materialize spurred the shop-local effort. It’s not easy, even without Walmart, because College Station with its shopping malls and super markets is only 15 miles away.
“What I tell people is that a hundred dollars you spend in College Station could pay for another police officer over here,” Miller said. “I want people to get as much as they can possibly get without leaving Navasota. It’s a challenge.”
A dream realized
Thanks to “location, location, location,” to quote City Manager Brad Stafford, growth is both on its way and already here. With spillover from the spreading megalopolis an hour to the south and from fast-growing Aggieland just minutes to the north, growth and change has honed in on Navasota, population at the moment about 7,000. Local industry is thriving, as well.
“Highway 249 will connect us to Tomball when it’s built,” the mayor noted. “We’ve doubled home-building permits from last year.”
Suzie Linnenbank is one of the Main Street newcomers. A 30-year resident of Katy before she and her husband, Wes, moved to nearby Washington-on-the-Brazos, she had long fantasized about owning a smalltown book store. She thought she might have to move to a quaint Vermont village to fulfill her dream — until she discovered Navasota.
On Aug. 3, she opened Muddy Water Books in a historic building she has since discovered is haunted.
“Old Papa Gessner (the original owner) is always throwing books off the shelves,” she said, laughing.
Linnenbank nodded toward busy Washington Avenue beyond the front windows, decorated these days with holiday stacks of books artfully arranged. (So far the ghostly old-timer hasn’t objected.) “There’s tons of functions, always something going on downtown,” she said, “and everybody has been so helpful.”
Violent history
A year and a half ago, Texas A&M photography professor Glen Vigus and his husband, Tim Vigus, opened a commercial photography studio in the Giesel House, the oldest commercial building in downtown Navasota. It’s one of a number of venerable buildings that have been restored recently. Erected in 1860 by R.H. Giesel and his Germanborn wife, Fannie, near the Houston & Texas Central Railroad depot, the three-story building originally housed a hotel and restaurant. In 1871, according to the state historical marker attached to the building, Fannie renamed her restaurant “The Good Morning John.”
“A lot of people don’t know that in the late ’30s, in the years leading up to the war, the old railroad hotel was a Corps dorm,” Glen Vigus said. “A hundred members of the Aggie Corps of Cadets lived here.”
Vigus calls Navasota “the Little Easy,” a play on the New Orleans nickname. “Everybody’s laid back, everybody gets along,” he says, pointing out that the population percentages are “30-3030, whites, Latinos and blacks.”
Laid-back and easy-going would not have described Navasota more than a century ago, when the Giesel House shared space along Railroad Street with cotton merchants and livestock sellers, brothels and bars. In 1865, a disgruntled band of Confederate veterans torched a warehouse filled with cotton and gunpowder and nearly burned down the town. Later in the decade, Navasota became a KKK hotbed, and a standoff between masked members and federal soldiers turned violent.
By 1908, Navasota was so lawless and ungovernable that city fathers hired a young Texas Ranger named Frank Hamer to be city marshal. For three years, the fearless lawman battled local toughs and gangsters. Once order was restored, he rejoined the Rangers and became nationally known years later for engineering the deadly demise of gangsters Bonnie and Clyde.
These days, a statue of Hamer on the City Hall lawn looks out over a calm and orderly small town. Since Hamer is confined to his pedestal, Navosotans have another “Texas Ranger” they can call on if need be. “Walker, Texas Ranger” — aka Chuck Norris — has a working cattle ranch not far from town.