Roadside Attractions in Gillespie County
Texas·4 places
History
Air Force One-Half
The small four engine jet parked in an open hangar on the LBJ Ranch is one of the JetStars that carried Lyndon Johnson between Washington and the Pedernales, and he gave it its nickname. Any aircraft carrying the president is Air Force One, so Johnson called the Lockheed JetStar, a plane sixty feet long with room for thirteen passengers, Air Force One-Half.
Quirky
Howard Huge
The fibreglass giant standing beside US 290 east of Fredericksburg is Howard Huge, a Muffler Man who spent more than forty years in Maine before coming to Texas. He is one of the roughly twenty foot fibreglass giants that International Fiberglass of Venice, California, made in the 1960s and 1970s as roadside advertising for car businesses and restaurants: a Bow-tie model, with a bow tie at his…
History
The LBJ Birthplace
The farmhouse where Lyndon Johnson was born on 27 August 1908 was torn down in the 1940s, and the one standing on its site on the Pedernales is a reconstruction that Johnson had built while he was president. His grandfather Sam Ealy Johnson Sr. had built the original in 1889. In 1964 the Austin architect J.
Music History
Viva Terlingua
The dance hall at Luckenbach is where Jerry Jeff Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded Viva Terlingua in August 1973, an album that helped make the hall famous. The band set up in the empty hall over several days and cut most of the record without an audience.
Elsewhere in Texas
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
