Name: Flatonia, Texas
Address: Flatonia, TX

Twelve People Inside the Hay Bales RoadyGoat

Interstate 10 runs along the edge of Flatonia, and around mile marker 658 on the nineteenth of May, 2025, a Fayette County deputy pulled over a white Ford pickup towing a gooseneck trailer stacked with big round hay bales. On this stretch of road that is the single most ordinary thing you can be hauling. It is what made it work. The bales had been hollowed out and fitted internally with metal frameworks, so that each one held a compartment with a person inside it, hidden behind a layer of hay. There were twelve people in there. The photographs that authorities released afterward went national, because the engineering is genuinely hard to look at: somebody had sat down and fabricated steel cages to fit inside round bales, in May, in Texas, with no ventilation to speak of. Two people were arrested as coordinators and the driver was hospitalized. The twelve were turned over to federal immigration authorities.

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Tower 3: The Last of Its Kind Left Standing in Texas RoadyGoat

That trim two-story railroad tower in the heart of town is one of the rarest survivors in Texas. This was one of the earliest and busiest rail crossings in the state, where the east-west Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio main line crossed the north-south San Antonio and Aransas Pass tracks at a right-angle diamond. So much traffic met here that the Railroad Commission authorized a manned interlocking tower, Tower 3, to keep trains from colliding. It went into service in October 1902 and a tower operator worked the crossing by hand for nearly a century. By the time it was decommissioned in 1996, it was one of Texas' longest-standing manually operated switching towers, effectively the last of its kind. Rather than let it be torn down, local residents, among them Martha and Arnold Tauch, fought to save it. The tower was moved to a trackside spot downtown and restored, and it now stands as a museum to the era when a human being, not a computer, personally cleared every train through Flatonia. (Source: Texas Railroad History; Handbook of Texas.)

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How 24 Levers Made It Physically Impossible to Crash RoadyGoat

The genius hidden inside Tower 3 is a piece of pure mechanical logic. The operator stood at a row of 24 heavy levers, each connected by long steel pipes and rods to a switch or a semaphore signal out on the diamond where the two railroads crossed. These were nicknamed Armstrong levers, because the pipe runs could stretch hundreds of feet and it took a strong arm to throw them. The clever part wasn't the muscle, it was the locking bed underneath. The levers were physically interlocked by a grid of metal bars and dogs so that they could only be pulled in safe combinations. If the operator had a signal set to send a train east-west, the machine mechanically blocked any lever that would have cleared a north-south train into the same crossing. You literally could not throw the wrong lever, no matter how tired or distracted you were. It is fail-safe engineering built decades before electronics, where the wrong action simply jams. A 24-lever machine ran this junction safely for almost a hundred years on that principle alone. (Source: Texas Railroad History.)

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Flatonia, TX

1874

Flatonia is on Interstate Highway 10, U.S. Highway 90, and the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad twelve miles west of Schulenburg in southwestern Fayette County. It was established on April 8, 1874, on land acquired from William Alexander Faries (Ferris, Farris) by the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway and named for pioneer merchant F. W. Flato. At that time residents of the original Flatonia settlement, one mile southeast, and Oso, three miles northeast, loaded their homes and businesses on wagons and moved to the new location on the tracks. The post office that had been established at old Flatonia in 1870 was moved to the new town without changing its name. Flatonia was incorporated on November 10, 1875, and its first election was held the following December 6. By 1878 the town had a population of 800, and the economy depended equally on cattle and cotton. The original settlers in the area were primarily Anglo-American. Opportunities provided by the railroad and inexpensive real estate, which sold for one to fifteen dollars an acre for uncultivated land and five to thirty-five dollars per acre for cultivated, brought successive waves of German, Bohemian, Greek, Arabian, and Italian immigrants. In the mid-1880s the Waco branch of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway completed a north-south line through Flatonia and brought new settlements, Muldoon on the north and Moulton on the south. This competition for business plus the agricultural depression of the time caused a decline in the town's economy and by 1900 occasioned a substantial loss in population. During the first half of the twentieth century the prospects of Flatonia rose and fell in response to the national economy and the markets for cotton and cattle. In 1950 the town had forty businesses, a population of 1,024, and a wide service area of farms and ranches. Cotton ceased to be a factor in the local economy during the 1960s, and many farms were converted to cattle ranching. The population remained between 1,000 and 1,500, and the number of businesses rose to sixty-nine by 1985. The completion of I-10 during the 1970s caused tourist-oriented businesses to move away from Highway 90 and the railroad to the new highway, a mile north. Each year a weekend-long "Czhilispiel," a festival named by Czechs and Germans who like chili, attracts visitors from a wide area of Central Texas. In 1990 the population of Flatonia was 1,295, and in 2000 it was 1,377.

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Williamson, Maro Woodley

1935

Maro Woodley Williamson, Texas Ranger, son of Charles Arthur Williamson and Lexa Key (Wood) Williamson, was born in Lavaca County, Texas, on June 1, 1903. His father was a farmer, and by the time of the 1920 census, the family lived in Flatonia, Texas, a town of 950 people in Fayette County midway between Houston and San Antonio. Williamson attended three years of high school and later served as manager of a pressing shop. In August 1930 he ran for constable of Precinct 6 in Flatonia. In his first campaign, Williamson defeated W. G. Doyle by a vote of 322 to 178, and he subsequently won reelection in 1932 and 1934. In the latter campaign, Williamson ran an advertisement highlighting his "fearlessness" in the "face of danger" and noted especially his role in capturing bank robbers in nearby Carmine, Texas, and his successful effort to recover the stolen car of ex-governor William P. Hobby 's wife. In truth, however, Williamson spent much of his time on more frequent problems, such as thefts and filling-station robberies-the latter being a common crime of that era (most famously committed across the Southwest and Midwest by Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker ). In September 1934 Williamson served as a delegate to the Texas state Democratic convention in Galveston, where the Democratic party overwhelmingly approved the nomination of James Allred as the party's candidate for governor. As governor, Allred initiated significant reforms. In particular, he created the Texas Department of Public Safety to bring order to the criminal justice system and reform the Texas Rangers . Under the previous governor, Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson , the Rangers had been reduced to a force of thirty-two men, their operational budget had been cut in half, and their longevity pay had been eliminated. Ferguson had also doled out 2,344 special Ranger commissions to her political supporters, including morticians, wrestlers, cooks, and barbers. Modern historians have argued that, as a result of Ferguson's actions and appointments, "With few exceptions, the Ferguson Rangers composed a sorry lot, and the effectiveness and hence the reputation of the force plummeted." As the new Texas governor, Allred hoped to change all of this. With his adjutant general, Carl Nesbitt, he canceled all special Ranger appointments and discharged virtually all of the Ferguson Rangers. Maro Williamson received word of his appointment to a new Allred Ranger force in February 1935. Formally joining on March 1, he quickly went to work on the governor's pet project: the investigation and destruction of illegal gambling and liquor sites that had sprung up during the Prohibition era. In March 1935 Williamson accompanied W. H. Kirby on a gaming raid at the Play House night club in Houston, where Kirby ordered Williamson and fellow Rangers Fred Holland, John England, Zeno Smith, and Edward M. Davenport to break up gaming machines and furnishings worth $13,000. Later that spring, Kirby led Williamson and Davenport to Beaumont, where they raided three alleged liquor dealers and obtained 340 cases of alcohol worth more than $6,000. Williamson's role in the gaming and liquor raids in Houston and Galveston continued for years. He and E. M. Davenport received a commendation from the East Texas newspaper the Tyler Morning Telegraph in 1939 for having "made 305 gaming arrests" that year. Maro Williamson married Frances McCullough Petty on June 1, 1936. By 1937 he had assumed other duties in his work as a Ranger, including investigating murders and securing confessions from the accused. In Orange County in February 1937 he helped Sheriff C. H. Merriweather and Ranger captain A. R. Mace investigate the murder of Hal Hall, a twenty-six-year-old dairyman, who had been killed eight years earlier. A month later in another case, Williamson obtained a confession from thirty-seven-year-old Lonnie Joiner from Orange, Texas. Joiner was assessed the death penalty for murdering his wife, Viola. As Williamson invest

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Hunter, Robert Hancock

Star and Wreath Fought for Texas Independence at Gonzales, Siege of Bexar and San Jacinto. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962

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F.W. Flato

1846

Born on February 22, 1820, in Bremen, Germany, F.W. Flato immigrated to Texas in 1846 and settled in Austin County. Flato and his wife, Sophia Welhausen, moved to southwestern Fayette County by 1866 where they operated a successful mercantile business. Eventually, the town was named Flatonia in his honor and he became its postmaster. When the GH&SA Railway approached Fayette County in 1873, Flato helped negotiate the move of the town closer to the rail line. Ever the entrepreneur, Flato built a brick factory and a steam saw mill, but was best known for his work promoting land sales to immigrants settling the area along the new rail line. After a final move to Kendall County, Flato died on May 18, 1899, and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Flatonia.

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Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church

1854

In 1854, Matej (Matthias) Novak (1818-1896), his four children and brother Anton Novak moved to the area and settled along Mulberry Creek in what was then a frontier area known as Hottentot. Other Czech Catholic families began to move to the area and, by 1864, Father Victor Gury from Frelsburg came through periodically to attend to their spiritual needs followed by Father Joseph J. Martiniere. After the Civil War, the parishioners built a small stone chapel, sometimes called a hut and another small cabin for visiting priests one-half mile east of the current site. Father Joseph Bittkowski delivered the first mass at midnight on Christmas Eve 1865 and became the new parish's first resident priest. With the high influx of Czech Catholic families, attracted to the Fayette County area, the little chapel became the first predominately Czech Catholic church in Texas and soon could not accommodate the growing congregation. In 1866-67, a new wood structure was built closer to the town center, now renamed Praha. Thirty years later, in 1895, the current structure with hand cut, locally quarried stone was erected with much of the labor donated by parishioners. Painted frescoes on the vaulted wooden ceilings reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican were masterfully created by Swiss artist Gottfried Flury. The parish's first Catholic school opened in 1896 in a two-story building administered by the Sisters of the Divine Providence and then the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. The parish and its church have stood for more than 150 years not only as a source of hope, strength and faith for the local community, but also as an outward physical symbol of the pride Czech immigrants and their descendants have for their religion, culture and heritage. (2016)

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Hamilton, Isaac D.

1836

Isaac D. Hamilton, soldier in the Texas Revolution , was a native of Courtland, Alabama, the son of Francis and Mary Hamilton. In 1835 he joined John Shackelford 's company of Red Rovers to fight for the independence of Texas from Mexico. He was quartermaster, fifth in the chain of command, with the rank of second sergeant. His company joined James W. Fannin, Jr. , at Goliad and fought in the battle of Coleto , after which Fannin surrendered to Gen. José de Urrea . Hamilton was one of four Red Rovers who survived the Goliad Massacre . Seriously wounded and left by his companions, he accomplished, according to historian Harbert Davenport , the "most incredible of all the escapes from the massacre at Goliad," only to be recaptured by Plácido Benavides at Dimmitt's Point and sent to Victoria, where he was again scheduled to be shot. But word came that Sam Houston had defeated Antonio López de Santa Anna at San Jacinto. In the confusion that followed in the Mexican camp Hamilton again escaped, with the aid of Francisca de Alavez , the "Angel of Goliad." He eventually made his way back to Courtland, Alabama, recuperated from his ordeal, and returned to Texas. He never regained his health. On February 13, 1858, the Texas legislature approved a measure awarding Hamilton a league of land near the site of present Beaumont as a reward for his services in the revolution. But before the land was surveyed he died at Moulton, Texas, in 1859. He was buried in Old Moulton Cemetery.

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Flatonia, Texas

Music in Flatonia

Songs About Flatonia

Artists From Flatonia

Rivers & Roads in Song near Flatonia

History of Flatonia

Twelve People Inside the Hay Bales RoadyGoat

Tower 3: The Last of Its Kind Left Standing in Texas RoadyGoat

How 24 Levers Made It Physically Impossible to Crash RoadyGoat

Flatonia, TX

Williamson, Maro Woodley

Hunter, Robert Hancock

F.W. Flato

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church

Hamilton, Isaac D.

Things to Do in Flatonia

Everything Near Flatonia