Hillsboro, Texas

Everything Hillsboro is known for

6 songs mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Hillsboro

Songs About Hillsboro

the interstate 35 waltz
garret t. capps & justin boyd
10%
Peggy Sue
Buddy Holly
9%
"Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue"
That'll Be the Day
Buddy Holly
9%
"That'll be the day when you say goodbye"
The Closest Thing
Kylie Frey
8%
"forty miles down 35 it dawned on me"
If Tommy Duncan’s Voice Was Booze
Brennen Leigh
6%
"But if Tommy Duncan's voice was booze I'd stay drunk all the time"
I’ve Been Everywhere...In Texas
Brian Burns
5%
"Hillsboro"

Artists From Hillsboro

T
Tommy Duncan
country
G
Ghosts Of Hill County
americana

Rivers & Roads in Song near Hillsboro

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Hillsboro.

Interstate 35 43 songs Brazos River 42 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs Interstate 45 8 songs

Musical Heritage

The Fire That Saved Texas Courthouses RoadyGoat

1993

The fire that nearly destroyed Hillsboro's courthouse ended up saving historic courthouses across Texas. On New Year's Day in 1993, an electrical short set the 1890 Hill County Courthouse ablaze. The roof and the seventy-foot clock tower collapsed, and the courthouse bell, cast in Baltimore and weighing more than fifteen hundred pounds, crashed down into the district courtroom. When the smoke cleared, only the limestone exterior walls were still standing. Instead of replacing it with a modern box, Hill County chose to rebuild the courthouse exactly as architect W. C. Dodson had drawn it, finishing the restoration in 1999. Hillsboro native Bob Bullock, then the lieutenant governor, championed the effort, and the most famous musician from a tiny town just down the road in Hill County played benefit concerts to help pay for it. The disaster helped inspire what became the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program, which has since rescued courthouses all over the state. (Sources: Texas Highways; Texas Historical Commission; Architexas.)

The Hillsboro Drummer Who Helped Invent Rock RoadyGoat

1939

Hillsboro's best music story might be a drummer. Jerry Allison was born here in 1939, and he became the drummer for Buddy Holly and the Crickets, one of the bands that essentially invented rock and roll. Allison co-wrote two of the songs that started it all, Peggy Sue and That'll Be the Day. He always told the story that the second title came straight off the movie screen: he and Holly had just watched John Wayne repeat the line over and over in the 1956 western The Searchers, and as Allison remembered it, within about thirty minutes they had written the song. It is a remarkable thing to stand on the Hillsboro square and realize this small Central Texas town has a direct line to the birth of modern rock. (Sources: Wikipedia, with cited sources; Vintage Rock, 2022 interview.)

Hillsboro's Hand in a Famous Prison Album RoadyGoat

1932

Coming out of Huntsville's prison-music history, there is a perfect Hillsboro footnote. Record producer Bob Johnston was born here in 1932. He went on to produce some of the most important records of his era, working with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Simon and Garfunkel. And he produced the man in black's landmark live album recorded inside Folsom Prison, which means this Hill County town has an indirect hand in one of the most famous prison recordings ever made. Johnston summed up his whole production philosophy in one rough, honest line that fit a room full of inmates as well as any studio: don't ever quit, don't stop playing, and if you do, don't come back. (Sources: Wikipedia, with cited sources; UNCUT; Briscoe Center.)

Willie's Picnic at Carl's Corner RoadyGoat

About seven miles northeast of Hillsboro is Carl's Corner, a town that began as a truck stop, with giant dancing frogs on its sign. On the Fourth of July, nineteen eighty seven, Willie Nelson, who was born just down the road in Abbott, brought his fifteenth annual Fourth of July Picnic there, to a treeless field off Interstate thirty five E, and dedicated it to the nation's truckers. The town's population was about two hundred twenty. Police estimated twenty to twenty five thousand people came. Willie opened the show before ten in the morning with Whiskey River, and the lineup ran to thirty acts, including Kris Kristofferson, Joe Walsh, Roger Miller, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Asleep at the Wheel. The truck stop owner, Carl Cornelius, was also the town's mayor. As he told a reporter that spring, Willie and I are old friends. That's why he is coming here.

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Hillsboro's Blues Singers RoadyGoat

Two early blues singers came out of Hillsboro. Maggie Jones was born here in eighteen ninety four, went to New York, and was billed as the Texas Nightingale. She recorded nearly forty songs, some of them with Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, and in nineteen twenty eight and twenty nine she toured Europe, including the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Later she came back to Texas and sang on Sunday nights on WBAP radio in Fort Worth. Lillian Glinn was born in Hillsboro too, and between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen twenty nine she became nationally known for her recordings, cutting her best known record, Shake It Down, in New Orleans in nineteen twenty eight, before leaving the blues behind for the church.

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History of Hillsboro

Reverse-Engineering a Lost Courthouse RoadyGoat

1993

Rebuilding the courthouse was really a feat of forensic engineering. When the fire left only the limestone shell standing, engineers and preservation architects had to play detective. First they stabilized cracked, heat-shocked stone that could have come down at any moment. Then they had to judge which original stones and structural pieces were sound enough to reuse and which had to be recut to match. The hardest part was the seventy-foot clock tower, which had burned and collapsed completely. To rebuild it, they studied old photographs, surviving fragments, and the original drawings, essentially reverse-engineering a structure that no longer existed. They reproduced the ornamental sheet-metal work and the historic roof forms by hand, then threaded modern structural reinforcement, wiring, and fire-safety systems through the building without spoiling its 1890 face. It is a master class in studying what survives to recover what is gone. (Sources: Architexas; Texas Historical Commission.)

Bonnie and Clyde's Disputed Hillsboro Killing RoadyGoat

1932

On the night of April 30th, 1932, members of the Barrow gang robbed a Hillsboro storekeeper and jeweler named J. N. Bucher, and Bucher was shot and killed. For decades the killing was pinned on Clyde Barrow himself, but the accounts do not actually agree. Most say Clyde stayed out in the getaway car because Bucher's son could have recognized him, and that someone else went inside and fired. The man later charged was Raymond Hamilton, though several accounts insist he was not the gunman either and name a different gang member, Ted Rogers. That disagreement is the real story. Hillsboro became one of many Texas crime scenes that got swept into the Bonnie and Clyde legend, the kind of place where the folklore and the documented evidence have never quite lined up. (Sources: Wikipedia, with cited sources; Find a Grave; period press accounts.)

Branded Burger: Home of the Branded Bun RoadyGoat

If you stop for one bite in Hillsboro, make it Branded Burger Company, right downtown across from the courthouse square. Its signature is exactly what the name promises: the bun arrives seared with the restaurant's own cattle-style brand, so every burger comes out marked like a Texas steer. They lean into the ranch-town identity, and the rest of the plate backs it up, with fresh-cut fries and hand-dipped onion rings made in house. Set in a historic building on the square, with a bar upstairs looking out over that famous courthouse, it is the food stop most tied to Hillsboro's identity. (Sources: Branded Burger Company; Explore Hillsboro; Yelp.)

James L. Harris

1916

James Lindell Harris was born on June 27, 1916 to Albert Lee and bessie harris at the family farm near hillsboro. He entered the army on March 20, 1941 and trained at Fort Sam Houston with the armored division. Harris was assigned to the 756th tank battalion and led his unit through North Africa and Europe. In vagney, France, Harris and his men encountered German troops. Although mortally wounded he continued to lead his men until allied tanks arrived, and refused medical attention until a member of his crew had been carried to safety. In recognition of his bravery, Harris was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Harris is buried at Ridge Park Cemetery in Hillsboro.

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Harris, James L.

1944

James L. Harris, Medal of Honor recipient, was born to Albert Lee and Bessie Harris at Hillsboro, Texas, in 1916. He attended Bynum High School through the tenth grade and was drafted into military service at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in late 1941. He was assigned to the 756th Tank Battalion and trained with it at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Fort Lewis, Washington, Fort Ord, California, and Camp Pickett, Virginia. After fighting through North Africa he earned a battlefield commission on March 26, 1944, as second lieutenant, at the battle of Cassino in southern Italy. On the night of October 7, 1944, near the village of Vagney, France, his tank command was attacked by a German tank and two platoons of infantry. While leading his tanks on foot, he was wounded. From the ground in front of his tank he ordered it to open fire on the Germans, whose progress was halted until more tanks arrived and forced them to withdraw. Subsequently, Harris's leg was shot off at the hip. He refused to be evacuated until other wounded members of his crew were removed. He died before he could be given medical attention. Harris was buried at Vagney, France, until 1951, when he was reinterred at Ridge Park Cemetery, Hillsboro.

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Philpott, Margaret

1943

Margaret Philpott [pseud. Madge Bellamy], motion picture and stage actress, was born in Hillsboro, Texas, on June 30, 1903, to Annie Derden and William Bledsoe Philpott. After her stage debut at age five, her family moved to Denver, and then to San Antonio, where she was educated at St. Mary's Hall . She subsequently pursued an acting career, appeared in New York productions, and attracted national attention in the title role in the road show Pollyanna . She made her screen debut in The Riddle: Woman for Pathé in 1920. In a motion-picture career spanning twenty-six years, she performed in some sixty features and one serial. Though primarily a lead in light drama and comedies, she was no stranger to horror and western films. Among the titles most associated with her are King Vidor 's Love Never Dies (1921), Lorna Doone (1922), John Ford's western The Iron Horse (1924), and the horror classic White Zombie (1932). Although Madge Bellamy's successes were mostly in the silent era of the 1920s, she proved able to continue into the early sound period, as evidenced in Tonight at Twelve (1929) and White Zombie . After partially retiring in 1935, she appeared in several small roles. She was married in 1928 in Tijuana, Baja California, to bond broker Logan Metcalf, but filed for divorce four days later. In 1943 she was convicted of firearms violations after taking three failed shots at an alleged lover, lumberman Albert Stanwood Murphy. The following year, in a court case over a contested "mutual agreement" with Murphy, Bellamy received a multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement. She spent her later years as a recluse in several residences in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where she worked on an unfinished autobiography, I Was Madge Bellamy . She made her last public appearance in November 1989 at a screening of The Iron Horse at the Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles. After several weeks' hospitalization for cardiac problems, Madge Bellamy died on January 24, 1990, in Upland, California.

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McMullan, Francis

1865

Francis McMullan, the leader of a group of Texans who moved to Brazil rather than remain under a Reconstruction government, the son of Hugh Milton and Nancy (Dyer) McMullan, was born in Walker County, Georgia, in 1835. His father was an early landowner, lawyer, and stockman in Hill County, Texas. Frank attended McKenzie College in Clarksville from 1858 to 1860. He was described by a contemporary as "a man of cool courage...and undaunted resolution" who served as an officer under William Walker in the unsuccessful 1857–58 campaign to capture Nicaragua. After serving the Confederacy in Mexico during the Civil War , McMullan joined William Bowen in a plan to take advantage of liberal Brazilian immigration terms and take a colony of 154 from north central Texas to South America. McMullan and Bowen left for Brazil in late 1865 to locate lands and decided on fifty square leagues on the headwaters of the São Lourenço River south of São Paulo. McMullan returned to Texas in June 1866. After harassment by port authorities in New Orleans and Galveston, the colonists sailed on the brig Derby on January 25, 1867. A mutiny occurred when it became known that the ship's captain had been a party to the delays in sailing and illegal fines of colony leaders. A tropical storm resulted in shipwreck on the coast of Cuba on February 9, 1867. McMullan subsequently led his charges to New York, where they boarded the steamer North America on April 22, then sailed for Rio de Janeiro. McMullan guided the emigrants to colony lands before becoming terminally ill with tuberculosis. His colony is credited with introducing the moldboard plow and modern agriculture to Brazil. In addition, colony members established a Baptist church there and made major contributions to Brazil's educational system. Frank McMullan was active in politics in Hill County before the Civil War and served as a delegate to the Texas Democratic convention in Galveston in 1860. He never married. He was a Mason and Methodist. He died at Iguape, Brazil, on September 29, 1867.

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Katy Depot

1881

This depot was built to serve the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) Rail Line, which reached Hillsboro in 1881. Completed in 1902, the station features elements of the Eastlake, Victorian, and Prairie styles. Early MKT trains carried materials for the growing town and brought early residents and such notables as presidents Woodrow Wilson, William Taft, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman. The building was moved here from the original site in 1978. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980

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Peabody School

1885

In 1885, a bond was issued for the construction of an African American School, which was built soon afterwards. The school, named for George Peabody, a banker who distributed funds to the southern states following the Civil War, educated students in the African-American neighborhood in Hillsboro known as Freetown. A brick building replaced the original frame structure in 1919, and was used until the school moved to here in 1950. Peabody School's last graduating class was in 1966, with primary level classes held on the campus for several more years until full integration occurred. Although the building burned down in 2005, Peabody School remains a source of pride for Hillsboro residents. (2008)

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Things to Do in Hillsboro

food 14.5 mi away
The Czech Stop

In 1983 Bill Polk opened a little convenience store off I-35 in West Texas and started selling kolaches he bought from a nearby bakery. The pastries moved so…
food 14.5 mi away
Slovacek's West

I-35 exit 353 in West, Texas — the rival Czech bakery to the Czech Stop across the highway. Over 35 kolache varieties, in-house smoked meats, and a full deli…
day trip
Day Trip to Hillsboro 🍔 (FULL EPISODE) S7 E12

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Hillsboro

391 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Hillsboro on the Map
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