Hostess House
Lampasas, Lampasas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Mineral springs such as nearby Hancock Springs flow into Sulphur Creek, providing Lampasas with waters for recreation and health. The Hancock Springs tract became a fashionable tourist attraction and convention and encampment site in the late 19th century; by the 1880s, Lampasas advertised as "The Saratoga of the South." In 1911, Dan Culver excavated a large open-air swimming pool in Hancock Park, utilizing spring-fed waters. Charles Baker and L.N. Little bought the property in 1929. Materials from the Texas Baptist Encampment dining hall were used to build the Hostess House south of the pool. The two-story frame building included a reception hall and changing room for the swimming pool, with an open-air dance platform on the second floor. Local bands and nationally known performers made the venue a popular destination. In 1936, the city of Lampasas bought the park, including the Hostess House. During World War II, the U.S. government leased Hancock Park as a recreation area, called Panther Park, for soldiers stationed at Camp Hood (later Fort Hood). In 1947, a golf course opened to the west and improvements to the Hostess House included a limestone veneer. After additional renovations to park facilities in 1948, Texas Governor Beauford Jester and U.S. Congressman Lyndon Johnson attended a rededication ceremony. For many years following, the people of Lampasas continued to swim in the pool and attend dances and proms on the second floor. By the 1990s, the building had fallen into disrepair. The city leased the building to the Oran Milo Roberts chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, which coordinated fundraising to renovate and restore the Hostess House and continue its public use. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the late 1800s, Lampasas rode the national craze for 'taking the waters,' advertising its mineral-rich Hancock Springs as 'The Saratoga of the South' and drawing tourists, conventions, and Baptist encampments. In 1911 a spring-fed pool was carved into Hancock Park, and by 1929 the two-story Hostess House rose beside it—part bathhouse, part dance hall, where local bands and touring performers played beneath an open-air platform. During World War II the federal government leased the park as a recreation ground for soldiers from nearby Camp Hood, and in 1948 Governor Beauford Jester and Congressman Lyndon Johnson helped rededicate it.
Why it matters
The Hostess House captures how small Texas towns turned natural springs into engines of leisure, health tourism, and community life across a full century of American recreation.
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Related people
- · Dan Culver
- · Beauford Jester
- · Lyndon Johnson
Related events
- · World War II — Camp Hood recreation
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hancock Springs Bathhouse
Lampasas, TX
In the mid-1800s word spread of the curative mineral springs at Lampasas, earning the town the nickname "Saratoga of the South." After the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1882, investors built the Grand Park Hotel and this bathhouse, with hot and cold baths and separate pools reached by a mule-drawn streetcar. Floods eventually carried off the roof, but the limestone walls endure beside the turquoise, spring-fed pool, now part of a city park.
Flood, The 1957
Lampasas, TX
Lampasas sits where Sulphur Creek gathers the runoff of a broad basin, and floods struck the town repeatedly—in 1873, 1936, and 1944—prompting officials to dredge the creek and raise earthen levees. None of it prepared the town for the night of Mother's Day, May 12, 1957, when sustained downpours after a long drought sent floodwaters tearing through the square, sweeping away cars and homes and stranding residents on rooftops. Five people died, but the community rebuilt within months, and the disaster became a turning point that reshaped the town's flood control and planning.
Malone-Manuel House
Lampasas, TX
Frank Malone arrived in Lampasas in the early 1880s, when the spa town was booming as a commercial center and resort, and as a bank cashier he helped found the Texas Bankers Association, which first met there in 1885. Around that time he built this Queen Anne home, with its unusual octagonal tower and richly detailed woodwork. After the Malones moved on, civic leader John Manuel bought the house in 1891, and his family held it for more than eighty years.
Manuel Hardware Building
Lampasas, TX
Built in 1884 on land owned by John R. Guynes, this two-story Italianate commercial building first sheltered the First National Bank before passing through a series of Lampasas merchants. J. N. Manuel bought it in 1900, and Manuel Hardware Co. occupied it for the next sixty years. With its faux-masonry façade, rough-cut limestone walls, chamfered corner entry, and ornate metal cornice, the restored building is a fine survivor of frontier-town commercial architecture.