Louie Mueller's beef rib

All beef links are famous at Patillo's in Beaumont.

On a recent drive to Austin, I took note of the many signs along the way pointing to various historical markers. If you grew up in Texas, family vacations often included a stop along the highway and a dutiful recitation of the engraved text describing a battlefield or old homestead.

Nowadays, it seems, there is less time for meandering around the state and randomly stopping at a historical marker. Google Maps has made the destination, not the journey, the main goal of travel.

Fortunately, for all the armchair travelers out there, the Texas Historical Commission has created the Texas Historic Sites Atlas that exhaustively documents every marker in the state, along with the text of its story. It’s a great virtual travel resource (atlas.thc.texas.gov/map) if you’ve got an hour or four to spend in front of a computer.

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