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History in
a Pecan Shell
Hanna Valley was named for the Hanna family.
Jesse P. Hanna and his five sons and their wives settled in the area
in the mid 1850s. The Hannas built the first house in the area despite
the threat (and at least one attack) of Comanche Indians.
After the Civil War, county vigilante committees that had formed to
fight cattle rustling became banditti themselves, causing the Texas
Rangers to enter the area and set things right.
Hanna Valley's first store appeared in 1871 with the post office opening
five years later. It was closed in 1882, but reopened two years later.
The population was fifty then and the town was notified by postal
authorities they needed to rename their post office since another
community was receiving mail under the name Hanna Valley.
Regency was chosen and by 1895 the town had a population of 200.
Regency had only forty residents from the 20s to the 40s and the post
office closed for good sometime in the 30s. The last store closed
in 1971. |
Regency Bridge
By Mike Cox
When you’re standing on a suspension bridge and the span begins to
bounce as a car starts across, it may be necessary to suspend an instinctive
urge to run.
This is especially true with the Regency Bridge, which crosses the
Colorado River 23 miles from Goldwaithe
to link Mills and San Saba counties. Looking down at the river below,
a normally robust appears to be considerably smaller.
Suppressing hard-wired flight impulses can be even more difficult
if you’ve pulled off Mills County Road 127 to read the 1976-vintage
historical marker summarizing the bridge’s history. The first
bridge on this site was built in 1903. That structure, a traditional
truss bridge, lasted only 23 years – practically a blink of an eye
when it comes to public infrastructure typically designed to last
a half-century or more.
Unfortunately, what the first bridge’s builder surely considered impossible
happened on May 9, 1924 when a rancher and his two sons pushed
a herd of cattle across the bridge... more
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| Texas
Escapes, in its purpose to preserve historic, endangered and vanishing
Texas, asks that anyone wishing to share their local history, stories,
landmarks and recent or vintage photos, please contact
us. |
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