Sweet Home

I always thought Sweet Home was in Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd and all that. The USGS database lists the name as a "populated place" in Alabama, but on satellite imagery, I don't see much evidence of populace there at all. I did, however, see evidence of population in Sweet Home, Texas, a town that until recently, I did not know existed. Terry & I drove through it intentionally; it's far enough off the beaten path that few people pass through it by accident. So...why would someone drive through Sweet Home, Texas on purpose?

As you can see from this image, Sweet Home is near the town of Yoakum, a town that Terry and I happened to spend the night in recently (and yes, it was "on purpose"...we didn't break down there or anything like that... Terry wanted to visit the Double D Ranch outlet store...another interesting story...but I digress). I was definitely on board with spending the night in Yoakum because, as a Texas railroad history buff, Yoakum has special appeal. It was named for Benjamin Franklin Yoakum, perhaps the greatest railroad magnate from Texas. The town was founded in 1887 as the San Antonio & Aransas Pass (SA&AP) Railway built two rail lines through the area (one of which, shown as a black line in the image above, is now a major rail line for Union Pacific). At age 28, Yoakum was a Vice President of the railroad when the town was named for him. In 1889, he became the General Manager of the railroad and in 1890, he became its "receiver" when the railroad went bankrupt! How's that for working both ends of the deal? He reorganized the railroad, brought it out of receivership, and negotiated its sale to Southern Pacific. Yoakum moved on to the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway and eventually to the St. Louis San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway. When the Frisco merged with the Rock Island railroad in 1905, Yoakum became the Chairman of the Board of both railroads. He later moved to New York, migrated into other businesses, and remained there until his death in 1929.

But what does this have to do with Sweet Home? The other former SA&AP line through Yoakum went to Hallettsville and eventually went all the way to Houston. This line passed through Sweet Home a short distance northeast of Yoakum (or...to be more precise...the railroad passed five miles south of the community of Sweet Home, and the townspeople relocated their town to be on the railroad!) It was great while it lasted, but Sweet Home eventually lost its railroad when portions of the line were abandoned in 1959.

After the abandonment, about five miles of Farm Road 318 was built directly on top of the former SA&AP railroad right-of-way, beginning in Sweet Home and ending at Mont, where the SA&AP right-of-way can be seen diverging from Farm Road 318 in the upper right corner of the image. Driving on highways that are built atop former rail lines is interesting. The highway doesn't follow the terrain; cuts and fills are used to flatten out the grade because trains don't go up and down hills, not in the sense that a highway might. And there are no short radius curves, only those of the long radius, sweeping variety. This particular highway is not a great example; the road is fairly short and the local topography eliminates the need for any spectacular fills and cuts. But it is a highway built on top of a railroad right-of-way, and since we were in the area, that was enough for me to decide to go to Sweet Home, Texas. Where the skies are blue.