'Davilla Runner-up as State Capital' by Clay Coppedge/Temple Daily Telegram

Davilla Runner-up as State Capital

by Clay Coppedge

Temple Daily Telegram - March 20, 2006

DAVILLA - Some people believe that this little town in a high corner of Milam County

finished second to Austin when the state capital was moved from Washington-on-the-

Brazos.

The Handbook of Texas and other sources make no mention of it, but the subject keeps

coming up.

A small booklet written by Etoile H. Moore in 1965 mentions it. 'Davilla was once quite

a town; lost to Austin for location of the capitol by two votes, any resident will tell

you,' she wrote.

Ron Tyler of Joe Lee, just a few miles from Davilla, is one of the state's most

respected historians. As president of the Texas State Historical Association,he edited

the Handbook of Texas.

Tyler said he has never heard that Davilla almost became the capital of Texas, but he

does remember helping his father, a contractor, build a dog house there for a man who

raced Greyhounds.

'I was enlisted to help pour the cement for the floor, and it was a big dog house, air

conditioned at a time when most houses in Central Texas were not,' Tyler recalled.

Ms. Moore described the Greyhound farms of Davilla in her recollections. She placed the

location as a little more than a mile east of Davilla.

She remembered the air conditioned dog houses too. 'As the owners show you the kennels

with their all weather protection, they will point out the champions and talk of racing

records,' she noted.

Later, she set the scene for the first race she saw at the track.

'The greyhounds stand eager to be unleashed. The mechanical rabbit moves swiftly around

the track. The dogs have caught the spirit of the race. They whine and tug impatiently

at their leashes. They are freed; they leap ahead, each determined to beat the other

one, and the race is on.'

A 1933 Telegram article describes Davilla as a town 'where automobile accidents do not

occur, where no one dies from the striking hand of a murderer, and where the sale of

intoxicating liquor is forever prohibited.'

That's because when H.C. Chamberlin bought the original land grant from Miguel Davila,

for whom the town is named, Chamberlin stipulated that intoxicating beverages never be

sold there.

In such a sober manner, the town flourished for a while. It had three churches and the

same number of gristmills and cotton gins along with a sawmill and a school. No saloons.

For five years, Davilla had an institution of higher learning, the Davilla Institute.

The school's first principal was George W. Baines, Sr., whose daughter, Rebekah Baines

Johnson, is best known today as the mother of President Lyndon Johnson.

The Katy Railroad surveyed the land around Davilla as part of its plans to extend its

tracks to San Antonio, but the Katy decided on another route and Davilla never

completely recovered from the snub.

'The visions of a Utopian community did not last long as some of the imported promoters

promoted themselves out of the railroad business and left Davilla citizens with nothing

more than a lengthy embarrassment and disappointing memories,' the writer of a 1936

Telegram article opined.

Davilla is on FM 487 in Milam County, about a dozen miles east of Bartlett. There's not

much there to make you think of a state capitol site, but there is a four-way stop sign.

The wider world may have passed it by, but Davilla still sits at the crossroads of three

Central Texas backroads.

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Clay Coppedge
and the
Temple Daily Telegram