Courthouse Hounds...

For those who have completed all 254 courthouse pictures with your bike(s), or are working on it, what wisdom to you have to share? How did you accomplish such a feat? How long did it take? How did you plan it out? What have you done with all the pictures?

I've sort of taken the approach thus far that if I could see it off the road, then I'd stop. If not, then I'd look for a dome and hope to get lucky. Then I bought "Courthouses of Texas" and now I know where they are.

I figured I'd put up a map with push pins in the county seats and everytime I went somewhere, look at the map. Sort of like the "Everywhere" project.

Any help, tips etc. would be appreciated!

Oh, and who all is in "The Club"? I think it's just Janet at this point with Teeds and Chuck close to finishing, right?

M38A1 said:

Then I bought "Courthouses of Texas" and now I know where they are.

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I have that, too, and it is a great resource.

M38A1 said:

with Teeds and Chuck close to finishing, right?

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yeah, right
I think I still have 2/3 of 'em to get.

This file does not have the exact courthouse locations but it has the Garmin MapSource "center of town" for all the county seats.

Same thing but a GPX file.

I keep one of these named "courthouses_left" that has waypoints for those I haven't gotten yet. I delete them as I get them.

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Some more resources:

map of Texas counties

List of county seats by county and counties by county seat.

Well, I didn't get all of them on the bike. When I first started, I was on the bike, but it wasn't about the bike. It was just about going to every county. I have 12-15 or so that I got in the truck. I will re-do those if I get by them on a bike though. I still have a few other re-dos due to construction or scaffolding and stuff like that.

I would decide which direction I was heading and then make a copy of the map for the area on my copy machine. I would then highlight the county seats that I wanted to go to on the section of map. I would look at the map with the "dots" and figure out which route I was going to go to get them all.
When I would get to the first one, I put a 1 next to the dot on the map and then mark waypoint 1 on the GPS. The second dot would get a 2 and waypoint 2. When I got home, I would be able to list the counties and cities without getting them confused.
If I was going someplace specific for some other reason, ( like when I rode to New Braunfels for the weekend) I put the dots on the ones I was going to do on the way down, the ones I was going to do while I was down there and the dots on the route I was going to come back.
Make sense?
Most important, HAVE FUN

I will add this, I did not mark on the GPS or in any way look up the courthouses before arriving. I enjoyed looking for them in the towns. On a lot of them, I could see antennae or radio towers sticking up and head for that. Sometimes I hit the courthouse and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I would still be miles from town but could see the building sticking up in the distance. Sometimes it was what I was looking for, sometimes it was a church. I really liked motoring around these little towns looking. I found some cool little towns.

I'm slowly working my way thru the list but this will take awhile. Besides getting the pic of the courthouse, I also walk around a bit and take a picture of the historical marker and any veterans memorials. Kind of fun to find one that has WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietman on one side of the courthouse and on the other side a Confederate memorial. Look for names that are the same and that makes it worthwhile to find.

Janet said:

I will add this, I did not mark on the GPS or in any way look up the courthouses before arriving. I enjoyed looking for them in the towns.

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I try to do that whenever possible & it works for a lot of older towns. But towns that have developed recent "urban sprawl" can take a lot of time. One example is Rockwall. I usually figure that an intersection of two FMs or SHs gets you close but I ended up going to the courthouse book to help find the Rockwall courthouse. If I had seen a sign like "old downtown" or something like that, it would of helped.

Another example is Victoria which Susan and I went thru on the way to Ingleside. We followed the main road (377 I think) thru town and just happened to see the CH a couple of blocks away before leaving town. There was a lot city "nothing" before that.

Kathy and I started years ago when we had the Goldwing just trying to ride through all of the 254 counties in Texas. We made all but about 20. Then we found this forum and decided we needed to ride to the county seat in each to get a pic. So we started over and have about 25 done.
We try to plan our ecxcurisions(rides) so it takes us through the county seats. We have been using mapsource for our GPS for about the past year and half. We also use this site http://barnfield.net/texas/index.html and this one http://www.texascourthouses.com/ to try for a accurate address to load into our route. Plus both show a pretty good pic of the place which helps to.
So we have been pretty successful finding them. Parking can be problem if you there on weekdays, but if you stop long enough to grab a quick pic we usually don't have a problem. We got Tom Green county which is San Angelo there was national news conference going on due the polymagists kids at Eldorado, and we had to kind of get over on the side. Sometimes with a major city like Houston or Dallas the best time is early on a Sunday morning just after daylight.
Marty

Janet said:

I will add this, I did not mark on the GPS or in any way look up the courthouses before arriving. I enjoyed looking for them in the towns. On a lot of them, I could see antennae or radio towers sticking up and head for that. Sometimes I hit the courthouse and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I would still be miles from town but could see the building sticking up in the distance. Sometimes it was what I was looking for, sometimes it was a church. I really liked motoring around these little towns looking. I found some cool little towns.

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+1 Janet!

I don't ever plan a ride for a courthouse, I grab em when I bump into them on accident. I'm only up to about 10 and I still skip them pretty regularly when I'm on a mission (fm roads usually) but plan to eventually get them all.

Also I have a few that I grabbed on the run and can't remember what county I was in...

Kit_McConnico said:

+1 Janet!

I don't ever plan a ride for a courthouse, I grab em when I bump into them on accident. I'm only up to about 10 and I still skip them pretty regularly when I'm on a mission (fm roads usually) but plan to eventually get them all.

Also I have a few that I grabbed on the run and can't remember what county I was in...

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Kit-
You and I have a lot in common. I couldn't have written my current 'appraoch' any better.

M38A1 said:

Kit-
You and I have a lot in common. I couldn't have written my current 'appraoch' any better.

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It's how I'm doing my "everywhere" too. Not quite as driven as you were, but I will get the job done. 2nd guy to ever do it on a GS.... but I'll have the bike in every pic.

I've been through about a hundred county seats looking for farm roads. I wish I'd stopped to take a picture of the courthouses when I went though town, but that would have required stopping. I'm going to start.....soon.

I know of one you could get this week!

bmcdonau said:

I've been through about a hundred county seats looking for farm roads. I wish I'd stopped to take a picture of the courthouses when I went though town, but that would have required stopping

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I hear ya man. "I'll get it on the way back" I always say... but it never happens.

I like to think I'm going for quality over completeness.
Not all the courthouses are worth seeing.
Have you found yourself rolling into a town square and thinking, "You went to architecture school AND got hired to build THIS?"

Anyway, I've already got an embarrassing amount of photos of the Norge, I just try to get some interesting shots of the building, often through nearby trees or maybe through some wavy old glass of a nearby 2nd floor window.

Also, and this is really first on my list, if I can get up in the clock/bell/whatever tower, I'm there.

We do have a special courthouse section at TWT (Story Telling and Tire Kicking - Special Places), please don't miss it.

tinstar_1977 said:

I know of one you could get this week!

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Welcome Tinstar!

Already have Motley County and a few surrounding ones. Besides, I'll be in the cage. You know, a beer run for my bud...