- The "Daytripper" is made possible by Rudy's, real Texas barbecue.

Shipping nationwide at rudys.com.

Karbach Brewing Company from Houston, Texas, makers of Karbach Lager, a beer that is proudly partnered with Don't Mess with Texas, please dispose responsibly.

Visit Georgetown, where big ideas meet small town charm.

Georgetown, the most beautiful town square in Texas.

Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, protection and peace of mind for Texans since 1952.

Don Hewlett Chevrolet Buick in Georgetown.

Making Texas road trips possible for over 50 years.

Don Hewlett Chevrolet Buick, Texas True.

Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages, Texas' local bottler providing the Lone Star state with a variety of Coca-Cola products.

(upbeat music) - Yes, Texas has mountains, and a new state park that we're headed up north to explore.

We'll eat a chicken fried as big as Texas, we'll voluntarily throw ourselves in jail, and dive deep into the history of a forgotten ghost town built on coal and brick, all before dining high atop New York Hill.

The mountains are calling, and we must trip.

Behold, the Palo Pinto Mountains!

(voice echoes) - Wow, that's a cool echo.

- (laughs) Yeah, pinto!

- Beans, beans, beans!

- Huh?

(upbeat country music) (upbeat music) The Palo Pinto Mountains are a small range about 90 miles west of Fort Worth.

It's our hidden hill country.

No, make that our hidden mountain country.

Well, welcome to Texas' hidden mountain range, the Palo Pintos, translated painted sticks because of all the colorful trees.

It's a very small range, only covers about 15 miles, but it makes this entire county feel like it just popped up out of nowhere.

And now true, these are not the Rockies, but in terms of unexpected adventures hiding in plain sight, oh yeah.

And right in the middle of the mountains, we find Texas's new Palo Pinto Mountain State Park, making it the first new state park in 18 years, and the first in North Texas in over a quarter century.

It's almost 5,000 acres of true Texas terrain surrounding a 91 acre lake.

Here's Park Superintendent James, who's been waiting patiently.

- So I've been at this park since the summer of 2017.

We were still in the design phase back then.

- You gotta be more excited than anybody.

- I am.

I'm ready to get it going.

I'm ready to do it.

- So was this all just private land?

Someone said, "That's gotta be open to the public."

- Yeah, most of this was private land, with the exception of the lake and about 100 acres right around it that the city donated to us.

- This is beautiful.

- Yeah, isn't it?

You know, I think mainly people are shocked when they see the topography of the place.

- So what is the highest peak in this mountain range?

- About 1,600 and change above sea level.

- Okay, all right, we'll call that mountains.

- Yeah.

So technically they are cuestas, right?

Which is a hill that has a sharp slope on one side and a gradual slope on the other.

- They were called mountains on old maps, and we can't question grandpa, but mountains or molehills, you can't deny this is some pretty country.

I love the fact that you can find these little pockets in a place that you probably didn't even know existed, and then now it's opened up as a park so you can get out and enjoy it and just see how beautiful Texas is.

- Yeah, absolutely.

That's what we're here to do, right?

Is provide outdoor recreation opportunities for the people of Texas.

- Well I think it's time to take a quest through the cuestas.

(bright music) - Chet, where you going?

- Thought we would do a little hike, man.

- You got a map, right?

- Map?

Ah, who needs a map, Greg?

- You've never been here.

- Come on!

Did Lewis and Clark have maps?

- Didn't they make a map?

- Just like Lewis and Clark, we blaze new paths through uncharted lands.

- I don't think that that's part of the trail.

- We're in the mountains, you gotta go up.

- Yeah, that's definitely not the trail.

- Impossible, this is clearly the trail, it's just, it's an unfinished park.

They're just not finished with it yet.

Yeah, Daniel, this is definitely not the trail.

- No.

- Why'd you say to go this way?

- That's not the trail.

- Yeah, maybe it's over there.

Well, there are 16 miles of finished trails out here.

Great for hikers and wildlife.

The deer are probably loving this trail.

It's like somebody built 'em a highway through the woods.

They're like, we don't have to go over the rocks anymore.

Look at 'em.

(upbeat music continues) One of the coolest things about this hike is all these rock outcroppings, they look like big layer cakes kind of crumbling away from the mountains.

Man, this is pretty special to be one of the first people in a new state park and to see something that very few Texans have seen and then to know that for generations to come, this will be a place that all of us can enjoy.

If you didn't feel rich before, you should now.

- Wait, wait.

- All of this is ours.

- It's mine?

- It's yours.

It's mine.

It's Greg's.

- I'll sell you my part.

- How much?

- No, that's not how it works.

- 10 bucks.

- Stop, that's not- - 10 bucks.

It's a deal.

- You guys stink.

- Deal?

- We'll do it.

- They're completely missing the point.

I need some space even from my own crew.

Don't come looking for me.

(soft music) This lake was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration.

At one point it was turned into a private fishing camp, and it seems like I'm not the only one enjoying the lake today.

No lie, a bald eagle just landed over there in that tree.

A bald eagle.

There might be another one circling up there.

Oh dude, this state park is amazing.

You know, 50 years ago, not a chance you would ever see a bald eagle.

But now just because our conservation has gotten better, they've started to migrate down here.

I mean, Texas fish are delicious, right?

Can't deny it.

♪ America ♪ America ♪ From sea to shining (fireworks bursting) ♪ Sea I dunno, I just felt overwhelmed with patriotism all of a sudden.

(upbeat music) This is a new state park.

It just drives home the idea that when you set aside lands, you protect them, you manage them well, not just do we benefit as humans, but the animals do as well.

Let's face it, they love this park even more than we do.

So cool.

Texas just set aside $1 billion for new state parks like this one.

So adventurers, get ready.

(upbeat music) Now if you follow the historic railroad tracks that run through the park, they'll take you to the town just outside its boundaries.

Strawn Texas.

Strawn!

(old country music) Wait.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

No, it's the same episode, y'all.

Come on.

(air whooshing) Anyway, if Strawn feels like it could be in a Western film, it's because it has been.

Most recently in Taylor Sheridan's TV show, "Lawman: Bass Reeves."

But if you've heard of Strawn at all, it's likely for one crispy, golden battered reason.

The chicken fried steak from Mary's Cafe.

And even though we featured it way back in season two, we're headed back for seconds.

First reason being it's delicious.

Second reason being, when we visited Mary wasn't available and we were banned from the kitchen.

And selfishly, well, I've been dying to know what makes her CFS so legendary.

You know, Mary, y'all didn't let us in the kitchen last time we were here.

You said it was top secret stuff.

- (laughing) It's a secret.

- The full recipe may be closely guarded, but like all chicken frieds, you start with the batter.

This isn't just like a little light batter.

He's beating the snot out of these things.

- Yes, he is.

- That flour gets worked into the meat.

No, bludgeoned into the meat.

You cook it on a flat top.

- Right.

- That right there is why the Mary's chicken fried steak is unlike any other.

Each steak sizzles to crispy in a thin pool of clarified butter.

Don't ask your doctor for permission to eat here.

Forgiveness is better on these things.

You know what it reminds me of is like if a grandma is gonna make a chicken fried steak.

- Exactly.

- People my age, even older, they'll say, this is like my grandma's or a gravy's, like our Gramps- - Okay.

Yeah.

- Make her gravy from scratch.

- Mary opened her cafe 40 years ago and since then, she's become the chicken fried queen of Texas.

Recently featured on Taylor Sheridan's "Landman", you know when Sam Elliot wears your shirt on camera, you've made it.

She's been surprisingly open with the recipes.

That is until I ask the question that shall not be asked.

What's in the seasoning?

What's in the seasoning?

(horror music) What's in the seasoning?

- Can't tell you.

- Oh no.

- Can't tell you.

Sorry.

- That's the secret sauce.

(sad music) (stamp thuds) (upbeat music) - When I hire people, I make them sign an employment agreement, but I've had one or two that has gone to other places and try to use it as- - Oh, get a good attorney.

- Oh, I have an attorney.

- Cease and desist.

- I have an attorney.

- Mary don't mess around.

And if this were my recipe, I wouldn't either.

This is the Mary's large chicken fried steak.

Literally, the plate cannot contain it.

- We don't portion our stuff out.

I always tell them to fill the plate.

- Well, you don't want anybody walking outta here hungry.

- They don't, if they do, it's their own fault.

- Yeah, exactly.

I'll be lucky if I walk outta here alive.

Mary makes a mean hamburger.

There's enchiladas, hand cut fries and so much more.

But we all know why I'm here.

I ate this chicken fried steak season two 15 years ago and I've been dreaming about it every day since.

Literally every day.

- Every day?

- Every, no.

Okay, maybe I missed a couple days, but I thought about it a lot.

So this is indeed the large chicken fried steak, which is just means- - Wait, just show me one because that's three.

- That's one.

Oh, there's toast underneath.

You can make a little sandwich.

- Well, it tells you enough if there's a bowl of gravy.

- The soup de jour today and every day is cream gravy.

(slurping) Mm.

Cozy.

(laughing) That's really good though.

(Daniel laughing) That's was so good.

I think this is one of those that if I just like sat here long enough and just kept taking one bite after another, eventually I might finish it but I also might die.

- Just like you remember?

- Better than I remember.

The years have been kind to Mary's for sure.

Like as true as the sun sets in the West, Mary's cafe is known as one of the best chicken frieds in Texas.

(upbeat music) Strawn only has about 500 people, but visitors to the new state park have sparked some new life.

And hiding inside this old building is a mini mall of surprises, including Mel's Sweets and Eats.

(laughing) And I can't help myself.

This is Mel.

I did just polish off a Mary's chicken fried steak, but I think I've always got room for dessert in here.

- That's a separate compartment.

- Exactly, exactly.

- And I'm from the East Coast, so we've brought Hershey's ice cream out here.

I always like to bring something different in Texas, you know?

- Sure.

- Mel has the same philosophy at her other restaurant in nearby Mingus, which serves up some mean crab cakes.

She's becoming a bit of a local hero.

So you think you're in Texas for the long haul now?

- Oh, absolutely.

I would never move back to the East Coast.

I love it here in Texas.

- It's too good.

Yeah, it's too good.

Too good is right.

- We have 16 flavors of Hershey's ice cream.

You can get any of them in a milkshake.

- These have Hershey's chocolate in them?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Oh!

- Oh, that's good.

It's a good thing I've got that second stomach, you know, right over here.

- Like a cow.

- Exactly.

(upbeat music) - Ooh, that chicken fried steak though.

- Ah.

- My goodness.

- I don't think I've ever, in my life, I've finished a chicken fried steak entirely.

It's just heavy.

- Then they've given you two small portions.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

That's how you know when they gave you the right portion is when you- - When you can't finish it.

Okay.

Make this a little bit easier of a conversation.

Can we just call it CFS?

- It's cubic feet per second.

- It's so long.

No, no, saying chicken fried steak takes too long.

Cubic feet per second.

What are you talking about?

(group laughing) - Should be a measurement of how little blood can get through your arteries after eat- - (laughing) The CCFs constriction.

Oh.

(upbeat music) Just like the mountains, this entire county is named Palo Pinto, as is it's county seat Palo Pinto Texas.

And if you wanna dig deep, well, then you got no choice but to throw yourself in jail.

This is the old Palo Pinto County jail built in the 1880s.

This is so cool.

This stone fortress will hold any tripper captive with its unique history and some even more unique artifacts like this fake gun used to break out of this place.

Back in 1938, made of lye soap and boot polish.

It still looks pretty good.

You slap some new paint on there.

This complex is less about a single building and more about an entire era of history.

So Palo Pinto County is definitely one of those like wild West counties.

The stories of cowboys, Indians, cattle drives.

The fight for the West.

Palo Pinto County was right in the middle of it.

(soft country music) So this log cabin was built in the 1800s and look at this, up here, a secret room.

The guy who built this cabin built that for his wife and his children.

If they saw Indians coming, they could scurry up a rope ladder and hide out.

Some of these buildings are much older than Texas, maybe even America, like this stoned fort.

Nobody knows who built it, but it was moved stone by stone here to this museum complex.

And these are the original logs that were hewn to build this thing.

They've dated when these were cut down and they estimate it was sometime in the 1700s.

That is a long, long time ago.

- You think they had wifi?

- Yeah.

Oh yeah, for sure.

They ran this thing with wifi ethernet.

No doubt.

(playful music) Greg will never learn.

And for his comments, straight to jail.

- Yeah.

I'm going it.

- That's it, Greg, just... (door thuds) - Nope.

- You didn't finish your chicken fried steak or your bowl of gravy.

- Somebody, help.

Help.

(Chet laughing) Can't even fit a full chicken fried steak through here.

(group laughing) (upbeat music) - History is a funny thing.

Life passes and a generation later we only remember what gets written down.

And without the stories, it's as if the past didn't exist.

For instance, what if I told you that this empty field was once a city of 10,000 people?

Seems unbelievable, right?

That is until you step into the W.K.

Gordon Center for Industrial History and into the world that was once Thurber, Texas.

Thurber was a town built by and for the coal mine, more specifically the Texas and Pacific Coal Company.

And here's Mary Adams, the museum's director.

So this was a company town?

- It was a completely 100% company owned town.

Your stores were owned, your schools were owned by the company.

If you lived in Thurber and you wanted to put a chicken coop in your backyard, the company came and put it in your backyard and charged you rent on it.

(upbeat music) - The company owned everything, electricity, medicine, even the barbed wire fence that once surrounded the town.

And everything served one purpose: to get coal out of the ground, which the company also owned.

All right, so you wanna know what it was like to work in a coal mine?

Well, imagine 10 to 12 hours a day laying in the prone position.

You crawl in up against a wall of black and then you just chip away big lumps of coal to take up to the surface.

My back hurts just thinking about it but at this time, in the late 1800s, coal was a hot commodity thanks to our new interstate railroad system.

And discerning businessman R.D.

Hunter, along with his right hand man, W.K.

Gordon, did everything they could to produce that coal.

The more you describe it, the more it sounds like he basically had an enslaved workforce almost.

- Yeah, he ran his town with an iron fist from what I've heard.

There was something called Company Script here in Thurber, you could get up to half of your expected pay at Company Script and at the end of the month when they paid you, they would didn't take that out.

- It was like company cash, good in only one place, the company store.

That song that says, "I owe my soul to the company store."

- Yes.

- That was Thurber?

- It could have been, yes.

- To skirt the unions and find chief labor, Hunter started recruiting foreign immigrants to the USA and Thurber became an odd melting pot of culture.

At one point, there were between 15 and 18 different ethnicities living in this little town.

You'd have like the Italian neighborhood, you'd have the Polish neighborhood, the Mexican neighborhood, and all these people came and many of 'em couldn't even speak each other's languages.

And they all had to work together, live together in this one strange community.

It's like an Olympic village where the only sport is coal mining.

That is until Thurber discovered the dirt below their feet was also good for brick.

So Thurber brick, evidently some of the best brick west of the Mississippi, and it was used to pave Congress Avenue in Austin, and the Fort Worth stockyards.

Lots of the towns around this area, you know, they have the old red brick streets, that's Thurber brick.

This smokestack is the lone remnant of the giant brick kilns that used to burn in the middle of town.

But soon the brick and coal boom that fueled Thurber was replaced by another even bigger bang, oil, and Thurber collapsed.

- The company basically said, "We don't need coal mines anymore.

We're closing all the coal mines.

I'm so sorry you have X many days to vacate the property."

- So where did the houses go?

Like where'd all the stuff go?

- The company, it was a company owned town, so they treated it like a company owned business and they salvaged it and they sold everything they could.

- Okay.

Yeah.

Adios!

Today it's nothing more than a ghost town and only a few echoes remain: a church, a fire station.

The old Mercantil is now the Smokestack restaurant.

But thankfully the museum is here to help us all remember that Thurber was once more than just an apparition.

(upbeat music) Now not everyone in Thurber's past worked in the depths of the coal mines.

The white collar jobs got to keep their collars especially clean, high atop New York Hill.

At one point this hill was covered in the homes and offices of Thurber's elite.

Today it's a home cooking restaurant welcoming the white collar, blue collar, even no collar.

(upbeat music) - They built some houses up here on top of New York Hill for the office people and they moved from New York.

- Oh.

- So they also called it Silk Stocking Road.

- Okay.

Yeah.

The teacup pinkies up when you came up here.

Okay.

This is Janice and Mariela Mills representing three generations of the Mills family, plus a basket of their famous homemade rolls.

- You have to eat it with the honey though.

- Oh, okay.

- You even got the honey.

- I'm not gonna complain about that.

- Yeah, there's the honey too.

That is like warm tasty.

- Uh huh.

(sniffing) oh.

- Made daily.

- Oh, that is amazing.

I know I'm hungry, but I could like, I could eat 10 of them.

How do you stop?

I mean it is, you- - You don't.

(laughing) - Yeah.

Over the past 35 years, New York Hill has become a beloved institution built by a family for families.

- My mother had started making this recipe, you know, years ago and so it was things that we knew how to do.

- If you like it that much, maybe other people will too.

- That's right.

- It's multi-generational recipes served in a dining room whose walls tell the stories of the generations of Texans who lived in Thurber.

Photos all around here.

- Yes.

- We just over the years collected 'em.

- Yeah, we have people that will bring stuff in and be like, "This says Thurber Texas on it.

Like, do you want it?"

And I'll be like, "Sure.

We'll put it on the wall."

- Yeah.

(all laughing) (tongue clicking) There we go.

- There it is.

- So you still have people who have Thurber stories?

- Even the grandchildren, some of 'em are coming in and they'll look to see if their grandparents is in it.

- Parents or- - Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, a lot of history, a lot of collective memories.

Y'all are kind of the heartbeat of what was Thurber.

Thurber will live on as long as we keep telling the stories.

(upbeat music) So while I've been sitting out here on New York Hill with the ladies, the men have been stuck in the proverbial coal mines AKA the kitchen.

But that's the way they like it.

This is Grandpa Leslie, his son Randy and his grandson Ryan.

All right, Randy, what'd you just drop in there?

- Okay.

I got some gizzard cooking here.

- Gizzards?

- Gizzards.

Yeah.

- People still order that?

- They love 'em, they love 'em, but they like these even more.

- What is this?

- These are livers, chicken livers, so.

(Chet laughing) - Now do you eat these things?

- I eat 'em, I like 'em.

They had to grow on me.

- I've got something right up here that I just cooked and they're actually probably cool enough for you guys to sample.

- Don't insult the chef.

- Yeah, that's right.

- When he says to try it, you try it.

That's good.

I expected not to like it, boy.

If you couldn't already tell, this is classic country cooking.

Call me a believer.

- A be-liver?

(Chet laughing) - So what's the philosophy?

What makes something good?

- Just being real, I guess, being real food.

We don't like doing a lot of that frozen stuff just out of the bag.

- Yeah.

- Items that we, you know, that we like to serve and put in our menu are things that we cut ourself and create ourselves.

You know, we don't, it's time consuming, but it's worth it, so.

- You got one chance a lot of times for a highway traveler to win their heart.

And if you can, they're gonna stop every time they're coming through.

- That's true.

- And also our other half of our customers, we all know 'em.

I mean, we all live around them.

It's really embarrassing to screw up your neighbor's steak or, you know what I mean?

- Home cooking abounds.

But hand cut steaks are their best seller, so why not?

Lemme tell you that if I was a hoity toity bourgeoisie on the New York Hill back in the day, this is exactly what I would've eaten up here.

I would've opened all my windows and let the smells waft out to the miners below.

- That's pretty cruel.

- It's pretty mean.

Hand cut ribeye, got little garlic butter on top.

A little skewer shrimp on the side.

They asked if I wanted a couple more rolls.

I said, "You know, a couple more wouldn't hurt."

Oh yeah.

Tastes like Texas right there.

That is a really good steak.

'Cause I don't think the coal miners of Thurber probably even knew what a shrimp was out here back in the day.

- No way.

- But on New York Hill, oh, we knew.

- Wait, we?

- We, I was- - It's we now?

(Chet laughing) - I'm eating surf and turf for dinner.

I think that puts me in the top echelon of society.

I'm a spoiled man, Daniel, what can I say?

Spending this long on the road, eating food as good as this, you get spoiled.

(soft upbeat music) This part of Texas has more adventure than you can shake a stick at, a painted stick.

New adventures beside age old stories, legendary eats, and legendary families.

If you listen closely, I know you'll agree, the mountains are calling.

Ooh, thank you.

- Welcome.

- Always save room for a homemade cinnamon roll.

So I'll see all y'all out on the road.

Vaya con dios, amigos.

- Is that a cinnamon roll or a loaf of bread with icing?

(Chet laughing) - Whatever it is, it's amazing.

- Whoa.

(Chet chuckles) Howdy, y'all.

Follow along with my adventures at chettripper on Instagram and at thedaytrippertv on Facebook and YouTube, or head to the daytripper.com for travel guides, past episodes, and info on our mobile app and team "Daytripper."

- The "Daytripper" is made possible by Rudy's, real Texas barbecue.

Shipping nationwide at rudys.com.

Karbach Brewing Company from Houston, Texas.

Makers of Karbach Lager, a beer that is proudly partnered with Don't miss with Texas, please dispose responsibly.

Visit Georgetown, where big ideas meet small town charm.

Georgetown, the most beautiful town square in Texas.

Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, protection and peace of mind for Texans since 1952.

Don Hewlett Chevrolet Buick in Georgetown making Texas Road trips possible for over 50 years.

Don Hewlett Chevrolet Buick, Texas True.

Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages, Texas' local bottler providing the Lone Star state with a variety of Coca-Cola products.