IronTiger

I was surprised to find a railroad connecting Katy to Hockley. I knew there was a spur connecting to what I read was a quarry(?) but the other connecting railroad had been abandoned years before it. Even more interesting, it's the exact same orientation as the connector rail between the MKT and the same railroad in the Heights area, where the Walmart is to be going in.

Google Earth has now added imagery from 1944 in Houston. Granted, there are some dead patches but the quality is a lot better than the 1978 imagery. Railroads exist of which there is no trace now. US-59? Doesn't exist. Inner loop Houston? What inner loop? What trees of West University Park? Hardly a tree there! Cypress? That farm community out of town on 290? "Katy Freeway"? What, do you mean to say that Highway 90 is going to have ten times the lanes it does now? Check it out today!

I've been to British Isles before. My brother got a Yellow Submarine mug there, and personally, I still want to try the beef extract-and-horseradish potato chips.

OK, I'm curious of this one: are there any places in Houston that sell Vegemite? I've read that Whole Foods and Fiesta do, anyplace else?

Don't forget Houston Heights, annexed in the early 20th century.

Quick reading on the Internet says that alcohol doesn't actually warm your body temperature when it's cold. No matter, though, as I'm under 21, and Spec's isn't on my normal way to college.

With rumblings of College Station's proposed takeover of Wellborn, I'm sure that Houston has probably sucked up independent suburbs that were once not in Houston city limits. While some have been surrounded (West University Place, Jersey Village), I'm sure others didn't survive. Does anyone know some of the old cities?

That's true, there were blackouts early this morning, but seemed to have stopped. Hopefully that's the case for the rest of the day: I need Internet for college stuff.

Given this cold time in Texas, there are rolling blackouts across the state. Given you're reading this, you probably have power! What say you in this cold, icy grip?

Hmm...a new Walmart in that neighborhood. Any news on the old Auchan, which is in that same general area?

I'm doing research for my blog (College Station Roads & Retail) and it looks like Parkway Square (Kroger on Texas Avenue) had a rather large "anchor", which now serves as spaces for Harbor Freight Tools, Stein Mart, and King Dollar. Does anyone know if a large store was there previously? (link)

Perhaps. I've learned from my experiences on this forum to keep a much lower profile.

I heard that the old Fox Sports Grill will be replaced by another sports bar. What have you heard about it?

Can't believe they would demolish legitimate bars when "Zone D'Erotica" is sitting right in front of Dillard's...

Should I ask around at a Dallas forum if they'd chip in, or would be mocked and driven out on a rail?

Have you ever visited the College Station Conference Center and met the city history director, Anne Boykin? She has a scanner, plus it goes to the city servers!

Well, the "Target grocery" was mentioned in the Weingarten's thread, and it turns out Target did run grocery stores in the 1970s (HistoricAerials.com has the 610 location physical building built in the early 1970s). Lewis & Coker apparently had grocery stores with Kmart from Galveston to College Station, so it must have been Kmart's Kmart Foods partner for that region. The Target grocer was likely a local company.

Well, to account for the unusually large size for a pre-2000 Target, I found out that this Target had an attached grocery store, similar to how Kmart had "Kmart Foods" (which was run by Lewis & Coker), so an auto center wasn't out of the question. Did Auchan ever use the space?

In the 610 south loop location, why does the store jut out to the east side? I think it may have been an automotive center at one time, but did Auchan use for it for anything?

Did you work in Houston banks in the 1980s?

Yeah, "Jewel-T" was in fact owned by Jewel-Osco as a small discount grocery chain.

Yeah, AppleTree was by and large a failure. It really downscaled from Safeway (dropping prices, though) and died with a whimper when the last one finally closed in late 2009. The local Weingarten's in CS lasted from 1982-1984, became Safeway (I think?), moved to Culpepper Plaza (the older location becoming Toys R Us), became AppleTree, and then closed in the early 2000s. It was eventually knocked down during redevelopment and rebuilt as two smaller store spaces, one of which is a Spec's today (the other side is vacant).

Whew! I thought you said you said you had a favorite "breed" of hotel. Hotels are weird, man. They swap names easily: the Continental Inn (the ugly 1970s one) on the 59 area was a Holiday Inn Select until a year or so ago, and Holiday Inn (presumably) before that, except both Continental and Holiday Inn are the same company. There's only been one Ramada in College Station, but they're currently on their third location, and every hotel they move out of got a different name.

When my mother lived on Lake Waco when she was very young, her family lived in a house that was supposed to be a real house but only the basement was built, so the basement was literally like a bunker with a (presumably) sunken door and one-foot-thick concrete walls. I'm sure that it's still probably there under Lake Waco where they flooded it to build a dam.

Because it's not The Woodlands. Realistically, it reminds me of the Disneyworld "Main Street USA", something (also) totally fake and merchandise-oriented.