Chris Travis had never been to Mineral Wells when he first arrived to examine the 50 Year Club’s project to restore and revitalize what is now called Mountaineer Heritage Park. So, when he drove up from his home in Round Top, Texas, he expected flatness, somewhat like the Dallas area, but the terrain quickly adjusted his perception and the treasure trove of buildings he found have been an added bonus.

Since his initial visit last spring, Travis said he has discovered more of the city’s people and buildings. Although his role is focused on the historic high school campus, he soon recognized the depth of architectural history throughout the city’s structures.

When Travis first came to meet the 50 Year Club and see its project, he also found a city full of undeveloped historic structures, similar to his hometown 12 years ago.

“I had heard of Mineral Wells, having grown up in Waco, but I didn’t know anything about it,” Travis said. “The truth of it is that Mineral Wells itself was a huge, pleasant surprise. As a restoration designer and restoration builder I love old buildings, so just to find a city that, in general, has so much extraordinary period architecture that’s my kind – meaning not fixed up yet – it was a huge thing in the first place.”

Travis is managing partner of Sentient Architecture, the firm charged with bringing new life into the old Mountaineer High School and its adjacent structures, including the rock schoolhouse, the home economics building and the amphitheater built by the Works Progress Administration.

He is an expert in historic design and restoration of indigenous Texas historic structures, according to Sentient’s Web site. In 1981, he received the T.C. Jester award for excellence in historic design in the historic Houston Heights.

“I’ve made a lot of friends and talked to a lot of people here and I think that people don’t really realize that level of treasure [they have],” he said, referring to Mountaineer Park as well as the Baker Hotel and “a number of other buildings in this town.”

“Part of why I got into this project is because I come from a rural community lifestyle,” said Travis.

Round Top is about an hour and 30 minutes from Houston and has seen historical and cultural tourism explode there in the past 12 years, mainly because of Round Tops’ proximity to Houston and Houstonians’ desires to periodically escape back into history and rural communities.

“I live in a place where that’s what the economy is about and it really did enrich the community in the long run,” he said. “There were the same kind of pressures with outsiders coming in revitalizing the community, but in the end it really turned out to be a really important partnership. It’s a whole economy in that region, not just that town, driven almost entirely by Houston people.”

Travis sees similar economic possibilities in Mineral Wells at large, and he said he sees tremendous possibilities with his Mountaineer Heritage Park project that brought him here.

“I think from just an economic development standpoint [historic tourism is] a hugely underutilized resource here,” he added about Mineral Wells.

Mountaineer Heritage Park
The 50 Year Club awarded Sentient Architecture with the contract to restore and renovate the historic high school complex in May. The process has included examining what could be and looking at the big picture by including all the site’s historic and unique structures. One of the first results was naming the complex Mountaineer Heritage Park.

“What I told them when I came here, it wasn’t about just the high school; it was about the entire property,” he recalled.

Travis said the fact these structures exist on one piece of property that has gone largely untouched by modernization is “unique in Texas, that I’ve seen.”

“I’ve never seen [in 59 years] the combination of ingredients [Mineral Wells has]. It just a real unusual and dense bunch of historic [structures]. The high school itself is in extraordinary condition. You’ve got a WPA amphitheater; you’ve got the old stone schoolhouse; you’ve got the home economics building. So there’s four really unique historical features on this one piece of property that are set real well by the site.

“And I’ve never seen that combination of things in an undeveloped property in this kind of location, not even once,” he said, “in any size community.”

“What I think is unusual is it’s a property that has four buildings of historical value that are totally different and significant kinds of structures,” Travis reiterated about the site that initially attracted him to the project. In addition, he said he was impressed by how the entire complex was originally sited, with a raised big stone wall around it.

“It’s like a painting with a frame. I’ve never seen anything close to it,” he said.

Opportunities
Travis sees numerous opportunities for Mountaineer Heritage Park.

In his hometown of Waco, he saw the old Waco High School, where his mother taught journalism and English, become a community center.

“It’s a city that took a structure similar to the high school [here] and is doing exactly what we’re talking about doing,” he said. “And they didn’t have the benefit of all the other structures. It’s a good example of repurposing [their old] high school.”

He sees a similar opportunity for Mountaineer Heritage Park and its relationship with Mineral Wells and Palo Pinto County.

“It lends itself to not just historic preservation … but relatively inexpensively … compared to how we would develop this in most other places … [a project] that has a huge amount of diverse options.”

“The auditorium there … I’ve never seen a high school auditorium with a curved, suspended balcony, ever,” he said. “And so, that by itself, [could become] a community theater.”

“There’s plenty of much bigger communities that would kill to have something like that, let alone the rest of the facilities available here, relatively inexpensively.”

Travis said theaters are frequently used “as some form of economic development,” often highlighting the history of the community to engage people with performances like Lone Star reenactment-type programs. Along with the large classrooms, the historic high school could become a site for theater-arts competitions for youth and adults.

In addition to theater programs, weddings, religious services, community functions and meetings and conferences are just some of the opportunities he and the 50 Year Club envision for Mountaineer Heritage Park.

“So it becomes a resource for the whole community – church groups, organizations [and] non profits,” Travis said.

In fact, the outdoor Mountaineer Amphitheater has already been used by church groups as a meeting place and for outdoor movies.

R.E. Mason, a 50 Year Club board member and construction co-chair for the renovation committee, and others worked hard to restore the WPA-built amphitheater. Among other things, Mason and crew have cleared brush, pushed earth around to make the site safe and accessible and re-cemented the stage surface.

He said he hopes more groups will discover the city’s unique historic amphitheater as a venue for outdoor programs.

In his 50-plus years of work, Travis said he’s seen projects like this one change communities.

“It’s not hypothetical,” he said. “I’ve seen this type of project turn a community around.”

‘Can do’ spirit

But there’s another, non-structural aspect of the project that also attracted Travis.

“I don’t see too many senior citizens groups going out there,” he said of the group’s efforts to take on a project of this magnitude. “People have to be 69 or 70 to get to vote in the 50 Year Club.”

Although there are national groups, “like Encore [Civic Ventures] … about people who retire doing things that make a difference, having a homegrown group that is in that demographic … that is extremely rare,” Travis noted. “I don’t think I’ve seen people of that generation take on something this ambitious and being that ‘can do’ about it.”

In the process of planning the restoration, Travis has conducted workshops with 50 Year Club members to establish values and roles, and ask about possibilities for the site and the purpose of Mountaineer Heritage Park.

“What could it be for the club, city and county and all stakeholder groups,” he said. “The thing that came out of this was [club members] who could express this ‘can do’ spirit. It’s the same kind of spirit and pioneering attitude of the same people who founded this place and Texas, [who] aren’t going to let anything stop them. I found that very extraordinary and still do.”

He said as meetings progress attendance grows larger and more people are talking and taking on projects.

“You can see it incrementally growing,” Travis said about his last meeting. “We talked about what’s next and they said what we need to do is open doors and get people participating and take leadership roles.

“It’s just a group of people who, to me, symbolize what the history of the area is all about,” he said. “There’s a whole lot of things I think are extraordinary and this has become very personal to me. I find it very inspirational – it’s a lot more than another project.”

“It’s a bigger thing that the community is coming,” he said of the amphitheater use last fall. “That’s really their vision,” he added of the 50 Year Club.

“How they see it – when you really get down to it – is this is their legacy. These are people that this area has given a lot to,” he added. “And they feel like, if they can make this happen, this is their gift, their parting gift – it’s really that serious to the core people, especially.

“This is the passing on of the values and the history, the heritage and all these things that have been a huge part of their lives,” said Travis.

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For more information or to donate to the Mountaineer Heritage Park project, call (940) 325-5600, or e-mail 50year08@att.net.

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Phase I plans for Mountaineer High School include:
• Installing a new new doorway and ramps for accessibility and delivery to the high school’s lower (basement) level, beginning at the back of the Rock School. – both near the new north-side entrance. These areas will allow support for meetings and planning for the next phase.

• Framing the future elevator shaft leading up from the basement floor.

• Updating water, sewer and electricity. The club’s Executive Director Jessie Teddlie noted, “The city has been very helpful in identifying ordinances, resources and regulations and has provided the resources to identify those lines.”

• Working with the Texas Historical Commission to meet requirements for a new porch over the new basement-floor doorway that will match the structure and appearance of the rest of the building.

In addition, the 50 Year Club has just begun a capital campaign to raise funds for Phase I construction.

So far Teddlie said the renovation project has received donations from small local and state foundations and business owners from Mineral Wells and some surrounding towns, including Eastland, Weatherford, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls and Santo. Teddlie said business owners in these communities see this as a benefit to them in the long term. She said Richard’s Signs is making an in-kind donation of a professional sign for Mountaineer Heritage Park.

Judy and Bob Shubert, of North Richland Hills, are “young” associate members from the Mineral Wells High class of 1962. The couple are using their collective skills to:

• Keep a blog on the project, available at mountaineerheritagepark.blogspot.com.

• Work on a virtual tour for the Web site, www.50yearclub.org.

• Repair, protect and digitize treasures.

• Assist with the capital campaign.

“We encourage the younger classes to participate like this because they are going to inherit this,” said Teddlie.

In addition, the club invites community groups to sign up to use the outdoor Mountaineer Amphitheater.