I met Sam!

Just south of Huntsville, TX on the east side of I-45 is a 67 ft. statue of Samuel Houston.  I pass this statue periodically when a load takes me to or from Houston and every time I pass it I wave at it and say “Hi Sam!”

Yes, I know I’m a dork.

The 67 ft. statue sits on a 10 ft. platform, making the total height 77 ft.  This blows my mind when I think about it.  My truck, hooked to a trailer is approximately 75 ft. long.  I can’t give you an exact measurement because I have no idea where my tape measure is, but that makes this statue taller than my truck is long.  Holy guacamole!

So, I pass this statue periodically and I have been telling myself for years…. “Someday….”

“Someday” came last weekend on my way back from vacation.  I’d actually decided a few weeks before vacation that I was going to stop and see Sam on my way back.

On the trail to the statue, there is a replica of Sam Houston’s face, where I stopped and took this picture.  The replica face is the same size as the statue face, so you can get an idea of the enormity of this statue.  I knew nothing about him except that the city of Houston is named after him.  There is so much fascinating information about him online.  This would be a three-day read if I listed everything I found interesting so I’m just going to include a few highlights.

 1.  Sam Houston was born in Virginia.

 2.  He was a congressman in and later the governor of Tennessee.

 3.  Sam relocated to Texas, which at the time was still a part of Mexico after he ruined himself politically for beating William Stanbury with a hickory cane on Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C.

 4.  He was a leader in the Texas Revolution and his victory in the Battle of San Jacinto secured Texas’s independence from Mexico.

 5.  Sam was the President of the Republic of Texas and supported annexation by the United States, he later went on to become a senator and then governor of Texas.

Seriously, I had no idea this guy was so fascinating.  Sometimes I think education is wasted on the young.  The older I get, the more I appreciate history; and man, do I love Wikipedia!