Hempstead: Six-Shooter Junction & Liendo Plantation

In the decades after the Civil War, the little Waller County town of Hempstead earned a nickname that stuck: Six-Shooter Junction. It sat where rail lines crossed, and the crowds, saloons, and tensions of Reconstruction gave it a reputation for gunplay that outlasted the era itself. This driving tour begins on the courthouse square, where the county's government and its post-war history are written into stone and bronze, then follows the town's older streets past the homes and churches of the people who built it. From there it drives east out of town to Liendo Plantation — one of the oldest cotton estates in the county, later the camping ground of General George Armstrong Custer and his cavalry during the occupation of Texas in 1865, and later still the home of a celebrated sculptor. Six-Shooter Junction is a nickname the town has both lived down and leaned into; this loop shows you where it came from.