SFA Campus Tour

Stephen F. Austin State University opened in 1923 in Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in Texas, and moved onto this wooded campus the following year. Its grounds, once part of Thomas J. Rusk's homestead, are dotted with more state historical markers than most Texas campuses can claim. This walk heads north from a 1936 replica of a Spanish-era stone house, passes the home of a celebrated poet who taught here, circles the original 1920s hall and its plazas, and ends at a logging locomotive that recalls the East Texas timber industry the university's forestry program grew up alongside.

Nacogdoches calls itself the oldest town in Texas, and Stephen F. Austin State University's wooded campus, much of it once Thomas J. Rusk's homestead, carries that history openly. This walk links several of the university's state historical markers into a story that stretches from Spanish Texas to the East Texas timber woods.

One highlight is the Stone Fort Museum, a 1936 Texas Centennial re-creation built from the salvaged stones of Antonio Gil Y'Barbo's 18th-century house on El Camino Real; the original's demolition in 1902 set off one of the state's early preservation fights. The classical revival Austin Building, opened in 1924, is still the university's oldest academic building in use, and a bronze of Stephen F. Austin, known to students as "Surfin' Steve," is a favorite photo spot on graduation day.

The route also honors poet Karle Wilson Baker, who taught at SFA, earned a Pulitzer nomination and wrote the poem that became the school song, and it recalls the roughly 3,000 women who trained on campus in 1943 and 1944 at the Army's first administration school for the Women's Army Corps. A 1907 Shay logging locomotive nods to the timber industry that SFA's forestry program grew up alongside.

It's a lively mix of frontier history, wartime service and campus tradition, and an easy way to see why Nacogdoches and its university are so closely tied.