Texas State: LBJ's San Marcos

Lyndon B. Johnson enrolled at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1927 and earned his degree in 1930, making this the only Texas university to graduate a U.S. president. This walk traces his footprints from the student center that carries his name to the gym where he signed the Higher Education Act as president. It then drops downhill past a boarding house he once roomed in to the downtown museum and memorial that keep his story alive. Expect roughly 2 miles on foot with some steep campus hills; wear good shoes.

Lyndon B. Johnson arrived in San Marcos in 1927 with almost no money, worked his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College, and earned his degree in 1930. Decades later he returned as president to sign one of the most important education laws in American history. This walk follows his trail across the hilltop campus and into town, retracing the student days of the only U.S. president to graduate from a Texas university.

On campus you'll learn how college president Cecil E. Evans gave the cash-strapped Johnson jobs, including work in his own office, and how those years shaped his later thinking about education. The emotional high point is the Music Building, once Strahan Gymnasium, where on November 8, 1965, Johnson signed the Higher Education Act after rain drove the ceremony indoors. A plaque placed for the law's 40th anniversary marks the spot where federal grants and loans that opened college to millions were set in motion.

Off campus, the 1896 Beverly Hutchison House, a former boarding house where Johnson rented a room as a student, is best admired from the sidewalk. The free LBJ Museum of San Marcos explores how his years as a student and young teacher shaped his presidency, and the LBJ MLK Crossroads Memorial marks a corner the city promotes as the only U.S. intersection named for both men.

Expect some steep hills along the way, and plenty of history packed into a single morning.