Gingerbread Trail: Victorian Mansions

For a few decades around the turn of the last century, Waxahachie was one of the richest towns in Texas, and the reason was cotton. Ellis County led the state — and at times the nation — in cotton production, and the merchants, bankers, doctors, and mill owners who handled all that white gold poured their fortunes into showpiece houses. They hired traveling contractors and bought millwork by the catalog, then dressed their homes in scrollwork, spindled porches, turrets, and the lacy 'gingerbread' trim that gave the city its nickname. Hundreds of those houses still stand, most of them in the leafy historic district northwest of the courthouse square, and the Ellis County Museum has led a tour through them every June for more than half a century. This walk strings together eight of the finest — from a south-side mansion crowned with an onion dome to a Queen Anne built by the man who founded the town library. Almost all are private homes today, so admire them from the sidewalk and let the porches tell the story.