Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, I'm Alexa and I'm Rory, and together we are the Romies. We are married To each other. Right, we are a touring musical duo.

Speaker 2: 0:11

And our music has taken us to all kinds of places all around the world and keeps us always on the go.

Speaker 1: 0:16

So we hope you enjoy our stories and adventures while running around working to keep all your plates spinning.

Speaker 2: 0:22

And we hope, to facilitate your busy lifestyle and feed your inner travel bug. Hi everyone, welcome to the Romy's Podcast. I'm Alexa.

Speaker 1: 0:35

And I'm Rory.

Speaker 2: 0:36

We are excited to continue sharing our Mineral Wells series with you.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Yes, we are.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Mineral Wells is just about two and a half hours from us here in Waco, texas, and you can take some back roads to get there or go through Fort Worth on your way.

Speaker 1: 0:50

We took the back roads. It was nice.

Speaker 2: 0:52

So, however you like to road trip, we definitely encourage you to take the road trip to Mineral Wells.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Deaf. Now they can ship you their magic water if you end up flying. But if you road trip, you can take home those five gallon barrels of the stuff, just like we did, yes, of the good stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Now, if you're not sure what we're talking about, check out our previous episode to hear all about the famous crazy water that put this town on the map. Now, in today's episode, we're going to deep dive into this town's history with the help of our tour guide, Rose Jordan. Awesome, yes, she's been working with the Mineral Wells Tourism Bureau. She loves the town. She knows its stories inside and out, so there's no better guide than Rose to share Mineral Wells' rich history with us. We started a walking tour with her and began at a very unassuming well.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Indeed. Here's Rose, here's Rose at a very unassuming.

Speaker 3: 1:47

Well Indeed. Here's Rose. Here's Rose. The Lynch family Judge Alvis Lynch and his wife lived in Denison and they were moving west looking for a place to stay and they decided to make Mineral Wells their home, and they Was there a town here at the?

Speaker 3: 1:56

time there wasn't. There was nothing here. No wells, no anything, just country. And so, for whatever reason, they picked Mineral Wells. And so what do you do when you find a new home? You've got to find water. And so they hired somebody to drill a well and in exchange their payment was three oxen. The original well is actually back over in another section, but they started it.

Speaker 3: 2:20

When they first started drinking that water, it smelled funny, it tastes a little funny, so they decided to test it on their cattle. Cattle were drinking it. Nothing happened to like okay, we should, should be good. So they started drinking it and they both had some different kinds of ailments rheumatism or digestive issues or whatever and they noticed that as they were drinking the water those ailments were going away and so obviously worried about something like that's going to get out really fast. And people just started flocking to mineral wells for the water. And so this particular well we're standing on the northwest corner of the Crazy Water Hotel this particular well was the third well to be dug.

Speaker 3: 3:00

What's really cool is I finally found the first written documentation about this story just a few weeks ago. Up till now it's just been legend, but I found a firsthand account of this story and it was one of the kids, one of the school kids. So there was a woman in town who everybody thought was crazy and she was hanging out by this. Well, this was the third well to be dug. It was then called the Wiggins. Well, and over a period of time, she was drinking the water and she became less crazy. What we think is she probably had something like, um, dementia, maybe some Alzheimer's. But also, to you know, when you know about the chemical, the chemistry of your brain, you know if you're really really off on things like magnesium or calcium, your brain does funny things to you. In whatever case, it was, the water was making her feel better and less crazy. So the school kids around town called her the crazy woman. So this became the crazy woman's well.

Speaker 3: 3:57

It was later shortened to crazy water or crazy well, and so that's how we have the crazy water hotel. And as you walk around town you see crazy, crazy everything, because this was here before this. Yes, all. So this was in like 1877 or just a little bit before this hotel was actually. This is actually the second crazy water hotel.

Speaker 3: 4:16

The first crazy water hotel, I think, was a block or two away from this, but it burnt down. It was built in 1912 and burnt down in a huge fire in town. This one was built in 1925. And then the Baker Hotel was built in 1929. So this one is not only first, but it's the one that carries our story Crazy Water. So every time you see crazy around town, it all started right here with a woman who's drinking this well, drinking water from this well. That everybody thought was crazy and became better. 1877 is the year our city was founded, and so that picture you just took the man on a donkey that is the most iconic photo that we have of judge Alvis Lynch, and people will say that you know they thought it was a man on a donkey drinking a bottle of hooch. He's not carrying a bottle of hooch, he's carrying our water. So that's what all that was.

Speaker 2: 5:07

That's awesome and for those of you who are listening, obviously you don't have video, and so we're standing like when I think that I'm going to go to a, well, I'm thinking like an old school, well, like you can drop your pail in and grab something. I mean, we're basically at like a manhole.

Speaker 3: 5:27

It's a really dingy yellow square manhole. So it's a square and a hole we have a square we have a plan to um replace get the well working again, number one, okay and then replace this metal grate with a plate glass so that you can see it down in there and see it working, and then put a historic sign up here explaining what it is Right. Yeah, so cool.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Yep, yep, so when y'all come and visit, that might already be up.

Speaker 3: 5:54

So back in the day we would have people come in town, and so we know this from old postcards. We've got several old historic postcards of Mineral Wells and on the back people would write I'm going to mineral wells for a season, and a season usually meant months, a couple of months, two months, three months, to take the waters, and by take the waters they meant drinking it or it could have been bathing in it. And so we actually have seen old prescription pads where the doctor has written, old prescription pads where the doctor has written take number two this many times a day for this long, take number three this many times a day for this long. And so they actually literally were prescribing our mineral water to deal with whatever your ailments were. And so you can't see it right now because the famous is under it's under renovation, but there's a sign in there from way back when that talks about all the different ailments that they believe to help with digestive issues, rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, just all those different kinds of things.

Speaker 3: 6:50

And so back in the 60s and 70s some things changed that made it so that we can't make the claims about our water, but it was also the turnaround of the original part of our decline for mineral wells. So about that time the FDA number one said that we can't make those claims about our water anymore. Around that same time people discovered it was easier to take an aspirin to deal with the symptoms than it is to actually root out and find out what's causing your ailments and then deal with that and actually cure your body Right and actually cure your body. At the same time then our military base was decommissioned and shut down.

Speaker 2: 7:27

So you guys had a military base here.

Speaker 3: 7:29

Massive. It was Fort Walters. It was massive, and so if you, basically if you flew a helicopter in the Vietnam War, 99 percent of them were trained right here in Mineral Wells at Fort Walters, and so our base was huge. We had helipads, different places across the county. Yeah, so when you kind of combine all those things, not only did a massive chunk of our population disappear when the base shut down, but also our tourism the main thing that people were coming for, our water suddenly now become less important, less significant because it was easier to just take an aspirin.

Speaker 3: 8:03

So, yeah, but back in the way, way back days, back in the early 1900s. One of the things that we see now is photos, oh, black and white photos of people on the donkey trails and so that's actually that mountain right there and where, pretty much today, if you go to a place and you don't take a picture and put it on instagram, were you really there? Well, in those days, if you came Mineral Wells and you didn't go up on the donkey trail and get your picture taken at one of the cabins, like, were you really ever, ever, in Mineral Wells? That's like that's kind of the old, old story. Instagram is seeing those. Yeah. So we have a lot of people that we we would love to have the donkey trails back, but liabilities and all the things that's not happening.

Speaker 3: 8:42

So yeah, yeah, there was a thousand step stairway going up the side of the mountain and it was called the fat man's reducer. So we've got a historic postcard of that. So yeah, yeah, yeah, reduce you all the way, yeah. And then I don't know if you guys saw the welcome sign when, when we were coming into town up on the hill, reminds you of the Hollywood sign. So it's two mountains over, but it actually was. Ours was before the Hollywood sign. And the man, mr Griffith, who went back to Hollywood and built the Hollywood sign we have a photograph of him up on the rooftop of this hotel looking at that sign before the Hollywood sign was built. So legend has it that he got the idea from here. Whether or not that's true we don't have it on paper, but if you look at the time frames and you look that he was here, that works.

Speaker 2: 9:27

Now, when you walk around downtown you see a lot of historic buildings, and Rose has some historic insight on those as well.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Go Rose.

Speaker 3: 9:36

Submineral Wells has over 100 historic buildings in our downtown. We are a nationally registered historic district. Back in the 50s and 60s the towns that had money actually a lot of them took their historic buildings down and just rebuilt all new stuff. So one of the blessings of not having had a lot of money in the 50s and 60s is that now we have something really special. We have a hundred more than a hundred historic buildings here in our downtown. So we wouldn't have had that, I think, if we'd had money. So that's been really great.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Another thing that led us walking and driving around Mineral Wells downtown are the murals.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Now we've talked about murals in our episode about Somerset in the Lake Cumberland area, which is episode 212. And you can also take a mural tour in Lancaster, California, episode 211.

Speaker 1: 10:22

And there was a mural tour trail thing in Port Angeles as well.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Yes, there was, yeah, Okay so it's a.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Thing.

Speaker 2: 10:31

It's a thing, but Mineral Wells has its own unique take on the stories behind their murals and. Rose tells us a little bit about that.

Speaker 1: 10:39

And interactive as well.

Speaker 3: 10:42

So one of the things that we started doing when we started kind of reviving our town back is some of the buildings that were ugly looking but didn't still have their historic value. So if it was brick that had never been painted on, we didn't touch that. If it was a facade that had never been touched, we didn't paint over it. But some of the buildings had already been painted over and they were ugly, had already been painted over and they were ugly, and so what we started doing was bringing in muralists to put murals in our downtown so that while they were waiting for their renovations, then we had something pretty to look at.

Speaker 3: 11:12

And we actually have two that are interactive murals, and this one is the Goodnight Loving mural and it's interactive because if you're standing in the right place of the parking lot, that mountain actually lines up to that mountain, so it looks like the Cowboys are coming down out of the mountain and that cowboy that's there getting water with his horse it was actually our councilman Doyle light, and so the muralist painted him. The other interactive one is a few blocks down and it has it's a cocapella mural, but it has a part of the Baker Hotel and the bell tower is chopped off of it, so that if you're standing in the right place in the parking lot, the bell tower of the mural is finished out with the actual bell tower of the Baker Hotel. So those are really cool. That's cool.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Now Mineral Wells has two significant and historic hotels. Rose tells us about those next.

Speaker 1: 12:01

They're really cool.

Speaker 3: 12:02

So the Baker Hotel is the other historic hotel and it's not ready yet. It was originally built in 1929 and opened right after the stock market crash, and even still she thrived because people were still coming for the waters. So the Baker Hotel we've got stories of, like the Three Stooges were there or Lyndon B Johnson has been there, and so a lot of famous people went to that hotel.

Speaker 3: 12:27

Well, actually, this one too, the crazy water hotel, and that we're in right now so in the crazy water hotel up on the seventh floor there's a ballroom and it was. Do you know who mary martin is the original peter pan okay okay.

Speaker 3: 12:41

So she had a dance studio up there and the way that she paid for it was she performed for people down here. And then also at one time there was the crazy radio gang. A radio show came out of this. But over at the Baker Hotel we had lots of famous people over there. So in 1972, it closed its doors for the last time. We told the story a while ago about kind of the decline of Mineral Wells. The FDA said we couldn't make those claims. People were taking aspirin. The military closed up and left. So the Baker Hotel in 1972 closed her doors for the last time. And so she has sat looming over our city for 50 plus years, just empty, and until 2019, most of the windows were beat out, Like it was just she was just this big shadow over the town.

Speaker 3: 13:25

And in June of 2019, the announcement was made this this finance group had come together to purchase the hotel. So up to that point between 72 and 2019, different people have tried to take over the Baker and renovate. But one of the things that was different about this time in 2019 was that this group actually purchased the hotel. All those other times it stayed under the ownership of the things that was different about this time in 2019 was that this group actually purchased the hotel. All those other times it stayed under the ownership of the Horn family and so people would try, and when they couldn't make it, you could failed. The Horn family still owned it. And so in 2019, this finance, this group of investors, came together and actually purchased the hotel, and so it was a big media day in June of 2019. From the steps of the Baker Hotel. We saw the finance, all of the investors there. We have signed, we have purchased the hotel. Construction begins immediately. So the construction fence went up and things happened.

Speaker 3: 14:20

Well, even then, for years, people would say, well, when the Baker Hotel comes back, it'll save our town. Okay, so then 2019 happens, the Baker has been purchased, construction is to begin immediately, but still people said, yeah, that'll happen when pigs fly. Now, not all of us. There was a group of naysayers that said it'll happen when pigs fly, but there are a lot of us that believe it's happening. Now here we are, five, six years later. We still believe. It just got derailed, slowed way down by COVID Supply chain, people being able to work. You know, hospitality financing stopped. They weren't putting anything into hospitality, so COVID just really slowed the whole project down.

Speaker 3: 15:00

But that summer 2019, we have a group here called Leadership Mineral Wells. It's a different group that goes through every year. It's adults in different parts of the community and so they just go. They spend nine months learning about our community and then they always have a class project. But class 23 were the ones that put the crazy sign up, the red and green crazy sign. So that's a historic. That's a replica of the original and the original was more ceramic. That was one of their projects was to put that up prior to that um in 2018. I don't remember what the class number was, but they put um. So if you're at the baker hotel, you'll see these blue signs covering a lot of the windows and doorways and some of them have been taken down since construction started. But it was a historic walking tour. You could walk around the baker hotel and if you read the signs, it gave you a history about our town and it talked about our attractions and those kinds of things.

Speaker 3: 15:52

Well, in 2019, that class was class 25 and their project was to restore the historic welcome sign up on the mountain. It was in bad, bad shape. It was rusted through, it wasn't lit anymore. It was in terrible shape. So, to do that, the Hollywood right right. So this connects back to the Hollywood story. So, but that costs many thousands of dollars to do.

Speaker 3: 16:15

It just so happened that that particular class was phenomenal at fundraising and they just had this synergy. That was great. Well, one of the things that they did for their fundraiser is you remember the big pig that we saw at the Coffee and Cocktails? Okay, this was at the same time, so our downtown renovation started in 2018. October 2018 was when that store opened, and so shortly later, they put that patio in the back and they put a stage out there, and so we had our first live music in downtown there at Coffee and Cocktails. So, for their fundraiser and actually Brandon was part of that class they bought that pig and they put it up on the stage behind where the bands performed, and for $5, you could sign that pig, and if you signed it, you were one of the believers saying we believe it's going to happen. It was also a little bit of a snub to the naysayers saying it's going to happen, and so that's the fly and pick story, so that we do still believe the Baker hotel is going to happen.

Speaker 3: 17:08

But the other thing to the other piece to that story is that, yes, we believe the Baker's going to be a big deal when she gets here, but as a community, we stopped waiting and we decided, okay, we have to do something, cause if you had driven through this town eight, six, eight years ago, you'd have just kept on driving through to wherever you were going. There was nothing here in the downtown, not a reason to stop. We didn't have shops, we didn't have restaurants down here. I mean, there just wasn't anything here, a lot of boarded up, closed up shops. So, as a community, in 2016, we decided, well, if the baker comes, that's great, but we're not waiting. So we're going to go and figure out what we want to be and start this renovation and take our you know, get our town moving again, so that if the baker comes, we'll be ready for. Because, truthfully, back then, if the baker had been finished and you had come to stay the night in the baker with our town the way it was, you'd have been okay. Now what? You'd have gone in the baker, you'd have come back out. You're like the baker's great, but what do I do now? So now we have something for people to actually want to do. Now people are coming even without the baker ready, so just imagine what it's going to be like when the baker gets here.

Speaker 3: 18:16

But when you see the murals of the flying pigs, when you see the pig, if you come to my office, it's full of flying pigs, people even. It's full of flying pigs, people even. Because I share this story. All the time bus groups come in I'll hop on be their tour guide. I share the story. You know, I've done it for historic tours and stuff, and so people are leaving me flying pigs all the time. When you see flying pigs in Merrill Wells, it actually means something to us. It's not just a fun yard ornament, we actually believe we're seeing our people are doing the impossible things here. So that's the flying pig story and the Baker Hotel story too.

Speaker 3: 18:52

Yeah, so the Baker Hotel, it is a historic preservation project. It's the biggest historic preservation of a hotel. I can't remember if it's in the state of Texas or in the country, but it is a. It's a huge, huge deal, and so because of that, big chunks of the funding are historic grants, historic, you know those kinds of things historic credits, and so they have to keep it as true as they can, and so back then the rooms were small.

Speaker 3: 19:14

Some of the things that were notable about the Baker Hotel when it got here was that it was the first one to have this great, big, huge pool here in Texas. It also was an early adopter to this technology of as soon as you open the door to your room, the lights and the air conditioning would come on. So at the baker hotel, she's got she. There are so many stories about the baker hotel that she just like in fact where she sits now is not where they originally started building it. Where the baker hotel pool is is where they started building that. And then mr baker went to um, I think it was a place in california and he saw this big pool and he's like we have to have that at the baker. So they stopped construction on that, move the baker over and put the pool in the footings.

Speaker 1: 19:58

They made the pool right.

Speaker 3: 20:00

So and then I mean we have pictures they had already started the construction on the hotel. So yeah, it was really cool. But because it's a historic preservation project, they have to try to keep things true and that's kind of part of what slowed it down. So not only with COVID did hospitality funding stop because nobody was going to loan for hospitality, but the other piece too is that if you think about it's a historic project, so if you need a sink in your room, well, you need 167 out of 147. It's going to be 147 rooms, well, they can't just be any sink, it's got to be something that's going to fit the time period, those kinds of things, right. So then think about supply chain and how that came to a halt with COVID. So you've got hospitality funding is a problem, supply chain is now a problem. So that's been a lot of the slowdown of it. On several of the floors where there were two rooms, they will become one because they were so small. Because of the historic nature of the project, I think they've just is it one whole floor that they're keeping original? But in those floors where they've made two rooms one, they've still kept the original. So the hallway still has to be the same. So they kept the door for both rooms, but only one of them is usable. There's one more piece of the funding that they need to kick it back in gear. So they never fully stopped, but they've had to go really slow. Right, when they get this last piece in they'll kick it in full gear.

Speaker 3: 21:20

But some of the things that they did. So there are 997 windows on the Baker Hotel. They couldn't be, and most of them were shot out not shot out, but most of them were broken. Well, they couldn't just be replaced, they have to be restored. 997 windows came out, had to be labeled, came out, restored by a craftsman and put back in. Yes, so like the roof. So the next thing was the roof. Well, that roof was imported from Italy. So it's like kind of a big deal, but that I mean, I don't think they had to import it this time, but it's that terracotta roof. So they had to replace the roof and because they had to dry it in, because a lot of the damage was, you know, rain leakage and bats, um, so yeah, so those been a few things, but.

Speaker 3: 22:05

But then our general contractor, mark Rawlings, is this phenomenal like. I don't know how this man thinks. But there's a room in the ground floor of the hotel that has all the artifacts, and so all the light fixtures came out, but they've been labeled, so we know where they go back to. All the doors from all the rooms came down and they're all labeled, so you know exactly where they go back to. All the doors from all the rooms came down and they're all labeled, so you know exactly where they go back to. And so, like they've even got an old butler's door there so that you know back in the day if you wanted to leave laundry for them to do, you would put it in this fixture in the door and they would pick it up on the other side. So we still have some of those old doors.

Speaker 3: 22:41

So, yeah, it's a really cool to see. I can't remember what he calls the room, but it's phenomenal. And then the other artifacts that they have found throughout the hotel that they're not going to reuse will later become part of a museum there at the hotel, but they're all down in a room. It's really cool, yeah. Yeah, it had restaurants in it, it had a bowling alley in it, it had a gymnasium in it, it had mineral spas in it.

Speaker 3: 23:10

It was where all the famous people came yeah I mean back in that time, you'll see, you'll see places in old newspapers where people wrote stuff about us, or you'll see in old advertising postcards that there were two things that they used to call us america's great health resort and where, where America drinks its way to health, everybody was coming here for the water. Yeah, yeah. So our historic post office is over by the Baker and we've got a picture of Judy Garland in the historic post office. They were doing a big. Was it a fundraiser? Remember what that was?

Speaker 3: 23:39

The big stamp thing and so we've got a historic picture of Judy Garland over there at the post office. Yeah, it's really cool Like everybody came here, and so we've got a historic picture of Judy Garland over there at the post office.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Yeah it's really cool, like everybody came here. And finally, we have the Crazy Water Hotel, which is where you're going to find the crazy coffee and water bar we told you about in our previous episode, so check that one out if you haven't heard it yet. There are also some other fun shops inside the hotel and even a salon, which is actually where Rory made his very first stop when we arrived at Mineral Wells.

Speaker 1: 24:06

That's true. I walked immediately into the salon there in the Crazy Water Hotel and they had someone available. Yes, so you got to. You know, stay looking sharp for podcasting, even if you can't see me, Right.

Speaker 2: 24:22

You can watch them in your heart. Maybe we'll post this on YouTube one day. All right, so Rose even has a story or two about the Crazy Water Hotel, so here she goes.

Speaker 3: 24:32

So the Crazy Water Hotel is actually? It's a public benefit corporation, so it's not owned by one person. It actually has 88 local investors. The primary investor on this project is also a primary investor on the Baker Hotel, but that one will be a little bit different. But this one is a public benefit corporation project. So what that means is that they can. It means a lot of things, but what it means for our community is that while they can keep an eye on profit with it being a public benefit corporation, they keep more eye on what's best for the community. So they will make choices here that if you were looking for profit first, it would be one thing, but they don't do that here. When they're doing things here, they're thinking about the best benefit for our community. So yeah, and so we also live in an opportunity zone, and so I think both of them sit inside that opportunity zone.

Speaker 3: 25:25

So in here, the water bar was originally a pavilion. You see signs in there that say Crazy Water Pavilion. Also, where you got your water bottled, that was a pavilion. So back in the day we had pavilions all over town and each pavilion had its own specialty. So where today you would belly up to the bar and drink your beer back in those days yes, sir, that's where you check it when today you would belly up to the bar and drink beer. Well, in those days you would belly up to the bar, to one of the pavilion bars, and drink the water, and it was pricey, but each pavilion had a specialty. So it might be dancing, or it might be shuffleboard, or it might be card games or dominoes, and so you just hang out at the pavilions, drink your water and do whatever entertainment thing you had.

Speaker 3: 26:07

Yeah, we saw the advertising of a heater outhouse, and outhouses were in need when people started drinking the water one of my most favorite advertising postcard and they're all cartoonish, but they all show some version of a person drinking water, drinking crazy water and running to the outhouse. It's really that number four water that they're depicting because it cleans you out.

Speaker 2: 26:30

So yeah, so good. Yeah, and if you're busy drinking the good stuff, then you're not spending your time drinking harmful stuff. That's true, just saying.

Speaker 3: 26:39

Yeah, we were really looking at going down the Blue Zone route. When you're marketing a destination, you really have to figure out what's the one thing that sets you apart that will make it worth people coming to you. For At that time, what we were marketing for was outdoor adventure. But if you think about where Mineral Wells is and you drive 30 minutes or an hour away from here, like everybody around us has some form of outdoor adventure, outdoor adventure is not enough to set us apart. What does set us apart is our water. But also a tourist generally isn't coming for water unless you start talking about wellness, because I mean you can get, you can go to 7-Eleven anywhere and grab a bottle of water unless there's something special about the water. So it was about that time that I started thinking okay, in this next coming year, how am I going to market us as a destination? And very sheepishly, I started thinking. I knew the renovation that had started and I knew some things that we had coming, and I knew a lot of it involved wellness in our water. And so I started thinking I wonder if we could go back to our roots as a wellness destination. And I'll tell you, it was about six months before I spoke it out loud, because when you think of what a wellness destination is, you think of like Sedona or Palm Springs, it's all the frou-frou, spas and all those kinds of things. We're not that, and so I'm like I don't know if we can actually do this. I finally started talking about six months later. I finally started talking to some tourism experts and I said this is what I'm thinking. Have I lost my mind? They're no, no, absolutely you need to go do it. You need to do it now. And so the very first avenue that we took with to look at blue zones but it's incredibly expensive to be a blue zone, to get certified, to do the programming and then to maintain it because you have to have programming and all that. But as I started really digging into the wellness tourism, found the Wellness Tourism Association and they are a global organization and they set the global standard for what it is to be a wellness destination and there are nine pillars. So I just reached out to them and I went ahead and joined that association on behalf of Mineral Wells and really got to digging in and that was much more attainable and it was much more in line with what we were trying to do anyway, and so, of the nine pillars, we're only missing two. I actually had them come in and do an assessment of us to see where we are. I thought we were missing three. Actually we're only missing two Sustainability policy and practices, and then a wide selection of healthy dining, and truly that's what we're missing. So it was no surprise. In the process of doing that. So since 2014, the number one thing that a wellness traveler is looking for is experiences in nature. Well, there's that outdoor adventure piece that we have because we are an outdoor destination. We have three state parks, we have four lakes, we have two sections of the Brazos River that come through, we've got more than 30 miles of hiking, biking trails. So we're moving into that direction. We're working with the Wellness Tourism Association.

Speaker 3: 29:32

And then we decided, well, what if we went after Wellness Capital of Texas? So I reached out to our then representative, glenn Rogers, and I said, hey, we would like to do this, would you help us? And he said absolutely. So he put me in contact with his team and we worked through that and put together all the documentation. We had to go to legislation, like we, the mayor and the owner of crazy water, the water, and I went down to Austin, spoke in front of our mayor, spoke in front of the at the legislative session and then, at the very last possible minute, in the last legislative session, at like midnight, june 18th of 2023, it was signed into law. We're the wellness capital of Texas, so yeah, and we're still kind of a big deal. We're the wellness capital of Texas, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:17

Kind of a big deal.

Speaker 3: 30:19

We're still working towards the global designation. That's so exciting.

Speaker 2: 30:24

So y'all the history here is so beautifully woven into the present, which we'll dive into in our next episode.

Speaker 1: 30:30

So make sure to subscribe to the Romies Podcast if you haven't yet.

Speaker 2: 30:36

That's right. See y'all next time. We hope we've inspired you this episode so join us next time. Please subscribe to rate and share our podcast with your friends or you know whomever? And please like and follow us on Instagram, youtube and Facebook.

Speaker 1: 30:53

We are also on X and on all social platforms. We are at TheRomies that's T-H-E-R-O-A-M-I-E-S, and our main hub is our website.

Speaker 2: 31:05

At wwwtheromiescom, that's right, that's. T-h-e-r-o-a-m-i-e-scom. We'll be there until next time. Yeah, thanks for listening. Bye.