Spring: Railroad History and Parks

Spring combines railroad history with museums and parks. If you’re looking for a hotel in Spring, it helps to first decide what you want to focus on during your stay: historic buildings and museum exhibits sit alongside walking paths, nature trails, and fishing opportunities. The places therefore differ both in their history and in the activities they offer.

Railroad History and Museums

The Houston and Great Northern Railroad was built through the area in 1871, after which Spring grew considerably. Spring also developed into a major railroad switching yard, with fourteen tracks and 200 railroad workers. The railroad is thus connected both to the town’s development and to its role as a switching yard.

Wunsche Bros. Saloon and Café is recognized as a Texas State Historical Structure and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In Old Town Spring, a faithful replica of a historic railroad depot dating to around 1907 is used as a restaurant. An officially recognized historic structure and a depot replica therefore represent different forms of cultural heritage.

The Spring Historical Museum is housed in a building completed as a church in 1948 and later used as a courthouse for several years. Its model railroad exhibit is a permanent part of the museum. Here, the building’s history and the railroad theme come together: the building’s former uses add another layer of local history to the permanent exhibit. Docent-led tours of the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts are available by appointment.

Parks, Trails, and Fishing

A length estimate from January 2018 puts the Spring Creek Greenway at nearly 17 miles; it stretches from the San Jacinto River near Humble to Interstate 45 in Spring. This makes the Greenway a wide-ranging connection to nature, in contrast to the specific amenities of individual parks.

Dennis Johnston Park has walking paths, a butterfly and hummingbird garden, and access to Spring Creek. Collins Park offers nature trails and a canoe launch; access to fishing on Cypress Creek is restricted. Cypresswood Trails in Collins Park is a natural-surface, single-track mountain biking trail. The parks’ features appeal to different interests: walking paths and a garden, nature trails and a canoe launch, or a dedicated mountain biking trail.

Meyer Park offers paved paths and nature trails, a duck pond, and a three-acre fishing lake. The lake is stocked annually with rainbow trout by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; it also contains sunfish, catfish, and largemouth bass. Because stocking practices can change, check before a fishing trip if this is important to your plans. The combination of paved paths, nature trails, and bodies of water distinguishes Meyer Park from the amenities mentioned at Collins Park and Dennis Johnston Park.

For the broader travel overview: Harris.