There are two types of people in the world: those who love Jefferson and those who’ve never been. It’s nearly impossible to resist the charm of this small East Texas town, whose walkable streets are filled with antiques shops, restaurants serving up cornbread sandwiches and chicken-fried steak, and historic Greek Revival–style houses now operating as bed-and-breakfasts. In its mid-nineteenth-century heyday, this inland riverport town on Big Cypress Bayou, in Marion County about a thirty-minute drive from the Louisiana border, was the commercial center of northeast Texas. Back then, the place bustled with horse-drawn carriages and New Orleans–bound steamboats loaded high with cotton. During the peak of the river trade, in 1872, Jefferson’s population was just shy of 7,300, while today it hovers at around 1,800.The steamboat…
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