Brown Hotel

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll tell it to you straight, well, mostly straight. We're talking about the Brown Hotel in Wise County, and the story goes like this. Colonel J.T.

Brown founded the town of Chico in 1876. Just went ahead and founded a town. Staked it out, named it, the whole enterprise.

And twelve years later, in 1888, he went and built himself a hotel to anchor it all. The Brown Hotel. Man names a town, man builds a hotel; Colonel Brown was clearly not a man who sat still for long.

Now, here's where the story gets some weather on it. There was a fight in 1895. A fatality came out of that fight.

And Colonel Brown had a part in it. The marker doesn't linger on the details; it doesn't have to. What it tells us is what happened next, and what happened next is something.

Governor Charles A. Culberson came to Chico, stood on the porch of the Brown Hotel (the very hotel Brown had built), and there, in an official ceremony, pardoned the Colonel for his part in that 1895 fight fatality. On the porch.

Now that is a scene. Long after the Colonel's drama had settled, the hotel kept right on going. A banker by the name of R.

Lee Morris (who was also a tenant) owned the Brown Hotel from 1908 to 1965. Fifty-seven years. Some buildings just outlast everybody's story, and the Brown Hotel was that kind of building.

What the marker says

Colonel J.T. Brown founded town of Chico in 1876; built this hotel 1888. In ceremony on hotel porch, Governor Charles A. Culberson pardoned Brown for his part in an 1895 fight fatality. Banker-tenant R. Lee Morris owned Brown Hotel from 1908 to 1965.