The Best Things to Do in Palestine, Texas

The line was built by state prison inmates starting in 1883 to haul iron from the smelter at the Rusk penitentiary. Crews reached Palestine in 1909, regular commercial service ended in 1921, and Texas Parks and Wildlife took control in 1972 to redevelop the corridor as a tourist line. It opened for excursions in 1976. In 2003 the Texas Legislature named it the official Railroad of Texas.

The standard trip is a four-hour round trip between the Victorian style depots at Palestine and Rusk, roughly 25 miles each way through pine forest and cypress bottoms. Steam and diesel locomotives both run depending on the day, and the seasonal Polar Express, wine trains, and spring bloom excursions sell out first.

The city runs a 254 acre park of pines and hardwoods on the north edge of Palestine, with five miles of hard surface roads you can drive slowly and about eight miles of hiking and biking trails cut through the woods. Amenities include picnic tables, grills, restrooms, and a covered pavilion. The city page lists the Fairy Garden Trail and the roughly 1.8 mile Dogwood Trail among the marked routes.

The park is the anchor for the annual Texas Dogwood Trails Celebration, which runs the last two weekends of March and the first weekend of April. Palestine has hosted it for close to 90 years, and the 2026 edition is scheduled for March 21 through April 4. Outside that window the park is quiet and the dogwoods are gone, but the trails and the drive still hold up.

Palestine is one of the 85 communities in the Texas Main Street Program under the Texas Historical Commission, and the district runs roughly 44 blocks from the courthouse down to the visitor center. The Anderson County Courthouse itself was designed in 1913 by the Austin firm of Charles Henry Page and Louis Charles Page, dedicated on 20 December 1914, and cost about 200,000 dollars at the time. It went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

The building is Classical Revival with a Beaux Arts bi-axial plan, giant Ionic columns across the front, an art glass inner dome and a silver painted outer dome topped by a Lady Justice. Walking the blocks around it takes you past the Redlands Hotel, the Texas Theatre, and the two block Old Town district on Crawford Street.

Sacred Heart traces to 1872, succeeded an 1874 wooden church that burned in 1890, and stands as a rebuild of the 1890s. Nicholas J. Clayton of Galveston, the most important 19th century architect in Texas, designed the current building. Construction used 675,000 handmade bricks molded and fired on site, finished in 1893, with a square tower on the southeast corner and Gothic arched windows down the nave.

The stained glass windows were imported from Italy and Germany as memorials to early members. The large round window on the north side of the nave shows the Ascension of Christ, and on a sunny afternoon the light picks out the city of Jerusalem at his feet. A 1926 Pilcher pipe organ is still in use.

Built in 1915 as a hotel above street level shops, the Redlands was leased in 1919 by the International and Great Northern Railroad after its own office building burned, and served as railroad headquarters through the Missouri Pacific era until 1956. It sat empty from 1956 to 1972 and was restored by the current owners after that. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Today the building runs as hotel suites and long term apartments on the upper floors, with a ground floor restaurant, an art gallery, and small retail. The stained glass skylight over the lobby stair is the interior detail worth stopping for even if you are not staying the night.

The Texas Theatre opened in 1930 as a Spanish Colonial atmospheric movie house, played films through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and closed as a first run cinema. It reopened in the 1980s as a live venue and has been home to Palestine Community Theatre since. The company produces four live shows a season, split between musicals, comedies, and drama.

The theatre itself is the reason to buy the ticket, even if you have never heard of the show. Painted plaster, atmospheric lighting, and the small scale that Spanish Colonial movie palaces did well in East Texas towns. It is one of the oldest working theatres in East Texas.

The museum lives in the old Palestine High School building, a big brick school that graduated its last class decades ago and was converted to museum use. Exhibits cover Anderson County history and Palestine railroading, plus rotating rooms of photographs and objects from the collection. Admission is modest, and it is one of the few things in Palestine that is genuinely rainy day proof.

Locally the museum is known for a sports memorabilia display that includes gear and photos tied to athletes who came out of Palestine schools. It does not compete with a big city museum on production value, but it is honest county history in a real historical building.

The house was built in 1848 by Reuben A. Reeves, a Texas State Supreme Court justice, and sold in 1850 to merchant George R. Howard, who later served as mayor of Palestine. The city bought the house in 1964 and turned it into a museum. It is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

Inside, the eight rooms are furnished for a late 19th century look with period furniture, antiques, and photographs from the region. Tours run by appointment because the museum shares staff with the Museum for East Texas Culture, so a phone call the day before is the correct way to book.