Where to Stay in Wichita Falls, Texas

What is Wichita Falls known for?

Fort Worth and Denver Railroad brought the first train in 1882, and the oil boom that followed turned Wichita Falls into the working centre of the plains around it. Two museums hold that record. The Wichita Falls Railroad Museum keeps the rolling stock, while the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum draws a different crowd entirely to Wichita County.

What are the main landmarks in Wichita Falls?

The Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum is the surprise. The Wichita Falls Railroad Museum sits closer to the town's own story, with rolling stock from the line that opened the place. Churches fill the older streets.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, First Baptist Church, the First United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd stand among family homes such as the Albert Zundelowitz House and the Berry Brown House.

What is the history of Wichita Falls?

The Wichita River gave the name. Wichita people lived near the falls on the river, and the town that grew there took both the name and the water as its own. Rail changed the scale.

Fort Worth and Denver Railroad brought the first train in 1882, and Wichita Falls became the trading floor for the farms and stock of the plains around it. Then came oil. The boom of the early twentieth century made the city the headquarters of north Texas petroleum production, service and manufacturing, and the money went into houses.

Money built the streets. The Albert Zundelowitz House, the Berry Brown House, the Guy Dewitt Anderson House and the Samuel Kruger House survive from the years when oil and trade paid for the best addresses in the county. Congregations built alongside them.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, First Baptist Church and the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd date from the same expansion, and the First United Methodist Church rose within the same few blocks. The base came later. Sheppard Air Force Base, Midwestern State University and the industry along I-44 carried the city past the oil years, while the Wichita Falls Railroad Museum keeps the record of the line that started it.

The falls stayed in the name.

Where is Wichita Falls?

Plains run out in every direction. Wichita Falls stands on the North Central Plains of Texas, on the Wichita River, at the centre of a metropolitan area taking in Archer, Clay and Wichita Counties. The horizon is wide and low.

Farm and grazing country reaches from the edge of the city, and the river cuts a shallow line through it past the falls that gave the place its name.

What is the climate of Wichita Falls?

Wind is the constant on the North Central Plains, and Wichita Falls takes it hot and dry through a subtropical summer that leaves the Wichita River running low. Winters bite briefly. Cold fronts come down the open plains with nothing to slow them, and the swing between one day and the next can be sharp.

How do you get to Wichita Falls?

I-44 does the long-distance work. The highway crosses Wichita County and links the city to the plains beyond, while Sheppard Air Force Base and Midwestern State University pull their own traffic in from Archer and Clay Counties. Rail built the place first.

Fort Worth and Denver Railroad opened the line in 1882, and the Wichita Falls Railroad Museum is what remains of that arrival for anyone who wants to see it.