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Back to the future: what has kept tiny Fayetteville alive and authentic when other Texas towns have died or surrendered to tourism? The answer lies in its past. (on Travel).

Article Excerpt
TIRED OF SPRING GETAWAYS ON THE COAST, WHERE the sea air is thick with teenage pheromones? For something completely different, head inland to the gently rolling hills an hour and a half east of Austin, an area I once called home but fled the minute I graduated from high school. At the time, possibly pheromone-crazed myself, I considered my rural stomping grounds completely comatose. Twenty-five years of urban thrills later, however, comatose sounds pretty good.

But while some towns hereabouts have withered away to little more than a post office and a few vacant buildings held up by trumpet vines, others have morphed into homogeneous, Wal-Marted mini-cities or festival-obsessed tourist destinations. Miraculously, tiny Fayetteville, population 261, still manages the difficult high-wire act of remaining both charming and genuine without tumbling into either the pit of oblivion or one filled with tour buses and Ye Olde Fudge Shoppes. (What is it about tourists and fudge?) Fayetteville's 74-year-old water tower (which looks like the Tin Man's head) and its white clapboard precinct courthouse ringed with pecan trees are so picturesque, I actually squeal every time I see them. It's a sweet town, sure, but not cloyingly so, thanks in part to the authenticity of these quaint landmarks as well as the presence of...

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