The Johnson City Chamber of Commerce’s executive director keeps an eye on the past, present, and future of the Texas Hill Country.
Editor’s Note: Underwriting support for this story was provided generously by Studio Massaro of Johnson City. See the advertisement embedded below for more information about our sponsor.
Story and photographs by Pamela Price
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Highway 290 runs in front of Frances Ann Giron’s office, dividing the Hill Country region roughly into northern and southern sections. At the same time it connects Houston to Austin and Fredericksburg, giving travelers westward to El Paso and Marfa an alternative to the stretch of IH-10 that dips down to San Antonio. The asphalt artery also brings travelers to the Hill Country’s wineries, B&Bs, art galleries, restaurants, and historical sites. And those tourists arrive in Johnson City with luggage, money, hunger, and questions.
Which is precisely why Giron, the executive director of the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce, keeps her desk near the front of the building: to greet those out-of-towners and help orient them to the Hill Country. Monday through Friday she’s there, modeling old-fashioned hospitality. Like many small town chamber of commerce staffers, Giron wears many hats, sometimes all at once. She’s also always ready to share a bit of local lore or trivia.
“President Johnson bought the chamber building in the 1960s. It’s the old Withers-Spaulding building, and it was a fully functioning mercantile store about 150 to 175 years ago,” says Giron. “LBJ bought it because he wanted to preserve it, so he gave it to the National Parks Service.”
Today the parks service runs not only the famous LBJ Ranch just up the highway in Stonewall but also his historic boyhood home in the heart of Johnson City. With the old mill next door (now repurposed as a world-class science museum) and the erstwhile Ford dealership (now serving as the home to Echo in Johnson City) visible across the street, it isn’t hard to imagine a boyish LBJ standing coming through the front doors of the chamber building.
“After the parks service took it over, they used it for archival storage. That was until a park ranger named Cecil Brown decided to restore the entire building by hand. He’s retired now, and he’s a veteran, too. He pulled the plaster off to the studs, checked old archives to see what it used to look like because of course it had been changed many times, and then rebuilt it all. By hand. He’s just a tremendous, gifted person.”
A decade ago the chamber leased the renovated building from the parks service..
“The building now has the Johnson City visitor’s center, chamber of commerce offices, and a conference room that any member can use for meetings. I think it’s a wonderful community service to have the visitor’s center and chamber together like this. In small towns, there’s only so many resources, so much money to go around. Sometimes the visitor’s centers and chambers find themselves in competition. Not here. We work with the city government to promote the town and chamber members together. We’re only about 1,700 people here in town. There’s only so many ways you can cut the [budgetary] pie.”
Giron became the chamber’s executive director three years ago, having moved to the area only after the turn of this century.
“I’m from Dallas and my husband and I were living up in Pennsylvania. My husband’s Fortune 300 company had just sold, and my daughter was finishing her MBA at Texas State. He was from California and reluctant to move to Texas. We came to see my daughter walk at graduation, spent four days with her and her then-boyfriend playing, eating, drinking, and enjoying the area. On the plane home my husband said, ‘I could live in the Texas Hill Country.’”
After moving to nearby Blanco and putting down roots, Giron’s husband Richard passed away. Following the loss, Giron realized she needed to fill her time. A friend suggested a chamber gig and, with a background and business that included having once been the vice president of a travel company, she shifted her energies to the old storefront.
“The chamber was in a bit of a disarray, but we turned it around. We have 200 members currently, with live active members here and in Blanco, Dripping Springs, Marble Falls, and Fredericksburg.”
Although Giron points out that the local economy is very diversified (“We’ve got rural ag, art galleries, historical sites, and science now, too, thanks to the Science Mill.”), tourism is now a major Johnson City economic engine and one that seems to be gaining traction.
Yet with growing outside interest in Johnson City comes fresh challenges.
“For a rural community, so much is going on out here, every day, that’s it’s like we’re exploding with growth. We have challenges ahead of us more typical of big cities–things like traffic, and water treatment projects, and how to get the infrastructure in place to attract developers while also providing affordable housing. Every restaurant in town seems to have a “help wanted” sign out front, but we don’t have enough housing for those basic service jobs. We’ve got some great guest houses near our walkable downtown, but we need some affordable motels and then you have to be concerned about what happens when gasoline prices go up, what might happen then?”
While Giron and the rest of the chamber work through those thoroughly modern challenges in the boardroom, she remains upbeat at the front desk, alway eager chance to share what’s great to see and do in Johnson City. Between the high-end art galleries, shops, restaurants, vineyards, the LBJ-related sites, and seasonal events like rodeos, Pedernales Falls State Park, a wild game dinner, and a pig roast, Giron has plenty to talk about–and plenty of people willing to listen.
“We had 146,000 documented visitors last year, between the visitor’s center, LBJ’s boyhood home, and the LBJ ranch alone. That’s not surprising, what with all we have to offer. But our number one tourist draw is the Lights Spectacular that begins at the end of November.”
The annual lights show, presented by Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC), has been around almost three decades, making it a Hill Country tradition. Not lost on oldtimers, however, is the role that LBJ himself played in rural electrification almost a century ago. The PEC eventually became the nation’s largest rural electrification cooperative, a tale that frankly doesn’t get told nearly enough. Those strings of colorful lights that decorate downtown Johnson City’s trees at the holidays tell as much of a Hill Country story as the chamber offices and Giron herself.
To discover them all, you need only to pop into the Johnson City visitor’s center.
Ask for Frances Ann.
Pamela Price, the founder of TheTexasWildflower.com, had the good fortune of taking a trip to Washington, D.C. a few times as part of a program started by LBJ and funded by the nation’s rural electric cooperatives.
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