Tuesday Treasures Around the World

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.
Travel Tuesday
Our World Tuesday
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My Corner of the World

April 2015 - Cisco Texas

I've been intrigued by Conrad Hilton since I read The Hiltons. But imagine my surprise as we were driving from Odessa TX to Fort Worth to spot a billboard out of the corner of my eye advertising  "Cisco home of the first Conrad Hilton hotel"!!!

With great excitement I said we must stop in Cisco. John was willing (he always is) and was also curious about what we would find.

Like many of these small towns dotting the interstates there are many boarded up businesses. We drove around looking for the "attraction".

The Victor Hotel has been closed for decades in this dusty West Texas town.

It is believed from the look of the lettering and the style of the sign, that it was painted on the side of the Victor Hotel wall facing what was at that time the Bankhead Highway/US 80 through Cisco, in the 1950s.

Cisco was bypassed by the new interstate I-20, when it was designed and built through Eastland County south of town in the 1960s.

We almost gave up but suddenly we were there.


It was restored by the Hilton Foundation and turned into the Cisco, Texas, Chamber of Commerce office and community center. But two of its rooms have been preserved as they were in 1919, and a third serves as a small museum.

Here is an interesting article on how the oil and gas business boomed overnight around Cisco.

By reading the book I had learned that one of his sons was the first husband of Elizabeth Taylor.

I walked by this hotel a million times when we lived in Montreal, and even had lunch there a few times.