Fake Texas

You can’t visit the town of Lonesome Dove. It doesn’t exist. It was created by author Larry McMurtry to serve as a starting point for his novel of the same name. The name came to McMurtry while driving in South Texas. He saw an ad for “Lonesome Dove Baptist Church” plastered on the side of a bus and declared that his town’s namesake. Why McMurtry chose to create a fictional town rather than utilize one that already existed is unknown. McMurtry set several of his novels in real places, but for his 1986 Pulitzer Prize winning novel drew the idea of a Texas border town in the 1800s from his imagination.

McMurtry is not the only author to pull a Texas town from thin air. Many books, TV shows, and movies are set in places that only exist in a Lone Star State of mind. Here's a look at a few of those locales and my thoughts on each.

Highland

Created by honorary Texan Mike Judge, Highland serves as the home of “Beavis and Butthead.” Judge probably created Highland as a no real town would want to claim Beavis and Butthead as residents or have them associated with their school system. Highland is presumed to be a DFW suburb and has nothing to do with the real Highland, population 60, which sits just outside Fort Worth. The fictional Highland serves as an almost Anywhere USA and has both small town attributes as well as big city attractions and offers little in the way of traditional Texan culture.

Wolfe Landing

Set on the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Texas - Mexico Border, Wolfe Landing is the home and criminal headquarters of the Wolfe family as depicted in several books by James Carlos Blake. In the books, the town was established with the help of real-life politician and frequent law bender Jim Wells. This isn't much of a stretch as the real Jim Wells probably would've had no issue in supporting and helping a family of gun smugglers establish a municipality (for a price). I’ve been to the mouth of the Rio Grande several times to do research about the towns of Bagdad (yes, it’s spelled that way) and Clarksville (these were real towns but were washed away in a hurricane) and found the area just as Blake described it in his books. Blake had a real knack for writing about geography, and his account of Wolfe Landing is some of the best work about a fake Texas town that I’ve ever read. I’d definitely live in Wolfe Landing.

Newt

Both the town of Newt and the county it’s located in (Muerto) are fictional. And that’s a good thing because no one in their right mind would want to be from or move to a place made famous for 1974’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Before the internet, film fans were convinced the town was an actual location, and that the murders which inspired the movie were real. Of course, now that we have the internet there’s still a wide swath of the population that believes such despite seeing factual proof that it is not. Sad that the information superhighway works that way, isn’t it?

Arlen

Another creation of Mike Judge, Arlen is the home of “King of the Hill.” Much like with Beavis and Butthead’s Highland, Arlen is sort of an every town and sits somewhere outside the DFW area. The town is considerably more Texan than is Highland however with most of the town's residents having Texas accents, doing Texan things, and eating Tex Mex foods. I’d visit there for sure. If I was a cartoon that is.

Dancer

The namesake of the 1998 film "Dancer, Texas Pop. 81," Dancer sits in Brewster County in far West Texas. I went to see this movie after Joe M. O'Connell of the San Antonio Express-News, declared the film "the finest representation of small-town Texas since The Last Picture Show.” I guess it was kind of like The Last Picture Show if you took out all the sex, angst, and excruciating pain of youth and tossed it in a washing machine set to Hallmark Channel. Given that the movie barely made more than a half a million dollars upon its release is telling that the movie and the town weren’t worth visiting. Not only would I never want to visit Dancer, I’m upset I paid to see the movie.

Thalia

A stand in for author Larry McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City, Thalia is definitely small-town Texas at its best. Or worst depending on how you take your misery, melancholy, adultery, sexual angst, depression, and ennui. I don’t know. You might like those things. McMurtry set Horseman, Pass By, Leaving Cheyenne, The Last Picture Show, Texasville, and a host of other books in Thalia which is odd given that Thalia is the muse of comedy in Greek Mythology. None of these books were comedies. Yes, they had comedic moments, but I assure you that no reader ever came away from these tomes laughing hysterically or wanting to move to Thalia because the people there sounded so well-adjusted. I’d live in Thalia so long as the pharmacy promised never to run out of antidepressants and the stores beer. I’d need a lot of both.

There is a small, unincorporated community in Texas called Thalia in Foard County, but this collection of 104 people (as of 2000) has nothing to do with the McMurtry books. In fact, the only reason this Thalia is Thalia is because postal authorities refused to allow the town to be named Paradise. The fictional town of Thalia was changed to Anarene in the movie adaptions of the aforementioned books.

Dillon

The TV show "Friday Night Lights" was set in the fictional town of Dillon rather than in Odessa like the movie and book that proceeded it. Dillon was described and played as if it was in West Texas but it being filmed in Austin and Pflugerville meant that it was presented as something else entirely. I admit to not seeing more than a few episodes of the show but this change in geography always irked me. It probably irked a lot of people who were able to tell the difference between Odessa and Austin.

Salome

Another geographically challenged fake Texas burg was the town of Salome. As featured in Kevin Costner’s movie Tin Cup, Salome was placed in far West Texas. Some of the shots filmed in Arizona made this somewhat believable. Somewhat. The portions that were filmed at country clubs in and around Houston made it not so much. Come on Hollywood. Get your geography right. West Texas is a whole ‘nother world compared to Austin and Houston.

Braintree and Arnette

            These two towns feature prominently in Stephen King's epic tome The Stand. Or so I’m told. I wouldn’t know. I never read The Stand. Mainly because all the people who told me I should read it and that I would love it were weird as hell. Also, none of them seemed to know much about Texas. They did know a lot about house cats and box wine which stood out to me as a sign not to read The Stand.

West Canaan

I’ve also never watched 1999’s Varsity Blues which takes place in the much-imagined West Canaan, Texas. I have, of course, watched the famous scene from the movie in which actress Ali Larter tries to seduce a football player by showing up at his house wearing a whipped cream bikini. That didn’t have much to do with the fictional town the movie was set in but was an entertaining scene none the less. 

Tuna

Tuna is the setting for a series of humorous plays written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard all of which have the name “Tuna” in the title. As all the plays take place indoors, it’s hard to know what the physical town is like. The characters presented, however, are all pretty much small town Texas. So much so that the plays have a been a huge hit in the Lone Star State since premiering in 1981 and by 1985 became the most produced plays in the United States.

Midnight

Apparently, there was a TV show called Midnight, Texas that aired for two seasons starting back in 2017. This supernatural drama was based on a series of books by Charlaine Harries who is from Tunica, Mississippi. The series revolved around a fictional Texas town populated by vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons. I doubt the almost all red Lone Star State would allow such a town although a lot of those same people probably think that such a town does exist and that it’s actually Austin. The show was filmed in New Mexico and, at 19 episodes, came and went pretty fast.

Medford

Both Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage take place in the fictional town of Medford which is situated somewhere in East Texas. The creators of the shows seem to have gotten the town right from the few clips of these shows I’ve seen. These clips come to me via Instagram as I’m sure some algorithm somewhere thinks as I’m from Texas I might want to see clips from a show about fake Texas. Social media is weird.

And so were some of these towns or at least what some creator thought a Texas town should be.

This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.

Like what you see? Want to keep the adventure going? Fire a PayPal or Venmo in my direction & you may get a shout out! Hot Tip: Include blog idea in the description…