Love's Lookout

Love’s Lookout is located a few miles north of Jacksonville, Texas. When I stumbled onto it in early 1972 it was not as well developed as it has become in recent years, as part of the Texas State Park system. I spent little time at the park, preferring to concentrate on an abandoned group of buildings close by that was once a thriving establishment known as The Lookout. It appeared to have been little used in the early 1970s, but the wonderful cartoon character murals, while beginning to deteriorate, were still very colorful. One was signed Tom Van Buren and dated 1946-71. When I returned to The Lookout in late 1974, it was little changed, but by 1989, the place was surrounded by high fences and guarded by a pack of noisy, possibly nasty dogs. I couldn’t get near enough to any of the buildings to take photographs, but managed to get one through a fence which shows the murals had almost faded away. More recent photographs of The Lookout posted on the Internet show nothing but crumbling and dilapidated buildings. They have now all been demolished and there is nothing left except memories, photographs and postcards, one of which proclaimed, "Where East Texas Plays."