If plentiful accommodations, good restaurants and nightlife, historical tours and local color aren't enough to draw you to Jefferson, there are still other enticements. Antique shopping in Jefferson and surrounding small towns is a prime activity and the nearby village of New Summerfield is widely known for the quality and variety of bedding plants grown in its many greenhouses. I'm not much of an outdoor gal, but I have it on good authority that the fishing is prime on Caddo Lake and Lake 'O the Pines is less than a thirty-minute drive, featuring boating, skiing, and fishing in its pristine waters. Life in a 1930s oil boom town is chronicled at the East Texas Oil Museum on the campus of Kilgore College in Kilgore. In every season, surrounding towns offer all manner of tours and festivals. Canton is renown for the First Monday Trade Days and people travel from all over the state to see the fabulous Wonderland of Lights in Marshall from Thanksgiving until New Year's. Gilmer boasts the annual Yamboree with its pie-baking contest, Tour de Yam bike race and Tater Trot run, and the alluring casinos of Shreveport, Louisiana, are only a short drive away.

Though cities such as Dallas and Houston long ago replaced Jefferson as centers of business and commerce in Texas, the "Queen of the Cypress" retains her flavor as a busy port city with an open, welcoming spirit. Tiny, vibrant Jefferson puts me in mind of sprawling, raucous New Orleans, sister cities once bound by a river of commerce that are still alike in very important ways. Both cities have seen more, experienced more and accepted more as passageways to the larger world. Both cities celebrate their history and embrace restoration, keeping them remarkably hospitable and alive today. As the history-loving child of an area of Texas that can claim little more than a century of existence, the respect and preservation of the past I found in Jefferson is one of the magnets that will draw me back. The other will be my curiosity to see what those dynamic garden club gals are up to next.