The Best Things to Do in Paris, Texas

Built in 1993 at 65 feet, roughly one sixteenth the height of the French original, and fabricated by Boilermakers Local 902 with material and labor from the Babcock and Wilcox Company. The cowboy hat came later, added to the top of the spindle in 1998 after Paris, Tennessee put up its own replica the same year Paris, Texas did.

Twenty-seven thirty-watt LED lights wash the frame after dark and get reprogrammed by season, red and green at Christmas. It takes about ten minutes to see, it costs nothing, and it is the one thing in town that no other town has.

On 21 March 1916 a fire burned roughly 1,400 buildings across about 264 acres of Paris, taking the courthouse, the post office and the whole business district. What went up in the two years after is why the square is worth an afternoon. Paris has one of the largest collections of 1916 and 1917 commercial architecture anywhere in the country, and it is a Texas Main Street city, so the buildings are occupied rather than boarded.

The white Italian marble fountain in the middle was a gift from cotton man J. J. Culbertson to mark the rebuilding. St. Louis architect J. L. Wees designed it, and it took three years to assemble, from 1924 to 1927. The Farmers and Artisan Market runs at Market Square, 400 1st St SW, on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. May through October, with a shorter mini season the rest of the year.

Built in 1868 in High Victorian Italianate style for Sam Bell Maxey, a West Point graduate of 1846, a veteran of the war with Mexico, a Confederate general and later a two-term United States senator. Maxey and his father had moved their law practice from Kentucky to Paris in 1857.

What makes it different from most house museums is continuity. Maxey descendants lived in it until 1967, when the family gave it to the city, so the contents are largely the family's own rather than period pieces assembled later. It went on the National Register in 1971, opened for tours in 1980, and the Texas Historical Commission runs it now. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for seniors, veterans, teachers and first responders, and $2 for ages 6 to 17, with under 6 free.

Chartered in 1866 and holding around 40,000 graves, with the first burial attributed to Lucy Pope Maxey, mother of the senator whose house is three stops up this list. The reason people drive here is one marker. Willet Babcock, an Ithaca native who fought for the Union and made his living building furniture and caskets in Paris, ordered his own monument before he died in 1881. A German immigrant stonecutter named Gustave Klein carved it.

The figure is robed, leaning on a cross, and wearing cowboy boots. Whether it is Jesus is genuinely disputed, and the cemetery's own caretaker has said it is not meant to be. Sources also disagree on how tall it is, so go look rather than trusting a number. The rest of the grounds are worth the walk too, including a life-size stone buffalo and a carved replica of a newspaper front page.

Paved end to end, 6.89 miles including the spur to the Love Civic Center, with mileage markers, benches and water fountains along the way. Six access points have parking and their own welcome signs. Sources describe the western end differently, so treat it as running from the southwest side of town east to the city limit rather than from one exact street.

At the eastern edge it becomes the Reno Rail Trail and keeps going. Both are finished segments of the Northeast Texas Trail, a rail-to-trail corridor of more than 130 miles. Counters on the paved Paris and Reno stretch average around 360 users a day, which for a town this size is a genuinely well-used piece of public infrastructure.

Built and run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Red River basin, Pat Mayse is where Paris goes to get on the water. Sanders Cove and Pat Mayse West are the two developed campgrounds, both with electric hookups, potable water and restrooms, and boat ramps sit on several sides of the lake.

Fishing is the main draw, with largemouth bass, crappie and channel and flathead catfish the species people target. It is close enough to make an afternoon of and far enough out that it does not feel like a city park.

A volunteer-run museum open two days a week, free to enter with donations welcome. This is where the 1916 fire, the cotton and railroad years, and the families behind the street names are actually documented, and it is the right stop if the downtown architecture leaves you with questions.

The two-day schedule is the catch, and it is the single biggest constraint on planning a trip to Paris around history. If you want this and the Maxey House in the same visit, Friday or Saturday is the only day that works.

An open-air memorial you can walk at any hour, laid out with more than 2,700 granite pavers, 56 family benches, 18 ornamental tree pavers and two monuments. Names are still being added, which is why it reads as an active community project rather than a finished installation.

It sits on the same stretch of South Collegiate Drive as the Eiffel Tower, a short walk apart, so the two are effectively one stop. The memorial's office is at a separate Collegiate Drive address and keeps midweek hours, with Mondays and Fridays by appointment.

The Plaza opened on 30 July 1926 with rounded arches, a tiled roof and wrought iron, built as a modern picture house for the rebuilt downtown. It stopped showing films in the early 1970s. Paris Community Theatre has been producing since 1976 and bought the building in early 1981, and the theatre carries both a National Register listing and a Texas state historical marker.

Seasons open in September and run through the following summer, with recent and announced titles including Songs of the Season, Murder on the Orient Express and Gypsy. Directory listings split between two street numbers on North Plaza, so no number is published here. Find it on the north side of the square.

Named for John Gambill, a Lamar County farmer who started putting out feed for a pair of Canada geese in the 1920s. The city of Paris now keeps the 600-acre refuge around Lake Gibbons as day use, with no amenities, no reservations and no staff on site.

Winter is the season it exists for, when waterfowl are on the water. The rest of the year it is a quiet lake and a listed birding hotspot, with woodpeckers, lark sparrow and dickcissel turning up in summer. Wildflowers along the shoreline are the other reason locals drive out in spring.