Ennis: Czech Polkas, Bluebonnets, and the Iron Road South

Ennis was born in the early eighteen seventies when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad pushed through Ellis County and named a stop after one of its own officials, Cornelius Ennis. At its peak the town handled ten passenger trains a day. What made Ennis unusual was who came to farm the surrounding land: Czech immigrants arriving in the late eighteen hundreds, drawn by cheap prairie soil and the promise of something like home.

Their descendants still hold the National Polka Festival here each year, filling the streets with accordions and tubas. The town also earned the official designation of Bluebonnet City of Texas for its Bluebonnet Trails, which began in the nineteen thirties and draw visitors each spring when the state flower carpets the roadsides of Ellis County in violet and blue.