Fire that damaged historic hotel in Granbury breaking hearts along the Brazos River

When people heard that the Nutt House Hotel building on Granbury’s historic square was ablaze, many hearts along this bank of the Brazos were breaking.

This resort town was built on the allure of Lake Granbury and is fiercely infatuated with its history. It’s one thing it can sell successfully to guests from near and far.

“That building has been the centerpiece of the Granbury Square since 1893, so 130 years, and so it has seen so much history and has been so much a part of our history,” Melinda Ray told the Star-Telegram Thursday night. “If it was lost, it would be a tragedy of epic proportions.”

At 1 a.m. Thursday morning, the Granbury Volunteer Fire Department along with other units from around Hood County raced to the square to fight a fire that had started on the second floor of the historic hotel building.

Ray owned and ran the hotel and restaurant from 2006 until she sold it three years ago. People in town know her love for the building runs deep.

One of Ray’s friends who lived in an apartment on the square fired off a text, “Do you know about the Nutt House?”

Ray responded, “What about it?”

“It’s on fire,” the friend wrote.

“Oh my God,” Ray said aghast.

The building was under construction for extensive renovations and was scheduled to reopen in the fall. But now its future is in limbo.

Granbury Fire Marshal Kevin Young said there is structural damage to the building. Whether that has damaged the limestone exterior is still under scrutiny.

“We’re waiting on insurance companies. There are a lot of players because it was under construction,” Young said.

Until after the engineers and fire investigator have had their chance to comb through what remains of the building, the town waits anxiously for any update. The future of their beloved limestone building on the corner of Bridge and Crockett streets uncertain.

The Nutt House Hotel’s resplendent Texas history

The Nutt family made the nearly 500-mile trek from Noesho, Missouri to Hood County, Texas. They landed on Stockton Bend – a knobby flat along one of the Brazos River’s lazy bends – a mere mile from what is now Granbury, according to Hood County Genealogical & Historical Society’s Karen Nace..

When the patriarch of the family, David Gramble Nutt, died in 1872, Jacob helped his mother take care of his brood of younger siblings. The Nutts had 10 children.

Jacob and Jesse Franklin decided to strike out on their own a few years later with younger brother, David Lee, in tow. The brothers were set on taking advantage of the Texas liberal Land Grant for Immigration policy, which offered 160 acres for settlers, and wanted the best location to homestead.

“They liked the location (of what is now Granbury) and we think that in their mind, they had people that came and kind of scouted it out, felt that it was a larger, better location,” Nace said.

They built a house on what is now Bridge Street, and in 1866 donated 40 acres of their land grant to form what is now Granbury, the seat of government for Hood County..

“The rock building that actually burned down (Thursday morning) was built in 1893 as a dry goods store,” Nace said.

Brothers Jacob and Jesse Franklin were entrepreneurs. Because they were both blind, they had younger brother David Lee “to help with the sighted part that was necessary,” Nace said. “Obviously, they could not write within the ledger. Somebody had to be able to do that.”

When construction of the two-story limestone structure was completed in 1893, the brothers earnestly opened their dry goods store. At the same time, they took in paying guests in their house down the street from their mercantile operation.

“They basically had the equivalent of a hotel slash bed and breakfast in there,” the Granbury historian said. “What we see today, everybody assumes was just the way it was built… there were changes, significant changes made. But (David Lee was) the one who also, I believe, started the hotel on the second floor of the (rock building).”

Their business flourished into the turn of the next century. At the time, people living on the Brazos River valley couldn’t exactly just head to Fort Worth for things they needed at home. There was the Sears Roebuck catalog, but not being able to touch the goods before paying for it detracted many from making orders. The Nutts made a killing selling things from soap to shoes to kitchenware.

At one point they even applied for a free permit to sell liquor because they were blind, Nace said. Their application was promptly rejected.

“(There was no) Disability Act in those days,” the Granbury historian chuckled. “They still had to pay for the permit.”

By the time the older brothers died, Jacob in 1912 and Jesse Franklin a year later, David Lee was running both the hotel and dry goods store. In 1929, David Lee passed on the cashbox to his son, Henry Lee, who minded the business until 1954.

The Nutt House Hotel and store stayed in the family until the 1970s.

The arrival of Lake Granbury, part of a masterplan to dam several points along the Brazos River to irrigate farms from North Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, breathed fresh life into this withering town.

“(The lake) placed Hood County and Granbury on the map,” Nace said.

The 20th century had not been kind to this farming outpost on the west bank of the Brazos. From 1910 to 1950 it had lost nearly half its population. Without industry to speak of — save the stick horse toy factory and a couple of sewing places — generations of families relied on farm and ranch land.

“Oh, if you’re one of eight kids. How many of you could have the farm before it was too small to be feasible?” Nace said.

Many of the younger generations fled to cities like Fort Worth and Dallas for “regular jobs.”

“They only work five or six days a week, whether they’re working piecework or salary, they’re getting a paycheck whether it rains or not,” she said.

Many of the younger Nutts skipped town as well.

“People were afoot,” Nace said.

But by the 1970s, tourism was giving Granbury a much needed leg to stand on. Two Nutt descendants, Mary Lou Watkins and Joe Nutt, came “home” to help.

“They all worked together and figured out in the 70s that the only way to save this place…we don’t have industry but we have history,” she said. “And all of a sudden we have people interested. That’s where it started.”