Day Trip Idea: Visit the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails Festival Today
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Type 100 N Dallas St. into your Google Maps and hit up the Buc-ee’s for Beaver Nuggets on the way because we’re going on a road trip to the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails and Festival TODAY. The annual springtime event showcases our state flower of Texas, the bluebonnet, in its full showy bloom.
Day trippers across the state have been venturing to Ennis in northeast Texas all throughout April, but today is the culmination of the 71st annual Ennis Bluebonnet Trails Festival taking place from April 14 to Sunday, April 16. Admission prices are $5 for adults; kids 12 and under are free.
The festival opens at 10 a.m. with arts and crafts vendors, tasty food, and kids activities on the streets of Downtown Ennis. At noon, the Downtown Ennis Wine Wander commences, benefitting the Ennis ISD Education Foundation. The last corn dogs, metaphorically speaking, will be sold at 6 p.m. today.
While you’re there, say, “Hi” to Gene Robinson, owner and developer of Mullican Place Ranchettes. For years, Robinson and his family have enjoyed the colorful displays of wildflowers blanketing the family’s Bar-M Ranch along FM 660. “The bluebonnet trails actually run right along Mullican Place and make such a scenic backdrop,” Robinson says. “Photos of these colorful patches of bluebonnets don’t even do it justice.”
Robinson is developing a portion of these green pastures for the new luxury ranch community in Ellis County. There are a limited number of homes available on premium 10-acre ranchettes — a term for single-family ranch estates of smaller acreage — with a 2,700-square-foot home starting at $700,000.
You’ll find that much of the open acreage in Ellis County feels like a quilt of rolling farmland — centuries old land grants that have passed generation to generation. That’s the case for Robinson, whose wife’s family can trace their ownership back in Texas history.
Speaking of history, the nearby town of Ennis was designated by the 1997 State Legislature as the home of the Official Texas Bluebonnet Trail and was designated the Official Bluebonnet City of Texas. From April 1-30, Ennis showcases over 40 miles of mapped driving Bluebonnet Trails sponsored by the Ennis Garden Club.
These trails are the oldest such trails known in the state, and tens of thousands of visitors make the short trek to Ennis to view this wonderful wildflower show. The Ennis Garden Club drives the trails to check the bloom status each week starting in April. The Club then reports to the Ennis Welcome Center about the latest status of the bluebonnets so that visitors can be well informed where the best flowers are on the trails at the time of their visit.
Each year, the bluebonnets will appear on different trails as these are natural to the area. But the bluebonnets are a fixture at Robinson’s Mullican Place Ranchettes.
“You kind of have to see the land with your own eyes to believe it,” he says.
Visit MullicanPlaceRanchettes.com for more information, email Gene Robinson at info@MullicanPlaceRanchettes.com, or go visit the property yourself at this address [Google Maps].
