"Waxahachie, the county seat of Ellis County, is on Interstate Highway 35E and U.S. Highway 287, thirty miles south of Dallas in the central part of the county. The name comes from an Indian word meaning "cow" or "buffalo"... Waxahachie has been nicknamed the Gingerbread City because of the architecture of several beautiful homes and buildings remaining from before 1900... In the 1980s four movies were filmed in Waxahachie, Places in the Heart, 1918, Tender Mercies, and The Trip to Bountiful."