The site that started the career
My first hand-coded project, October 2024
Ethan built Texas Hidden Gems by hand in October 2024. It was the first site he coded that way, and the moment technology became the work. The repository it came from stays untouched. The eight pages under /origin/ are those files, byte for byte.
What he said it was for
Here at Texas Hidden Gems we pride ourselves in knowing the unknown, exploring the unexplored, and sharing our best kept secrets with you.
Texas Hidden Gems was started in 2024 with one goal in mind. Provide the best opportunity for those looking for an adventure. Our all inclusive tours include trips to places many Texans don't even know about.
Come with us, as we take a journey to the path less traveled...
Those sentences are his, from the About page and the home page. The 2024 site also offered package prices, a pricing table, and a concierge who would book the trip. This rebuild does not sell those tours and does not repeat the prices. The guide keeps the five places and his descriptions of them.
He listed the inventory in the FAQ in one line: "We offer five tours. Proctor Springs, Krause Springs, Crystal Beach, Horseshoe Bay, and Tonkawa Falls."
The five places
Walk the archive
Same files, same names, same broken spots. Photographs and a waterfall gif are referenced from the HTML and were not in the committed tree, so those images 404. calendar.html was committed empty. Nothing in /origin/ has been rewritten to fix either fact.
- home.html
- destinations.html
- gallery.html
- about.html
- reviews.html
- faq.html
- contact.html
- calendar.html
The reviews page is in the archive with the rest. This site does not repeat those reviews as current customer quotes.
What carried forward
The mark and the wordmark are his SVGs. The new theme starts from the 2024 palette: a black page, charcoal cards, a graphite footer, a gray rule, white type, and the teal he used when a gallery image was hovered. The type on the new pages is Outfit, because the 2024 font was loaded from a third-party host and is not relicensed here. His lettering is still the logo.
The Dark/Light control is the same idea as the bulb on the original header. Dark is still the default.