Opening a Wimberley restaurant was a long-time dream for Ryan and Mollye Hildebrand.
“Mollye’s grandfather had a house here on the river,” Ryan Hildebrand said. “When we were working in Houston, whenever we had days off, we’d come out and get as much of Wimberley as we could.
“I just fell in love with it,” he added. “This became my end game; where I wanted to put my roots down and raise my family. The girls, and now a boy.”
Like their mother, Mollye, the Hildebrand kids all share a distinctive name spelling that’s a tradition in Mollye’s family: Finnlye, Ryllye and McKinlye.
Long before Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn opened a year ago on Winters Mill Parkway, Hildebrand was planning for it to fit the community.
“Because of our proximity to Blue Hole Park and how green it is there, I wanted to make sure we didn’t do anything that impacted the landscape in a negative way,” he said. “My local contractor, Banks Chisum, was so knowledgeable about building in Wimberley and making sure we stayed appropriate.”
That also meant staying in step with the International Dark Sky Association’s designation of Wimberley as a Dark Sky Community.
“It wasn’t a question,” Hildebrand said. “We made sure we were Dark Sky appropriate.”
In recognition of Hildee’s lighting, the Wimberley Valley Dark Sky Committee, which campaigned for the IDA designation, awarded the restaurant the Night Sky Friendly Business Award, a joint project with the Wimberley Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Hill Country Alliance.
“We really appreciate when people move in from a big city, where night skies are not visible, and embrace the culture of their new community; it benefits everyone,” said WVDSC chair Greg Webb.
“We are honored,” Hildebrand said. “We worked hard to make Hildee’s Texas Dine-Inn a great addition to Wimberley, and the Dark Sky community is a big part of that.”
For more information on the effort to save night sky visibility, visit darksky.org.
GREG AND SUSAN WEBB (LEFT) OF THE WVDSC, AND BECCA HANCOCK OF THE WVCC (RIGHT) PRESENT THE NIGHT SKY FRIENDLY BUSINESS AWARD TO THE HILDEBRAND FAMILY. PROVIDED BY LOUIS PARKS.
