Excelsior House
Jefferson, Marion County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Oldest hotel in East Texas. Frame part built in 1850s; brick wing added 1864. Among famous guests during river port days of Jefferson were Presidents Grant and Hayes, and poet Oscar Wilde. Restored 1961-63 by Jessie Allen Wise Garden Club. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest hotel in East Texas, the Excelsior House began as a frame building in the 1850s, with a brick wing added in 1864. During Jefferson's heyday as a bustling riverport, its guest register reportedly included Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes and the poet Oscar Wilde. Rescued from decline, it was restored in the early 1960s by the Jessie Allen Wise Garden Club.
Why it matters
The hotel captures the vanished era when riverboat commerce made Jefferson a gateway city drawing presidents and celebrated visitors deep into East Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ulysses S. Grant
- · Rutherford B. Hayes
- · Oscar Wilde
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jay Gould Railroad Car
Jefferson, TX
Built in 1888, the private railway car "Atlanta" carried the Gilded Age financier Jay Gould, whose empire included the Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific, and Texas and Pacific railroads. Fitted with observation rooms, staterooms, baths, a kitchen, and dining room in mahogany and curly maple, it was a rolling mansion. Passed down through the Gould family, it later served as a residence during the 1930s East Texas oil boom before being preserved at Jefferson in 1954.
Captain William Perry
Jefferson, TX
Arriving about 1840, William Perry helped turn Jefferson into a thriving inland port, running a shipping business and dredging a turning basin so boats could work the Big Cypress Bayou. He grew wealthy in land and shipping, tried his luck in the California gold rush, and served as Jefferson's mayor in 1863–64 before being fatally shot on his way home after midnight in 1869.
Old Livery Stable
Jefferson, TX
This corner of Jefferson sits beside Trammel's Trace, the frontier road charted in 1813 that funneled thousands of settlers into Texas. The lot was owned in 1868 by D. B. Culberson — later a congressman and a defense lawyer in the notorious Diamond Bessie murder trial — and hosted the exclusive Chesterfield Club, East Texas's elite social circle for decades. The present building, raised around 1900, boarded horses and buggies for public hire until the automobile ended the livery trade.
Old Federal Building
Jefferson, TX
When this building rose in Jefferson in 1869, the town was a booming inland riverport on Big Cypress Bayou, its wharves linking Texas cotton to the wider world by steamboat. As the first federal court and custom house in the region, it processed the trade and legal business of a frontier port at the height of its prosperity, and it also sheltered the county court and its records.