Humphris-Humphreys House

🏛️The era

In 1883, far West Texas was still frontier country in every sense. The railroad had only recently pushed across the region, and Marfa itself grew up in the early 1880s as a stop along that line. Around it stretched the high grasslands of the Big Bend country, rolling ranch land ringed by distant mountains, where a few hardy families were trying to build a permanent life.

This was the late Reconstruction and early Gilded Age, when cattle ranching was spreading across the West and the railroad was opening remote places to settlement. Building materials were hard to come by, skilled builders were few, and houses tended to be simple, sturdy, and adapted to a harsh climate.

The region's culture was a blend from the start. Anglo ranchers and merchants lived and worked alongside Hispanic families whose roots in the borderlands went back generations. The house's own story, with its builder and its owners, reflects that mix.

👥People & events

The house was built in 1883 by a local builder, Saturnino Naborette. Its first residents were John Humphris, a rancher, merchant, and community leader, and his wife, Mary. In a young town, people like Humphris often filled several roles at once: raising cattle, supplying neighbors with goods, and helping shape the institutions a new community needed.

Naborette gave the house a layout rooted in traditional pioneer building: a central hallway with four rooms on either side. The plan was practical. It organized a large home simply, and a central hall could help air move through the house.

In 1915 the house changed hands. Sally Humphreys, a schoolteacher and the wife of rancher Joe Humphreys, bought it. The similar-sounding names of the two families explain the marker's double title. Sally Humphreys ran the house as a boardinghouse until 1937, and for more than two decades it gave lodging to people passing through or settling in the area. In 1996 it was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Humphris-Humphreys House captures how the American frontier turned into settled community. The first generation of ranchers and merchants built homes meant to last, and the people who followed kept those homes in use as the region changed. A house built in the pioneer years that stayed in service into the twentieth century links the frontier to the modern West.

The boardinghouse chapter matters too. Across small-town America, boardinghouses were essential. They housed teachers, workers, travelers, and newcomers who couldn't yet afford a home of their own. They were also one of the few respectable businesses a woman could own and run in that era. Sally Humphreys, as a schoolteacher and boardinghouse keeper, represents the many women whose work held frontier towns together.

The builder's name is also worth remembering. The marker credits Saturnino Naborette by name, a reminder that the physical fabric of the Southwest was often built by local Hispanic craftsmen whose contributions are too rarely recorded.

🧭If you visit

Look at the house's form and try to read the plan from the outside. The marker describes a central hallway with four rooms on each side, a layout that speaks to the practical, traditional building methods of early West Texas. Notice how the design suits a hot, dry, high-country climate.

This is a historic home, so treat it as private property unless you know otherwise. Enjoy it from the street and don't assume it's open for tours.

Marfa is a rewarding place to wander. Today it's widely known for its art scene and its high-desert atmosphere, but walking its older streets lets you see the ranching town it was first. This house is part of that original layer, built when Marfa was barely more than a railroad stop.

Take your time in the surrounding Big Bend country. The long drives, huge skies, and distant mountains help explain why the people who settled here built as plainly and solidly as they did. This house belongs on any road trip through far West Texas.