Reconstruction & Gilded AgePostwar & Contemporary

Kleb Family House

Tomball, Harris County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Constructed c. 1890s, the Kleb Family Home and its location in the wooded northwestern part of Harris County represent a time of dispersed rural settlement in the area. Edward Kleb, a descendant of German immigrants who arrived in Texas in 1846, built the house on property acquired from his father, Andrew. Elmer "Lumpy" Kleb (1907-1999), son of Edward and Minnie (Willmann), was born in the house and inherited the property when his mother died in 1967. (Edward passed away in 1951.) Deeply attached to the family land, Elmer planted many of the trees in the area and cared for wildlife, often nursing injured birds. Elmer lived a unique existence - a life without utilities in the natural setting. He also did not pay taxes and amassed a debt of more than $150,000 by 1986. Over Elmer's wishes, a court-appointed law firm worked to sell a portion of the property, which had grown significantly in monetary value, to cover the amount owed. Elmer, however, wanted to donate his land to the Audubon Society. The situation attracted national attention and soon lawyers, county officials, charities and other agencies began work to find a way to pay the bills and preserve the habitat. In 1991, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department grant enabled Harris County to buy the land. The county paid the debt and created the Kleb Woods Nature Preserve. Kleb's determination, as well as help from others, led to the preservation of a wildlife refuge in a rapidly urbanizing area. The county started a trust fund to cover Elmer's needs until he passed away. Later, restoration began on his house, a vernacular hall and parlor style home featuring side gables with returns. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2006

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built in the 1890s by Edward Kleb, grandson of German immigrants who reached Texas in 1846, this hall-and-parlor farmhouse anchored a stretch of dispersed rural settlement in northwestern Harris County. His son Elmer "Lumpy" Kleb, born in the house, lived without utilities and devoted himself to the land, planting trees and nursing injured wildlife. When mounting tax debt threatened the property in the 1980s, a national outpouring helped Harris County buy it in 1991 and create the Kleb Woods Nature Preserve.

Why it matters

The Kleb homestead links immigrant frontier settlement to modern conservation, showing how one man's devotion to his land became a public wildlife refuge amid rapid suburban growth.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

The northwestern corner of Harris County was, for a long time, a landscape of scattered farms rather than streets and subdivisions. When this house went up around the 1890s, deep in the woods, it belonged to a world of dispersed rural settlement — families living far apart, working their own land, self-reliant by necessity in a countryside that had not yet been swallowed by the city to the south.

That pattern had roots in the wave of German immigration that reshaped central and eastern Texas beginning in the 1840s. Families who arrived in that era cleared land, farmed, and put down generational roots, and their descendants carried both the property and the culture forward. This homestead is a physical trace of that immigrant frontier.

The drama of the place, though, comes from what happened later — as Houston sprawled outward through the 20th century and once-remote woodland became some of the most valuable real estate in the region. A farm that had been ordinary in the 1890s found itself, by the 1980s, an island of wildness in a rising tide of suburbia.

People & events

The house was built by Edward Kleb, a descendant of German immigrants who had reached Texas in 1846, on land he acquired from his father, Andrew. That is a classic frontier inheritance: property handed down, a home raised on family ground.

But the figure at the center of this story is Edward's son, Elmer — known as "Lumpy" — born in the house in 1907. When his mother, Minnie, died in 1967 (his father Edward had passed in 1951), Elmer inherited the land, and he loved it with a devotion that shaped the rest of his life. He lived without utilities, at home in the natural world around him. He planted many of the area's trees and cared for its wildlife, nursing injured birds back to health.

That unusual life collided with the modern world through something very ordinary: taxes. Elmer did not pay them, and by 1986 he had amassed a debt of more than $150,000 as the land's value soared. A court-appointed law firm moved to sell part of the property to cover it. Elmer had a different wish — he wanted to give his land to the Audubon Society. The standoff drew national attention, and lawyers, county officials, and charities converged to find a way to both settle the debt and save the habitat. In 1991 a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department grant let Harris County buy the land, pay off what was owed, and create the Kleb Woods Nature Preserve. The county even set up a trust fund to care for Elmer until he died in 1999. Later, his hall-and-parlor house was restored.

Its place in the American story

The Kleb story sits precisely on the seam between two great American themes: the immigrant settlement of the frontier and the modern conservation movement. One family's arrival in 1846 and a grandson's refusal, more than a century later, to let his woods be paved over turn out to be chapters of the same book.

It also dramatizes a conflict playing out across the country in the late 20th century, as fast-growing cities pushed into their rural edges. Rising land values are usually a story of development; here they became the very threat to a place worth preserving. The resolution — public agencies, private charities, and a stubborn landowner's wishes combining to protect open space — is a model of how communities have chosen to keep a piece of the natural world when the easy money pointed the other way.

And at its heart is a distinctly American kind of individualist: a man who lived on his own terms, off the grid, tending trees and injured birds, whose personal devotion to his land outlived him as public ground. His name is now attached not to a subdivision but to a nature preserve, which is a rare and telling legacy.

If you visit

Come for the trees Elmer planted. The preserve that bears his name protects the wooded, water-laced habitat he spent a lifetime nurturing, and walking its trails is the most direct way to understand what all the fuss was about — why a whole community fought to keep this ground from being cleared.

At the house, look closely at the building itself. It's described as a vernacular hall-and-parlor home with side gables and returns — a modest, honest 19th-century farmhouse rather than a grand estate. That plainness is the point: this was a working family's home, and its restoration lets you picture the dispersed rural life that once defined this corner of Harris County.

The experience is really a study in contrasts. You are standing in preserved woodland surrounded by one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country. Let that sink in as you walk. For a road trip through the Houston area, this is the quiet, green counterpoint to the freeways — a place where one man's devotion, and a community's response to it, held the line against the sprawl.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

· Edward Kleb
· Elmer "Lumpy" Kleb
· Andrew Kleb

Themes & tags

ImmigrationFrontier HistoryHome

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