Steakley Home
Temple, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The F. L. Wright Home was built on old stagecoach road in 1874, seven years before Temple was founded. It is still on original boid d'arc stumps foundation. Has original chimneys, and roof line. The builder was 1867 settler from Alabama, Confederate veteran F. L. Wright. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1874 along an old stagecoach road, this house predates the town of Temple itself by seven years and still rests on its original bois d'arc stump foundation. Its builder was F. L. Wright, an Alabama man and Confederate veteran who settled in Bell County in 1867 as the region filled with newcomers after the Civil War. The original chimneys and roofline survive as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Why it matters
Standing before the railroad and the town, the home is a rare survivor of the stagecoach-road frontier that Central Texas grew out of in the postwar years.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · F. L. Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Temple Founder Lions Club
Temple, TX
Temple sprang from bare blackland prairie into a railroad boomtown in the 1880s, and within a generation its merchants organized civic clubs to promote the growing city. In 1917 two local businessmen launched the Temple Lions Club, which sold Liberty Bonds during World War I and went on to champion public health, beautification, and its signature 100-acre Lions Park.
Santa Fe Memorial Hospital, Inc.
Temple, TX
Opened in 1891 for workers of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, this was the first hospital in Temple, its present building's oldest section dating to 1908. For decades the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word provided the nursing care. Early staff physicians A. C. Scott and R. R. White went on to found the renowned Scott and White Clinic, giving Temple a lasting reputation as a medical center.
Lake Polk Park
Temple, TX
When the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad founded Temple, it dammed nearby Bird Creek to secure water for its trains — and the resulting reservoir soon doubled as a recreation ground. By 1900 investors had built a park honoring railroad manager L.J. Polk, where townsfolk paid a dime to boat, fish, and play croquet and tennis. Over the decades the retreat passed from private association to private club and finally to a city park.
Grace United Methodist Church
Temple, TX
Organized in 1882 as the Friedens (Peace) Church of the Evangelical Association, this Temple congregation was founded to serve the area's German-speaking immigrants. Its 1883 wood-frame sanctuary — built on land donated by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway and touched with Gothic detailing — still stands on a cedar-post foundation. The church remains a marker of the German heritage woven through Central Texas.