The City of Katy
Katy, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Karankawa Indians hunted buffalo on this site as late as the 1820s. Present Fifth Street follows the course of the San Felipe Road, which was opened to Austin's colony in that decade. In 1836 Santa Anna used that road in his march toward San Jacinto. This site was in the 1839 land grant of Republic of Texas citizen James J. Crawford. In 1863 at their camp on San Felipe Road, 35 Confederate soldiers died and were buried in the locality. Cane Island, the original settlement, was known as a stagecoach stop. Developers platted Katy townsite after Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad ("The Katy Line") reached this point in 1895. The post office opened Jan. 23, 1896, in the postmaster's mercantile store. In 1897, William Eule grew a rice crop, initiating the locality's major industry. Eule's son Fred dug an irrigation well for the rice fields in 1899. The 1900 hurricane razed or damaged all improvements except two houses in Katy, but the town was soon rebuilt. Beginning in 1927, nearby petroleum developments enhanced the local economy. Incorporated n 1945, the town had 849 people in 1950 and 3800 by 1970. It is a tri-county municipality, lying in Fort Bend, Harris, and Waller counties.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The land where Katy stands carries layers of Texas history — Karankawa buffalo hunters into the 1820s, the San Felipe Road that carried Santa Anna toward San Jacinto in 1836, and a Confederate camp where soldiers died in 1863. The town itself was platted after the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad — 'The Katy Line' — reached the point in 1895, and rice cultivation begun in 1897 became its signature industry. Rebuilt after the 1900 hurricane and boosted by nearby oil, Katy grew into a tri-county municipality.
Why it matters
Katy compresses the Texas story into one place: Indigenous ground, revolution-era roads, railroad boomtown, and the rice and oil economies that built the modern Gulf Coast.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Tarrant Pattison Homesite
Pattison, TX
At the crossing of the Atascosito Road and the San Felipe Trail, James Tarrant Pattison and his wife Sarah settled a Republic of Texas land grant that grew into a 5,000-acre plantation with its own grist mill, sawmill, and cotton gin. The homesite doubled as a stagecoach stop, and the Pattisons founded the community's first church and school. The town that grew up here took the founder's name, and his heirs still live on the land.
Cypress
Cypress, TX
The Cypress region of northwest Harris County took shape after Attakapas and Akokisa peoples gave way to Anglo settlers like the Burnetts and Simmonses in the 1830s, with Matthew Burnett running an inn and serving as first postmaster at Big Cypress. German immigrants seeking land and religious freedom arrived in the late 1840s, and the Houston and Texas Central Railway reaching Cypress Top in 1856 turned scattered farms into a thriving depot community of stores, hotels, and dance halls.
Charles Harvey Waddell
Rosenberg, TX
Arkansas-born Charles Harvey Waddell came to Texas as a child and grew into a driving force behind Rosenberg's development. He opened an automobile dealership in 1910, founded the Fort Bend Telephone Company in 1914, served as county tax collector and state legislator, and spread his energies across cotton gins, real estate, lumber, and a savings and loan. His ventures helped modernize a small Fort Bend County town in the early automobile age.
Wallis Cemetery
Austin County, TX
This burial ground, also called the Protestant Cemetery, has served the Wallis area since the 1890s. The community began as Bovine Bend, founded by Kentucky settlers William and Lydia Guyler in 1859; when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway ran a spur through in 1880, Guyler sold his land, moved to the new town, and it was renamed for the railroad's chief engineer, Joseph Wallis. Farmers, merchants, railroad workers, a physician-minister, and veterans dating to the Civil War rest here beneath obelisks and interior fencing.