HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Trueheart House

Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas

Marker Inscription

An excellent example of a Queen Anne style house executed in native stone, adobe, and milled wood, this house was built about 1898 as a summer home for the family of Henry M. and Annie Trueheart, residents of Galveston, where Mr. Trueheart was a prominent real estate investor. The family spent summers here to escape the coastal heat and enjoy the healthful climate of the Davis Mountains. The house remained in the family until 1920. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built about 1898 in native stone, adobe, and milled wood, this fine Queen Anne house served as a summer home for the Galveston real-estate investor Henry Trueheart and his family. They came each year to escape the coastal heat and enjoy the cool, healthful climate of the Davis Mountains, keeping the house until 1920.

Why it matters

The Trueheart House reflects how the Davis Mountains became a Gilded Age retreat, drawing lowland Texans to the high country of the Trans-Pecos.

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Related people

  • · Henry M. Trueheart
  • · Annie Trueheart

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Grierson-Sproul House

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Completed in 1908 by B. H. Grierson Jr., this masonry home was built of local pink volcanic tuff, echoing the officers' quarters at the nearby military post of Fort Davis. After fire gutted it in 1912, rancher and county sheriff Franklin Sproul rebuilt the house, and under the Sproul family it became a gathering place at the heart of community life in this West Texas town.

First Baptist Church of Fort Davis

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Reverends L. R. Millican and D. B. Rose gathered six charter members into this Baptist congregation in 1896, high in the mountains of far West Texas near Fort Davis. For years the Baptists shared buildings with local Methodists and Presbyterians, worshiped in a converted skating rink and theater, and finally raised a traditional church in 1942. The congregation sent missionaries into Mexico and remained woven into community life for more than a century.

Jeff Davis County Courthouse

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Erected in 1910–1911 to replace the county's original 1880 adobe courthouse, this Classical Revival building was designed by the Dallas firm of L. L. Thurman and Co. and built by a Louisville, Kentucky, contractor. A massive Doric portico fronts the concrete-and-stone structure, whose walls show alternating bands of locally quarried pink rusticated stone beneath a Beaux Arts clock tower fitted with a Seth Thomas timepiece. More than a century on, it still serves as the seat of Jeff Davis County government.

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