HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Wyatt-Boyd Ranch Complex

Stephenville, Erath County, Texas

Marker Inscription

This is a rare example of a virtually complete 19th-century Cross Timbers farmstead. Thought to have been built in the early 1870s by James J. Wyatt, the Cumberland plan one-story rough limestone two room ranch house was altered in the 1890s by J. H. Boyd and modified in the 1930s and 1940s. Other structures in the ranch complex include a single-room masonry dugout, two stone barns, and a rock base for an elevated cistern. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987 Incising on base: In honor of Naoma Caudle Frey Hickie, 1987

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

The Wyatt-Boyd Ranch Complex is a rare, nearly complete example of a 19th-century Cross Timbers farmstead, its two-room rough-limestone ranch house thought to date from the early 1870s. Later owners altered the house in the 1890s and again in the mid-20th century, and the site still includes a masonry dugout, two stone barns, and a cistern base. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1987.

Why it matters

Intact frontier farmsteads like this preserve the working landscape of early Texas ranching that so much of the state's identity was built upon.

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Related people

  • · James J. Wyatt
  • · J. H. Boyd

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryHome

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