Westward Expansion

Amarillo, TX

This two-story brick residence was built in 1914 for John Malcolm Shelton, a Kentucky-born cattleman who became a prominent Panhandle rancher and businessman, and designed by Amarillo architect Joseph Champ Berry in the Prairie Style. After Shelton's death the home passed to his daughter Martha, wife of rancher Ted Houghton, who lived here until 1965. Its Prairie-Style detailing marks the arrival of national architectural fashion on the Texas plains.

Houston, TX

On November 30, 1836, the Congress of the new Republic of Texas chose this raw townsite at the head of Buffalo Bayou as its temporary capital. Into a "Houston City" of mud, tents, and cabins came President Sam Houston and his government in April 1837, meeting in a two-story plantation-style capitol that hosted Indian treaties, diplomacy, legislation, and even church services. The city held its first great social event that spring—a San Jacinto anniversary ball—before the capital moved on, and Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston here in 1838.

Houston, TX

In 1890 investors from an Omaha loan and trust company came to Houston, bought some 1,756 acres northwest of downtown, and set out to build a model suburb. Named Houston Heights for its elevation about 23 feet above the city, the development came with electrified streetcar lines, laid-out streets, sidewalks, and utilities — an early planned community. Incorporated in 1896, it grew into a distinct town before residents voted for annexation by Houston in 1918 to broaden the tax base for their schools.

Bluff Dale, TX

The Putnam brothers assembled 25,000 acres on Upper Berry Creek in 1879, building a three-story commissary for travelers and pioneering some of the area's first cattle dipping vats. The land passed through several owners before the I.T. Houston family bought its heart in 1942, and four generations have worked the ranch since.

Grapeland, TX

Rising to 552 feet, the highest point around, this oblong knoll gave Native Americans, pioneers, and soldiers a commanding view of the East Texas landscape and was already known as Houston's Mound by the 1830s. William T. Sadler, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto and a respected surveyor, acquired land including the mound in the 1820s. He and other surveyors used its vantage as a benchmark to verify the boundaries between Houston County and its neighbors.

Taylor, TX

Born in Ohio in 1848, Howard Bland, Sr. came to Texas in 1878 and built a homestead near Taylor around raising sheep. His annual sheep-shearing contest grew into a beloved community fair, and Bland donated the land to keep it going. A restless entrepreneur, he ran everything from a flour mill and ice house to a hotel, power company, theater, and newspaper, and served in local government and the state legislature.

Rio Grande City, TX

Built in 1877 from lumber salvaged off a sunken steamboat, with mesquite-block floors and handmade brick, this Rio Grande City house was the home and business of John Peter Kelsey, a New Yorker who came to the border in 1848 to become a Starr County judge and major landowner. Its very timbers speak to the steamboat commerce that once moved goods up the Rio Grande. Later owners carried the property into the twentieth century, and it took the name of Howard L. Bass, who acquired it in 1954.

Sheffield, TX

Howard's Well was one of the few reliable water sources on the brutal San Antonio–El Paso road, rediscovered by ex-Texas Ranger Richard A. Howard during John Coffee Hays's 1848 expedition to map a wagon route west. Forty-niners bound for California gold, mail lines, and army surveyors all watered here across the mid-19th century. It was also a crossroads of conflict: in 1872 Comanches and Kiowas ambushed a wagon train nearby, a raid that hardened federal Indian policy.

Van Alstyne, TX

Chartered in 1875 in the frontier community of Farmington, this Masonic lodge followed its members to Howe when the railroad bypassed the older settlement in 1887. Its first hall rose above the town's early Methodist chapel, a common pairing of sacred and civic life on the Texas frontier. Over the decades it absorbed a neighboring lodge and drew in the veterans and civic leaders who shaped Grayson County.

Newton, TX

James William and Louisa Cheshire Howell brought their family from Alabama in 1872, and their kin bought up adjoining land until the settlement of Howell earned a post office in 1889. Son Marmaduke is credited with introducing terrace farming to Texas in 1882, a soil-saving practice on the region's rolling land. A one-acre cemetery was set aside in 1876 — its oldest marked grave a Howell grandchild who died in 1875 — and later deeded to the family's descendants.

McKinney, TX

The Howell House stands on land granted in 1845 to Edward Bradley, a member of the Peters Colony that drew settlers into North Texas. His daughter Mary Ann inherited the property, and her husband, merchant Daniel Howell, built the first part of this home in 1861-62 — much of its cypress lumber hauled by wagon all the way from Jefferson. Four generations of the family occupied and enlarged the house over the years.

Waco, TX

This cabin was raised in 1858 from hand-hewn, saw-notched native yellow pine on land patented in Rusk County to Matilda Hoyle around 1853. After 1880 it long belonged to the Snelgrove family, passing through Eli Benjamin and Julia Kilgore Snelgrove and their son John. In 1955 it was purchased, moved to Waco, and restored by local historian Roger N. Conger.

Hungerford, TX

This burial ground traces to 1851, when the family of Joel and Rachel Hudgins began using it, though the land's story reaches back to an 1824 grant. Rachel had already outlived one husband and buried children before marrying Joel, a widower, in 1847; of their thirteen children together, only six reached adulthood—a stark measure of frontier mortality. Joel served as a civic leader and founded a local school, and generations of descendants have continued to tend the cemetery into modern times.

Lakeway, TX

Wiley Hudson gave his name to this bend of the Colorado River when he settled his family here in 1854, one of a handful of households scratching out a life among the cedar and live oaks. Neighbors forded the river to grind corn at Anderson mill and to visit hamlets with names like Round Mountain and Nameless, and during the Civil War the Hudson men took up arms for the Confederacy. The old rural world vanished when Mansfield Dam was completed in the 1940s and Lake Travis flooded half the tract, forcing even the cemetery to be moved and turning ranchland into lakeside subdivisions.

Kennedale, TX

When John and Winnie Hudson's young daughter Ary Mae died in 1878, her grave became the first on the family's Tarrant County land, soon joined by her twin sister, reinterred from a distant county to rest beside her. In 1892 the Hudsons deeded three acres for a community cemetery, and by 1996 more than five hundred graves recorded the pioneers of the surrounding countryside. Community funds organized across the 20th century have kept the ground tended.

Sierra Blanca, TX

Carved from El Paso County and organized in 1917, Hudspeth County took its name from Claude Benton Hudspeth, a native Texan born in 1877 who rose from large ranching interests to serve in the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress. Sierra Blanca became its county seat.

Sierra Blanca, TX

Built in 1917 in the far West Texas town of Sierra Blanca, this building is distinguished as the only adobe county courthouse in the state. Its earthen construction reflects the materials and traditions of the arid borderlands where it stands. It remains the seat of government for sprawling, sparsely settled Hudspeth County.

Leon Valley, TX

Settlement here began in 1858 when Joseph Huebner, an Austrian immigrant and San Antonio businessman, bought land and built limestone structures along the creek that still bears his name. He opened a stagecoach stop on the San Antonio–to–Bandera line, offering blacksmithing, fresh stock, and shelter to travelers stranded by the flooded creek. In 1930 the property passed to Judge John F. Onion and his wife Harriet, and grassroots preservation later saved the homestead as a natural and educational site.

Hueco, TX

Hueco Tanks, whose natural rock basins trapped precious rainwater, was one of the most important watering places in the Southwest, used by Native peoples, emigrants, and travelers alike. Near here the Apache repeatedly contested passage through their country. From 1858 to 1861 the site served as a station on the Southern Overland Mail line linking St. Louis and San Francisco.

Alvord, TX

In 1874, during one of the last Indian raids in Wise County, tragedy struck a newly arrived settler family. While C. W. Huff and his son worked a remote part of their land, raiders killed Mrs. Huff and her daughters Palestine and Molly. Neighbors buried the victims in a wagon bed, and in 1879 Huff donated the land around the grave for a cemetery.

Reno, NV

When Granville W. Huffaker drove 500 head of cattle into the Truckee Meadows in 1858, the valley's main settlers were Mormons; he established his ranch the following year just as the Comstock Lode focused new attention on the region. Through the 1860s Huffaker's grew into a bustling stage stop and community center, with a stage line, post office, and an 1868 schoolhouse, hosting dances, horse races, and even a literary society. In 1875 the "Bonanza Kings" completed their great lumber flume from the Tahoe basin to a nearby terminus, where the Virginia and Truckee Railroad built a depot and spur to transfer the timber.

Valley Spring, TX

When James Jackson Larremore led his family to the Texas Hill Country in 1853, Llano County was raw frontier along the Llano River. His daughter Martha married Civil War veteran James S. Huffman, who acquired 300 acres running from Smoothin' Iron Mountain past Cold Creek, and as settlers put down roots they needed a place to bury their dead. The first recorded grave dates to 1884, and by 1917 the family formally dedicated the ground as Huffman Cemetery, tending it across the century until forming an association in 1980.

Liberty, TX

Tennessee-born Hugh B. Johnston helped govern the Texas frontier at the birth of a nation, serving as the first alcalde of the Liberty municipality in 1831. As a delegate to the 1835 Consultation and later a member of the Republic of Texas Congress, he was among the officeholders who steered Texas from a Mexican province through revolution and into independent statehood before his death in 1850.

Lampasas County, TX

These springs bear the name of Moses Hughes, remembered as the first settler in this part of Lampasas County in 1853. Tradition holds that his wife regained her health by taking the mineral waters here. Their arrival helped open the region to settlement in the years just before the Civil War.

Stoneham, TX

The family of Jefferson Edmond Hughey settled a 260-acre homestead in this part of Grimes County by 1859. They laid out a family cemetery whose earliest marked grave, that of Hughey's mother-in-law Mary Ann Garmany Boozer, dates to 1876, and built a nearby chapel that doubled as the community schoolhouse. The land stayed in Hughey hands until 1989, and the burial ground—home to Confederate veterans' graves—still marks the region's earliest settlers.

Lampasas, TX

Built of native limestone and cedar in New England colonial style between 1860 and 1872, this Lampasas cottage was bought in 1872 for $3,000 in gold by Elizabeth Bullock Smith Huling. As a Kentucky orphan she had fled toward the Sabine River in the 1836 "Runaway Scrape," the panicked flight of Texas families ahead of Santa Anna's advancing army. Her husband, Thomas B. Huling, fought in the Texas Revolution and later served as a congressman of the Republic of Texas.

Humble, TX

Believed to be Humble's oldest burial ground, this cemetery holds a documented grave from 1879 and, by tradition, the unmarked resting place of Jane Elizabeth Humble, wife of the town's founder Pleasant Humble. Its first legal record is an 1914 deed to trustees, though burials long predate it. A Civil War veteran and several World War I soldiers lie among the town's pioneer families.

Greenville, TX

The Humboldt community began to grow in 1866 when a caravan of families arrived from Tennessee. The first burial was likely an infant in 1868, and the Dinsmore family deeded the land as a burial ground in 1890. The 38 marked infant graves before 1932 — and the grave of a teacher who died in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic — testify to the harsh realities of pioneer and early-modern life.

Pershing County, NV

Humboldt House began as the departure point for Humboldt City and nearby mines, became a stage stop on the Beachey line in 1866, and reached its heyday when the Central Pacific railhead arrived in September 1868. From 1869 to 1900 it was celebrated as one of the finest eating-houses on the Central Pacific — a true desert oasis of good water, fruit, and vegetables. The site also stood along the California emigrant trail, where in 1850 alone travelers counted over 9,700 dead animals and 3,000 abandoned wagons on the nearby Forty Mile Desert.

Humboldt County, NV

Fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden reached this river on November 9, 1828, during his fifth Snake Country expedition, exploring hundreds of square miles of its course and drafting the first map of the region. Unsure where it led, he called it the "Unknown River," later renaming it Paul's, Swampy, and finally Mary's River before it became known as the Humboldt. As the only natural artery across the Great Basin, the river funneled thousands of emigrants toward the Pacific between 1841 and 1870.

Wells, NV

These marshy springs in the meadows were Humboldt Wells, a vital oasis on the California Emigrant Trail. Between 1845 and 1869, hundreds of covered-wagon trains halted here to rest and refit before the grueling 300-mile push down the Humboldt Valley. Deep ruts worn by their passage can still be traced on the surrounding slopes. When the Central Pacific Railroad built a station in 1869, it borrowed the springs' name, later shortened to Wells.

Crosby, TX

Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson came to Texas in 1823 as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300," settling east of the San Jacinto River. Their land grant helped open the San Jacinto District and enlarge Austin's colony, adding fresh ground for Anglo settlement. Sarah died just a year after arriving, and the couple lies buried nearby beneath a distinctive zinc grave marker.

Crosby, TX

Trained in law and opposed to slavery, Irish emigrant Humphrey Jackson left his Louisiana sugar plantation to join Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1823, unknowingly settling just outside its bounds. He helped petition Mexican authorities to form the San Jacinto District under Austin's control and was elected its alcalde, becoming one of the earliest civic leaders in what is now Harris County before his death in 1833.

Martindale, TX

The Jennings and Humphreys families settled around Martindale in the 1850s and established this hilltop cemetery on land Joseph Humphreys bought in 1855. Randolph Reed Jennings, said to have died of yellow fever on his way to the area, was the first buried here, and tradition holds that a number of unmarked graves belong to people once enslaved by the pioneer families. Descendants still gather to maintain the grounds, which were enlarged in 1946.

Marfa, TX

Built in 1883 by local craftsman Saturnino Naborette, this Marfa home belonged to rancher and merchant John Humphris and his wife Mary, its central hall flanked by four rooms on each side in the plain, sturdy style of early West Texas. In 1915 schoolteacher Sally Humphreys bought the house and ran it as a boardinghouse until 1937. Recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1996, it survives as an example of frontier building methods.

Hunt, TX

Farmers and ranchers settled the forks of the Guadalupe River in the late 1850s, forming the Japonica and Pebble communities. In 1912 Alva and Lizzie Joy bought land at the confluence and named the new settlement for prior owner Robert Hunt; a post office followed in 1913. By the 1930s the area drew artists like E.M. Schiwetz and grew into a hub of summer camps and retreats while staying a small rural community.

Henderson vicinity, TX

Thomas Hunt, Sr., his wife Louvisa, and their family came from Blount County, Tennessee, to Rusk County in 1851 and set aside ground for a family burial place; the oldest marked grave, from 1856, belongs to a daughter-in-law, Mary Finley Hunt. Alongside marked stones are graves noted only by rocks and many that are unmarked. Formally recorded in county deeds in 1915, the cemetery holds veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.

Greenville, TX

By 1929 Greenville had already worn through six earlier courthouses, and the seventh — the one still standing — caught a moment when American public architecture was pivoting from stately classical revival toward the streamlined optimism of art deco. Local firm W. R. Ragsdale & Sons joined Austin's Page Brothers to raise a six-story landmark of solid masonry, decorative terra cotta, and triple-arched entries that remains the seat of Hunt County government.

Hunt, TX

The Hunt Japonica Cemetery lies between the town of Hunt and the early community of Japonica, its oldest legible stone marking the 1872 grave of George T. Henry, sixteen years after Kerr County was organized. It holds many area pioneers and their descendants, along with a large number of unmarked graves. Though flooded on several occasions, the cemetery remains in use.

Bridgeport, TX

Born in New York in 1815, William Hudson Hunt came to Texas in 1836 to join the fight for independence, then served the young Republic as a soldier and surveyor—helping locate the site of the capital and joining the Santa Fe Expedition. In 1855 he pioneered Wise County, building a ranch on the West Fork of the Trinity, laying out the town that became Decatur, and helping route the Butterfield Overland Mail through the county. His remains were reinterred here after Lake Bridgeport flooded his family cemetery.

Huntsville, TX

Kentucky native Pleasant Gray and his wife Hannah settled here in 1835 on land granted through Mexico's colonization effort, beside natural springs that had long served as a campsite for the Bedias Indians and for travelers passing through. Gray and his brother opened a trading post, subdivided the land, and advertised lots as far as Alabama and New Orleans, naming the new town for Huntsville, Alabama. Incorporated in 1845 and even noted by British adventurer William Bollaert, the springs supplied the town's water until an artesian well replaced them in the 1890s and the spring was finally boarded over.

Whitney, TX

The U.S. Army's Fort Graham, established in 1849, drew settlers who stayed even after the post closed in 1853, and the Neal family's arrival by 1860 seeded the community of Elm Mott. The Neals donated land for a school, church, tabernacle, and lodge, while merchant Jehu Gist opened a store and secured a post office he named Huron for his youngest son. Though the school consolidated away in 1949, Cedar Creek Baptist Church still gathers area residents and the descendants of Huron's founding families.

Shive, TX

Established around 1880 near Shive in Hamilton County, Hurst Ranch Cemetery served the ranching families who settled this stretch of Central Texas during the cattle era that followed the Civil War. Its recognition as a Historic Texas Cemetery marks it as a lasting record of that pioneer community.

Farmersville, TX

Allen Daniel brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1847 and bought 480 acres here in 1851, only to die and be buried on his own land the following year. His daughter Tennessee, who married D. E. Huson, later gave the ground around her father's grave to the community as a public cemetery. Among the hundreds of marked and unmarked graves lie town founders, pioneer families, and many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families.

Arlington, TX

In the 1890s Arlington was a small farming and trading community only recently stitched into the rail network of North Texas. This Queen Anne cottage, built around 1896 with its ornamental "gingerbread" trim, stood on land held by merchant I. L. Hutcheson, whose son later chased the Texas oil boom in Archer City. When former educator and farmer S. T. Smith bought the house in 1919, it passed into a family that kept it for another sixty years.

Hutchins, TX

The town of Hutchins grew from a trading post serving settlers along the western bank of the Trinity River. This ground was used for burials long before it was formally platted in 1895—the earliest marked grave belongs to eleven-year-old Alonzo B. Clark, who died in 1875—and it holds several generations of the area's pioneer families, veterans, and civic leaders.

Stinnett, TX

Hutchinson County, carved from the Bexar District in 1876 and finally organized in 1901, moved its seat from Plemons to Stinnett in 1926 just as major oil discoveries transformed the Panhandle. The 1927 courthouse, designed by Amarillo architect W. C. Townes in Spanish Renaissance Revival style, rose in brick and cut stone and also housed the county jail. Friezes at its entrances celebrate petroleum, farming and ranching, and cattle — the three industries that made the county.

Hutto, TX

Organized in 1882, Hutto Baptist Church first gathered in the local schoolhouse before raising its own sanctuary in 1883. Central Texas weather tested the young congregation repeatedly, destroying or damaging its building in storms in 1886, 1895, and 1921, each time answered by rebuilding. By 1922 a new church stood at Main and Farley, anchoring a congregation that has served Williamson County for more than a century.

Hutto, TX

This burial ground took shape in the late 1880s, when it was known as Elmwood Cemetery, and the earliest marked grave dates to 1887. As ownership passed from family to family, the site filled with the community's story: settlers from distant states and countries, members of fraternal orders, veterans reaching back to the Civil War, and children whose short lives are recorded in stone. In 1950 a newly formed association bought the land and renamed it for the town of Hutto.

Hutto, TX

Lutheran worship in Hutto began in 1890 when ministers from Palm Valley Lutheran Church held occasional services for the area's fast-growing Swedish population. In 1892 August Swenson led the effort to organize a formal congregation, which built its first church in 1893—only to see it destroyed by a tornado and rebuilt the next year. Services here were conducted in Swedish until 1940, long preserving the immigrants' mother tongue.

Bridgeport, TX

J. E. Barnes bought this ground from P. J. and Mary E. Hyde in 1885, though the earliest graves — his wife Dizania and their son Felix — date to 1879. The cemetery also holds many settlers from the vanished community of Jim Ned two miles north, a town named for an Indian chief that once boasted a church, school, store, and post office before it faded away after 1900. Around 75 graves here are unmarked, and others are indicated only by rocks and fences.

Rockport, TX

This 1874 longleaf-pine house, designed by San Antonio architect Viggo Kohler with gallery porches and classical-revival trim, served as the hub of Rockport's Catholic community—hosting circuit-riding priests from Refugio until a church was built in 1889. Moved to South Church Street in 1906 and split into apartments, it later passed through several families before the Balthropes restored it after Hurricane Celia. It stayed in their hands until 1996.

Hurst, TX

Isaac Duke Parker, son of the noted early Texas politician Isaac Parker, settled near this site with his family in 1853. He served as a Tarrant County commissioner before enlisting in the Confederate army during the Civil War, then took over the family homestead and cemetery around 1867. Near the end of his life he set aside the eastern half of the burial ground — with more than thirty graves — as a public cemetery.

Trinity, TX

Built about 1888 in Trinity, this was the home of merchant Isaac Newton Parker, a Confederate Civil War veteran, and his family. He and his first wife, Mary Ashley, raised eight children here; after her death he married Lou Palmer, who lived in the house until 1955. Around 1911 Parker reworked the home's original Victorian styling into a simpler Classical look, and it was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1996.

Denton, TX

Chartered in 1859 by some of Denton County's leading settlers — including cattleman John S. Chisum of Chisholm Trail fame — this Odd Fellows lodge established a graveyard on land donated by merchant James M. Smoot. The first burial came in 1860, and the cemetery grew in stages across the next seven decades before the lodge deeded the 22-acre grounds to the city in 1933. Roughly 5,800 people rest here, from pioneer settlers to veterans of every war from the Texas Revolution through World War II.

Caddo Mills vicinity, TX

This burial ground grew out of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, whose Caddo Mills lodge bought land for a cemetery in 1902 near a stop on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad. The oldest known grave dates to 1893, and the cemetery now holds more than 2,000 burials. Its headstones mark veterans of every American conflict from the Civil War through Vietnam, alongside the farmers and townspeople of Caddo Mills and Josephine.

Sonoma County, CA · est. 1989

Icaria-Speranza was a utopian community founded near Cloverdale in 1881 by French immigrant families inspired by the writings of philosopher Etienne Cabet. Built on solidarity, cooperative living, and an agrarian economy, it was the only Icarian colony in California and the last of seven established across the United States before dissolving in 1886. The colony's schoolhouse, deeded to the county that year, once stood on this site.

Idalou, TX

As farming families broke the open prairie of the South Plains in the early 20th century, John William Turner, Jr. and his wife Mary Alice set aside two acres of their land as a burial ground in 1921 — its first grave a homemade marker for an infant nephew. A cemetery association formed by 1928, and decades of donated land and volunteer workdays shaped the site's curbed plots, upright shoulder stones, and native prairie plantings. It endures as a record of the generations who built Idalou.

Castroville, TX

Early Castroville colonists—Dutch and German immigrants who arrived on Henri Castro's ships in the 1840s—rest in this small family plot, where Marie Becker Ihnken was buried in 1847. Her son Gerhard, a leading citizen, farmed vast lands and ran a sawmill, store, and orchard, and is credited with bringing the area's first reaper and binder. One of Medina County's oldest cemeteries, it holds eight marked Ihnken graves and, by tradition, a freedman who worked for the family; it has stayed inactive since 1950 to protect unmarked graves.

Saint Jo, TX

A community rose here on the Red River around the start of the Civil War, and after the war nearby Red River Station became a favored crossing where Longhorn herds forded on the Chisholm Trail. Known first as Maxwell or Wardville, it took the name Illinois Bend—for some settlers' home state—by 1877, growing to include schools, stores, a cotton gin, churches, and river ferries. Its burial ground, with the earliest marked grave from 1873, remains cared for by a local cemetery association.