If you were to climb to the top of the bank and stand on the sidewalk at the foot of Taft Street, you could peer into the distance to the south and see West Dallas Avenue on the elevated horizon. With a little imagination, you can see back to the time of the first years of the Republic and, in your mind, envision a small log cabin, bounded on the east by a timber post fence, that was recognizable as belonging on Sam Houston's Ranch.
During the
formative months of the new Republic and its new capital at Houston,
several persons sought to stake out new land holdings in the vicinity
of the town. In early 1837, Sam Houston acquired thirty acres west of
town on the San Felipe Road. He built a log cabin there and established
a farm that became known as the "Houston Ranch." Other prominent farmers, veterans of the Texas army and members of the new government also settled on tracts of land on the edge of Houston. John Woodruff, a farmer from Brazoria, built a home on fifty acres on the east side of Houston's Ranch on a tract that later became the Castanie Subdivision. To the west of Sam Houston's Ranch was Mirabeau B. Lamar's homestead of one hundred fifty acres which he called Oak Grove.
After President Lamar engineered the relocation of the capital of Texas to Austin in 1839, the land on the outskirts of Houston became less valuable or practical for government officials to own. In late 1843, Sam Houston sold parts of his farm to Lewis Levy for about $75 per acre as land prices around Houston had fallen nearly 25 percent after the loss of the capital of the Republic.
In 1845, George Baker purchased part of the Houston Ranch from Levy, and in a series of purchases in subsequent years, Baker acquired the remainder of the ranch tract and several adjacent tracts to become one of the major land owners along this section of the San Felipe Road. As Baker consolidated his holdings, the delineation of specific tracts such as the Houston Ranch was blurred. In the case of the Houston Ranch, for example, the western boundaries of the thirty acre farm became no longer visible on survey maps as it was incorporated into larger tracts of land owned by Baker.
However, through a quirk of fate, the eastern boundary of the Houston Ranch has remained identifiable on survey maps, even today.
At the time that Sam Houston acquired his ranch, he chose it in the vacant lands south of the John Austin Survey. Since the San Felipe Road generally followed the east-west line of the southern boundary of the John Austin Survey, the deed describing the Houston Ranch began at the San Felipe Road and described a rectangular tract of thirty acres lying perpendicular to the road. This alignment of the tract placed the Houston Ranch at 10 degrees southeast (later surveyed as 12 degrees southeast) since the road dipped slightly to the southwest.
In the late
1840's, the San Felipe Road was straightened to run due west along the
John Austin south boundary line. This realignment placed the road a
short distance north of the Houston Ranch, as seen on survey maps after
1847 and even today. The realignment also left the eastern
boundary of the Houston Ranch as an intrusion into the adjoining
tract which is Lot 40 of the Obedience Smith Survey A-696. Although the
boundary lines of other tracts in the area were normalized to the
straightened San Felipe Road, the intrusion of the Houston Ranch never
was. It is this 2-1/2 acre intrusion that can be identified and which
allows us to definitively place the location of the Sam Houston Ranch.By following the legal description of the Houston Ranch from the earliest deed records, we can trace the boundary lines over the streets of a modern Houston street map with it generally lying south and west of the intersection of West Dallas Avenue and Taft Street.
A photo taken in 1916 shows a cabin which is believed to have been the original cabin on Sam Houston's Ranch. A timber post fence to the east of the cabin is probably the eastern boundary of the property. If that is the case, then, the cabin was in the vicinity of the modern Taft Street.
Although a lot of attention has been given to Sam Houston's log cabin "Presidential" residence in Houston, little notice has been made of Sam Houston's country retreat southwest of town. Now, at least, we know where it was.