Everything Fulshear is known for
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During the Texas Revolution, Churchill Fulshear Jr. and his brothers served as scouts for the Texan army as the Mexican army pursued Sam Houston's forces. The Fulshear area was on the route of both armies, and Churchill and his brothers scouted Santa Anna's army as they crossed the Brazos River near their plantation on April 14, 1836. The Texan army camped on the Fulshear plantation in an attempt to prevent the Mexican army from crossing the Brazos River.
Fulshear, Texas, might seem like a quiet spot on the map, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of place west of Houston. But scratch the surface, and you'll find a surprising connection to a figure who shaped Texas music.
Fulshear's history is deeply rooted in Texas' journey to independence and statehood. The city owes its origins to Churchill Fulshear, one of Stephen F. Austin's original Old Three Hundred settlers, who arrived from Tennessee in 1824. Churchill Sr. established a plantation that raised cotton, corn, rice, pecans, and livestock. His sons served as scouts for the Texan army during the Texas Revolution, playing a role in the conflict that shaped modern Texas. The town of Fulshear later grew around the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad in the 1890s, which Churchill Jr. granted the right of way through his plantation in 1888.
On July 16, 1824, land grant of Mexico to Churchill Fulshear, one of the "Old 300" settlers of Stephen F. Austin, father of Texas. Churchill Fulshear, Jr., veteran of Texas War for Independence, built 4-story brick mansion in 1850s, bred and raced horses at Churchill Downs (at Pittsville, 2 mi. N). His pupil, John Huggins, won world fame by training first American horse to win the English Derby. Town platted here 1890 by San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad, soon was trade center, with many facilities. The Rev. J. H. Holt was first (1894) pastor of the still existant Methodist church.
Dolph Briscoe, Sr., cattleman, was born on September 1, 1890, in Fulshear, Texas, one of four children of Judge Lee Adolphus and Lucy (Wade) Briscoe. His father was a planter, jurist, rancher, and descendant of Andrew Briscoe . His mother was a granddaughter of Randolph Foster . On October 1, 1913, Briscoe married his cousin Georgie Briscoe, who resided in Fulshear, and a year later the couple moved to Uvalde. Their son, Dolph Briscoe, Jr. , became the fortieth governor of the state of Texas. Briscoe, Sr., started in his youth tending cattle at the periphery of his family's plantation. He worked beyond the bordered cultivated fields and quickly became a natural at roping, culling, and driving cattle. His entrepreneurial talents also emerged early. Already mounted by dawn, he began a newspaper route around Fulshear and won a Houston Post competition for increased subscriptions, as well as a scholarship to Peacock Military Academy . But Briscoe naturally gravitated toward the range life. "I had my chance at college," he wrote, "but I didn't want college. My father wanted me to attend the State University and study law, but I liked horse trading better." Briscoe ran mules and horses from Bee, Wilson, and Dimmit counties to the farmers on the coastal prairies, and business was profitable, especially soon after the harvest. He expanded operations and began selling in Arkansas and Missouri. He partnered with Leo Byrd and ranched along the Leona River. He traded cattle, formed a partnership with J. M. Patton and Albert Finley, and by 1919 was buying cattle by the thousands. He "went broke," he recalled, in 1921 and again in 1932. He next became a commission agent for Humble Oil and Refining Company for the Uvalde territory, and in the course of distributing for Humble (later Exxon ), he made friends with Ross Sterling , president of Humble and Briscoe's next partner in the cattle business. After buying the Chupadera Ranch in Dimmitt and Webb counties the two men went broke. In 1932 the cattle business, like many other businesses in the nation, went sour. Beef at two cents a pound would not even pay the freight costs. Briscoe faltered but did not quit. He leased in subsequent years the Catarina Ranch, then bought 35,000 acres of it. He ran the Margarito Ranch and put 5,000 Hereford cattle on it in northern Coahuila. He became a partner of Albert Finley in a 10,000-acre spread named the Gato and acquired the Rio Frio Ranch, 14,000 acres north of Uvalde. His O6 (Open Six) brand was an adaptation of the original Sterling-Briscoe O9 brand, which Dolph Briscoe, Jr., later used. The O6 rapidly spread across several counties as the indefatigable Briscoe began to build his cattle fortunes for a third time. In 1933 he founded the Uvalde Wool and Mohair Company, which became his official office when he was not out on his land. In 1973, in the midst of a school-tax dispute over the Briscoe holdings, the Dallas Morning News estimated that the Briscoe family owned 303,125 acres in five counties, and that with additional leased acreage they controlled a million acres worth $40 million. The Briscoes were consequently the state's largest landholders. By this time Briscoe hobnobbed with prominent Texans who came to socialize and to hunt at his ranches, particularly at the Chupadera, while he owned it with Ross Sterling and before it went belly up. Jesse Jones , millionaire and lumber baron of Houston, R. M. Farrar , president of the Union National Bank of Houston, former governor W. P. Hobby , Frank E. Clarity, former vice president of the Fort Worth and Denver Railway, Walter W. Fondren , Houston investor, John Mobley, general counsel of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, Duval West , a federal judge, Judge C. A. Goeth of San Antonio, and Edward W. Kilman of the Houston Post Dispatch were visitors to Briscoe's ranches. He was also active in Governor Daniel J. Moody 's campaign for office, and he helped extensively when his old friend Sterling ran for gov
Churchill Fulshear, one of Stephen F. Austin 's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born in France. He worked as a mariner for a time, and was in Craven County, North Carolina, on December 9, 1800, when he married Betsy Summers. They were in Tennessee by 1808, when their third son was born. In the summer of 1824 Fulshear moved to Texas. He arrived already a man of considerable property and soon was settled on a sitio of land, granted in 1824 in what is now Fort Bend County. There he raised stock and farmed with his three sons, Benjamin, Graves, and Churchill Fulshear, Jr. His household also included his wife, a daughter, and a servant. Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827, walked from the coast to the Fulshear home, and was welcomed into the family's log cabin. There he was given his first Texas meal of "dried venison sopped in honey." In 1829 Fulshear ran for regidor at San Felipe but was defeated by Jesse H. Cartwright . He ran again in 1830 and was elected. Though he was old and lame, Fulshear fulfilled his duties, often traveling to check on the merits of land grantees in Austin's colony. He died on January 18, 1831. His three sons served as scouts in the Texas army during the Texas Revolution . They were on duty when Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna crossed the Brazos River on the road to San Jacinto. The town of Fulshear, in northern Fort Bend County, is named for Churchill Fulshear.
Albert H. Herzstein was born March 5, 1907, into a Jewish immigrant family in Trinidad, Colorado. The family lived in Clayton, New Mexico, and moved to Denver, Colorado, before Albert moved to Houston in 1925 and began working for a small welding company. Ethel Ann Davis was born April 13, 1896, in Fulshear, to a pioneer family. Albert and Ethel met in Houston and the pair married on September 17, 1927. Albert's business career began when he purchased a one-third share in a welding company that eventually grew to become Big Three Industries. Albert worked his way up to executive vice president and director before establishing Herzstein Investments, Inc., a subsidiary of the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation established in 1965. Ethels family was instrumental in starting the First United Methodist Church in Fulshear and after the couple attained financial success, Ethel suggested in 1979 that they gift a new sanctuary for the church in memory of their parents. After this initial gift, Alberts appreciation of the hardships of small communities further inspired the couple to create grants through their foundation for deserving causes including education, religion, support services for the underprivileged and the Arts. The couple was married until Ethel's death on May 6th, 1983. In recognition of his contributions, Albert, who never finished high school, received an honorary high school diploma from St. Pius High School and a doctorate from the University of St. Thomas. In 1993, Albert was named Philanthropist of the Year by the Columbus Foundation of Ohio. He ran the foundation and real estate business until he died at age 90 on March 16, 1997. (2016)
Planters preferring the prairie to the hazardous Brazos River bottoms settled this village in the 1840s. Named for store owners A. R. and Amanda (Wade) Pitts, it was a major commercial center by 1860. During the Civil War, the Pittsville Home Guard and Confederate cavalry units, which helped recapture Galveston, camped in the area. Notable residents included Robert Locke Harris and A. A. Laurence, Confederate surgeons; William Sheriff and J. Wesson Parker, Texas legislators and Fort Bend County judges; and John Huggins, innovator of horseracing techniques. The arrival of a new railroad to the south in 1888, and the subsequent founding of Fulshear, resulted in the gradual decline and eventual disappearance of Pittsville by the late 1940s. 					(2010)
A trio of multicolored fiberglass steers mounted to look like they are leaping skyward and salvaged from the 2001 CowParade Houston charity event now rises…
A tidy blue cottage tucked into a Cypress subdivision. Proof that charm doesn't need acreage.
Most recent: 2019 4A
Fulshear High School, representing Class 4A, has established itself as a notable presence in Texas high school volleyball. The Chargers have secured a UIL State Championship, a significant achievement for any program. This success reflects consistent effort and a strong program foundation in the Fulshear community.
The 2019 season stands out as a high point, with Fulshear High School claiming the 4A State Championship. This accomplishment brought state-level recognition to the school and its volleyball program. The team's performance that year highlighted their competitive spirit and skill on the court.
The 2019 4A State Championship marked a memorable moment for Fulshear High School volleyball.
702 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.
During the Texas Revolution, Churchill Fulshear Jr. and his brothers served as scouts for the Texan army as the Mexican army pursued Sam Houston's forces. The Fulshear area was on the route of both armies, and Churchill…
On July 16, 1824, land grant of Mexico to Churchill Fulshear, one of the "Old 300" settlers of Stephen F. Austin, father of Texas. Churchill Fulshear, Jr., veteran of Texas War for Independence, built 4-story brick…
Before any of this was suburb, the land west of Fulshear toward Simonton and the Brazos belonged to Churchill Fulshear Sr., a French-born mariner and one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, who received…
The crossroads you're at, where FM 359 meets FM 1093, is downtown Fulshear, and it exists because of a decision made in 1888. Before that, the main local settlement wasn't Fulshear at all. It was nearby Pittsville, a…
Near where FM 1093 meets FM 359 sits the Fulshear Black Cemetery, 3.09 acres that were once part of the Fulshear plantation. Fort Bend County records it as one of several plantation-era Black burial grounds in the area.…
As you come into Fulshear from the east along FM 1093, the master-planned developments give way to the old downtown, and that line marks an astonishing swing in fortune. The early railroad town boomed, supporting 11…
Somewhere along the eastern Fulshear corridor near FM 1093, a kid named Forrest Frank grew up back when this was still small enough to feel a long way from Houston. He'd go on to become one of contemporary Christian…
Along the Flewellen Creek corridor inside Cross Creek Ranch, you can see a deliberate piece of water engineering hiding in what looks like simple parkland. Years of agriculture, erosion, and drainage work had turned…
The historic downtown near FM 359 once burned to the ground in a single stretch. In 1910 a fire destroyed an entire block of Fulshear's businesses, a serious blow for a town of only a few hundred people. What's…
Eagle Landing Park at 4131 Woods Road is one of Fulshear's newest public spaces, opened by the city in November 2025. It isn't historic architecture and it doesn't carry an old story, but that's exactly what makes it…
If you want a meal rooted in the real, old Fulshear rather than the new subdivisions, Dozier's BBQ and Meat Market at 8222 Main Street is the one. Ed Dozier opened the original market and barbecue business right here in…
You're driving past Fulshear Black Cemetery, a final resting place with roots stretching back to the days of Churchill Fulshear's plantation. While oral tradition points to earlier burials, the oldest marked grave here…
The Irene Stern Community Center and Park at 6920 Fulshear-Katy Road is one of the civic landmarks that ties the modern city back to its older community life. The road name itself is a clue to how the town connected to…
Long before Kentucky's Churchill Downs became a household name, there was a Churchill Downs right here in Fulshear. Between roughly 1850 and 1870, Churchill Fulshear Jr. bred and raced horses at a local track he named…
Fulshear (Fulshear, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Trey Giametta (6 HR); Mark Macklin (3 HR); Braden Schumann (3 HR); Logan Wallace (3 HR).
Dolph Briscoe, Sr., cattleman, was born on September 1, 1890, in Fulshear, Texas, one of four children of Judge Lee Adolphus and Lucy (Wade) Briscoe. His father was a planter, jurist, rancher, and descendant of Andrew…
Churchill Fulshear, one of Stephen F. Austin 's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born in France. He worked as a mariner for a time, and was in Craven County, North Carolina, on December 9, 1800, when he married Betsy…
Albert H. Herzstein was born March 5, 1907, into a Jewish immigrant family in Trinidad, Colorado. The family lived in Clayton, New Mexico, and moved to Denver, Colorado, before Albert moved to Houston in 1925 and began…
You're driving through Fulshear, a town that owes its very existence to a railroad right-of-way. Back in 1888, Churchill Fulshear, Jr. granted the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway permission to cross his land. This…
You're driving through Fulshear, Texas, birthplace of Dr. Titus Holliday Harris, a pioneer in neuropsychiatry. Back in 1913, Harris was captain of the Southwestern University football team. The next year, he captained…
You're driving through Fort Bend County, not far from Fulshear. Right here, the community of Pittsville once thrived. It started as plantation owners sought higher ground away from the Brazos River's floods. The Pitts…
You're driving past Fulshear, Texas, the birthplace of Joseph Elward Clayton. Born in 1879, Clayton dedicated his life to improving the lives of African Americans. From 1908 to 1923, he served as principal of the…
You're driving past Fulshear Cemetery, but this place has roots stretching way back to 1824. That's when Churchill Fulshear, Jr., one of Stephen F. Austin's 'Old 300' colonists, acquired this land. By 1851, he donated…
Stand near the Fulshear Municipal Complex at 6611 West Cross Creek Bend Lane and you're at the center of an enormous, mostly invisible engineering project. For generations, communities around Fulshear got their water by…
The Fulshear Municipal Complex sits at 6611 West Cross Creek Bend Lane, and its address alone tells you how much this town has changed. For most of its life, Fulshear's center of gravity was the old railroad crossroads…
Imagine driving this same road, FM 1093, just twenty-five years ago. It would have been a quiet, two-lane blacktop flanked by open pastures and rice fields. You would have passed through Fulshear in about thirty…
The old heart of Fulshear, right along the railroad tracks, exists because of a single business deal. By the 1880s, the plantation economy was fading, and Churchill Fulshear, Jr. was looking for new ways to make his…
As you come up on Weston Lakes, you'll notice something unusual for a Texas city: a guardhouse and a gate. This is a place that decided its streets were nobody else's business. The gated core holds about fifteen hundred…
In 2008, Weston Lakes made history by voting to incorporate as a city. The decision was made on May 10th, with 58.24% of the 977 valid votes cast in favor of incorporation. Voter participation was high, with over 74% of…
The spot where you're driving now, perhaps past a pristine green or a still stretch of water, was working land for well over a century. Its roots run back to the 1820s and Stephen F. Austin's colony, to the Fulshear and…
You're driving past Pleasant Hill Cemetery, a place that's been serving this community for over a century. In 1910, two acres of land were deeded to the Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church right here. By 1930, the…
Planters preferring the prairie to the hazardous Brazos River bottoms settled this village in the 1840s. Named for store owners A. R. and Amanda (Wade) Pitts, it was a major commercial center by 1860. During the Civil…
You're driving through Fort Bend County, near Fulshear, where a massive land grant was issued way back on August 3rd, 1824. This 4,428-acre plot on the Brazos River went to David Randon and his partner, Isaac…
You're driving through land once owned by John Foster, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists. He arrived in Texas way back in 1822 and was granted a whopping 12,000 acres by the Mexican government. After his…
You're driving past Simonton, where a schoolhouse once stood that was more than just classrooms. It all started back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1893</say-as>, when the Simonton Common School District was…
Simonton is at the intersection of Farm roads 1093 and 1489, on the Southern Pacific line fourteen miles northwest of Richmond in northwestern Fort Bend County. The first settlement at Simonton was in the early 1850s,…
Of all the unlikely places to make diplomatic history, this one ranks near the top. In 1963 an indoor rodeo arena called the Round Up was built out on FM 1093, and on February 2, 1979, it hosted maybe the most famous…
As you look around at the wide-open green spaces, you might wonder what they're for. In Simonton, there's a good chance you're looking at a polo field. As Houston grew, polo people went hunting for flat, affordable,…
Life in Simonton is lived with an awareness of the Brazos River. In August 2017, during Hurricane Harvey, that awareness turned into a crisis. As Harvey stalled over Southeast Texas, it dumped biblical amounts of rain,…
The recurring floods in Simonton are a dramatic lesson in hydrology. The problem is the Brazos River's very nature in this region. As it crosses the flat Gulf Coastal Plain, the river's gradient, or steepness, decreases…
Once the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway pushed through in 1888, this little settlement got the one thing a farm town needs to get rich: a way to ship. The payoff came in 1905, when John Spencer and the Mullins…
You might not expect a soul-music legend to come out of a Brazos-bottom farming crossroads, but Dobie Gray did. He was born in Simonton in 1940, into a farming family in this corner of Fort Bend County, and went on to…
Simonton's history began in the 1840s when James Simonton and his brother Theophilus purchased 4000 acres of land in northwestern Fort Bend County. They built a cotton plantation on the Brazos River, and the 1850 US…
On April 10, 2000, four-year-old Joy Norwood was struck and killed on a rural road near Simonton after she slipped out of her mother's stopped van and darted into the path of a passing pickup. The driver never realized…
The crossroads town you're rolling through carries a family name that goes back to the 1850s, when brothers James and Theophilus Simonton came down from North Carolina and settled along a wide bend of the Brazos River…
After the potato money dried up, the land around Simonton found a new kind of blue blood, the four-legged kind. Through the mid-1900s the Simonton-Fulshear-Brookshire corridor became known as the "River Oaks of the…
Simonton sits barely a mile east of the Brazos River, smack inside its 100-year floodplain, and the river has never let the town forget it. Flooding is woven through Simonton's modern story: roughly 100 homes took on…
The railroad tracks cutting through Simonton aren't just a feature of the landscape; they're the reason there's a town here. James Simonton brought his family from North Carolina in the early 1850s and set up a…
Simonton's potato empire didn't fade because the dirt gave out, it fell to biology. The crop that built the town was the red potato, and two forces in plant science finished it off. The first was disease: like potato…
You're driving through Waller County, passing the Wade Cemetery. This isn't just any burial ground; it was established in 1846 by William Wade, a Mississippi plantation owner who amassed over 11,000 acres in the…
You're driving past the site of the Foster community, a Texas pioneer settlement that started way back in 1821. Randolph Foster claimed over 11,000 acres here, a massive land grant from Stephen F. Austin himself. Foster…
Tomas (Richmond, TX) placed on the 5A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Urijah Cardoza (0.474 avg, 1 HR); Sam Johnson (3 HR).
South of Interstate 10 on FM 359 lies the Brookshire Family Cemetery, established around 1850 and designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2004. Captain Nathen Brookshire (1793-1853) was born in Tennessee, fought in the…
You're driving past the Brookshire Family Cemetery, established around 1850. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2004.
Just outside Brookshire is one of the most quietly remarkable places in Texas: the Brookwood Community. It began in 1983 as a place built around adults with disabilities, not a facility that warehouses people, but a…
Just west of Katy, in unincorporated Waller County, sits one of the largest cooler factories on the planet. Igloo started back in 1947 not making ice chests at all, but galvanized-steel water coolers, the kind a crew…
Just east of Katy lie two massive, grassy basins: the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs. They aren't lakes; they're dry parks designed for a single engineering purpose, to protect central Houston from flooding along Buffalo…
The best place to eat in the Brookshire area might also be the most meaningful: the Brookwood Café, out on the Brookwood Community campus. Here, the Citizens of Brookwood, the adults with disabilities who live and work…
In the heart of Old Katy you'll find a beautifully restored train depot, and that building is the town's origin story in physical form. Built in 1898, it served the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, the M-K-T, or Katy for…
As you drive around Katy, look for the towering concrete cylinders that still punctuate the flat landscape. Those are rice dryers and silos, and they're the cathedrals of Katy's agricultural past. For much of the…
In September of 1900 the deadliest natural disaster in American history struck Galveston, sixty miles from here. Katy was spared the storm surge, but the winds swept clean across the prairie and wrecked nearly every…
Foster High School in Richmond, Texas is where CeeDee Lamb became a record-setting receiver, catching 98 passes for 2,032 yards and 33 touchdowns as a senior. Born in Louisiana, his family evacuated to the Houston area…
Before this was Katy, the whole settlement was called Cane Island. It was named for Cane Island Creek, a little branch of Buffalo Bayou that still winds through town, and old accounts say the creek was choked with tall…
You're driving past John Foster. John Foster John Foster was born on May 25, 1757, in South Carolina to William James and Mary (Hill) Foster. Family history indicates he may have served with his brothers in Charleston…
You're driving past Richmond, where Randolph Foster once made his home. Born in 1790 in Spanish West Florida, Foster was a hunter, an explorer, and an 'Old Three Hundred' colonist who arrived with Stephen F. Austin in…
You're driving alongside one of the most consequential little waterways in Texas. This slow, muddy stream may not look like much, but back in August 1836 two New York speculators, brothers Augustus and John Kirby Allen,…
The story that ended at the Sealy exit started right here in Brookshire. In early April of 1976, a man checked into a motel along Interstate 10, the Days Inn, and paid with a stolen credit card. When the fraud was…
You're driving through Brookshire, a town that almost didn't happen. Back in 1835, Captain Nathen Brookshire got land here as part of Stephen F. Austin's fifth colony. Many thought this coastal prairie was too wild to…
That was Coleton Black, and Katy country runs in his blood. He was born and raised in Katy, and that last name is no coincidence -- his dad Kevin toured for years in country music, and his uncle happens to be one of the…
You're driving past the First United Methodist Church of Brookshire, a congregation with roots stretching back to 1844. It began as Union Chapel Methodist in a community called Pittsville, about six miles south. The…
The biggest thing that ever happened under Orchard is a geologic wonder about a mile down. Beneath this town sits the Orchard Salt Dome, a massive column of solid salt, shaped like a mushroom, that has been slowly…
The name on the water tower belongs to a soldier who helped pry Texas loose from Mexico. Nathen Brookshire was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, in seventeen ninety-three, and he came up hard, soldiering through the…
Brookshire spent its whole life as a railroad and farming town, and by headcount it still is a small one. The census counted 4,702 people here in 2010 and 5,066 in 2020, a gain of 364 in a decade. But the ground around…
The first European settlers in Orchard weren't looking for oil; they were looking for soil. In the 1880s and 90s, families from what is now the Czech Republic and Germany began arriving here. They left behind the…
Brookshire is secretly two towns. In 1893, when the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad came through, two rival plats were filed side by side: John Kellner donated land and platted the Town of Kellner, while John…
You're driving through Brookshire, named for Captain Nathen Brookshire. He was born in Tennessee way back in 1793. Brookshire fought in the Texas Army, participating in the storming and capture of Bexar in December of…
At Fifth and Cooper in Brookshire stands the Donigan House, built in 1910 by Dr. Paul M. Donigan, an Armenian American physician born in Turkey who came to America for medical school around 1890 and settled in…
Orchard is situated along State Highway 36 and the BNSF Railway, which serve as key transportation routes for the city. State Highway 36 connects Orchard to Rosenberg in Fort Bend County and Wallis in Austin County,…
You're driving past the Donigan House in Brookshire, built in 1910 by Dr. Paul Donigan. Dr. Donigan himself was a bit of a journey, a native of Turkey who came to the U.S. around 1890 to study medicine. After…
You're driving through Orchard, Texas, a community that owes its existence to a railroad and a visionary rancher. Back in 1890, S.K. Cross saw opportunity, selling off parts of his ranch to settlers, many of them…
That was the Jon Kott Band, and if you catch live music around Katy, odds are good you'll run into them. Jon Kott launched the band right at the crossroads of Texas country and rock and roll, and they wasted no time --…
That was Kevin Black, Katy country with deep family roots. He grew up in Katy in a household full of musicians, and his younger brother went on to become one of the biggest hat acts of his generation. But Kevin built…
On a hot Thursday in July 1978, Brookshire's police chief broke up a fight and put one of the men in the back of a squad car. What happened next went out across the country on the United Press International wire. Some…
Brookshire sits on some of the flattest land in Texas, a stretch of Gulf Coastal Prairie where the ground barely tilts at all, mostly less than half of one percent of slope. The local soil, called the Waller series,…
Every February, long before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo opens its gates, riders on horseback and in covered wagons make a days-long trek across the prairie into the city, a living echo of the old cattle drives.…
Brookshire's own Royal High School produced a football player who pulled off one of the boldest career pivots you will see. Brandon Williams was a blue-chip running back out of Royal, one of the most heavily recruited…
Under the farmland around Brookshire runs something nobody thinks about until it goes wrong: buried steel pipe carrying natural gas. In 1955 a bulldozer working the ground here caught one of those lines and tore it…
Pick up the Katy Times today and you are holding a paper that started right here. John C. Adams printed the first issue in 1913 and called it The Brookshire Times, for the plain reason that Brookshire was then the older…
The Woods family has farmed rice around Brookshire since 1929, when they came over from Louisiana, and out of that work came a homegrown piece of engineering. Growing rice here meant a strange problem. To level a field,…
The concrete towers near downtown Brookshire belong to the Brookshire Drying Company, a rice dryer founded in the 1940s and still operating -- drying, storing, and marketing area farmers' rice and shipping Texas rice to…
That was Khaiti, a new generation coming up out of Katy. He's a young hip-hop artist doing it the independent way -- writing, recording, and releasing his own music under his own label. He's early in the journey,…
Long before she was an Academy Award winning movie star, Renee Zellweger was a teenager right here in Katy, cheering for the Katy Tigers. She grew up in town and graduated from Katy High School in 1987. Her father,…
Katy High School in Katy, Texas qualified for the 2026 UIL state softball championships, reaching the state tournament (final four) in Class six A, Division Two.
Katy High School (Katy, TX): Most recent: 51-14 over Cedar Hill · 2020 6A Division 2 final.
You're driving through Katy, Texas, a place that boomed thanks to a massive natural gas discovery. Back in 1934, the discovery well for the Katy gas field was drilled, kicking off a major industrial development. By…
That was Lynyrd Skynyrd -- and here's a Katy connection you might not know. Their guitar player, Sparky Matejka, grew up in Katy, went through Taylor High, and headed off to study guitar. He spent years as a road-tested…
You're driving past the site of Kellner Townsite, the very first town in this area! It was platted in 1893 by John G. Kellner, who donated land for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad. Kellner's farm and ranch lands…
Midway is about as old-Katy as a restaurant gets, and it did not start as a restaurant at all. Herman Meyer opened Midway Meat Market on Highway Boulevard in 1967, a true butcher shop that later took on wild-game and…
Katy Mills opened on October 28th, 1999, and the crowds were wall to wall. The mall's developers counted more than a hundred and twenty thousand customers at the grand opening. Back then, this wasn't just another place…
Out in the countryside near Hempstead stands Liendo Plantation, a Greek Revival mansion whose history runs straight through the hardest chapters of early Texas. The land was first granted by the Mexican government to…
During the Civil War, the genteel plantation near Hempstead became something far grimmer. Liendo was turned into Camp Groce, first a Confederate camp of instruction for training soldiers, then a prison for captured…
Liendo's strangest chapter belongs to an artist. On March 4, 1873, the old plantation near Hempstead was bought by German-American sculptor Elisabet Ney and her Scottish-American husband, Dr. Edmund Montgomery. They had…
That was Megan Nicole, a Katy original who basically invented a career path. She grew up in Katy, and while she was still a teenager she started posting cover songs on YouTube from her bedroom. Those videos took off --…
When Mike Johnston took the Katy High School job in 1982, the Tigers had not reached the playoffs in more than twenty years, and the timing looked awful. Katy had moved up from 3A to 5A and was suddenly lining up…
Your town takes its name from the Katy railroad, and that railroad earned a real place in Texas history a couple of days before Christmas in eighteen seventy-two. The Katy was the first railroad to enter Texas from the…
Here is a natural wonder tied to this place that most people never learn about. Just outside of town lies the Katy Prairie, a vast stretch of coastal grassland, and for generations it was one of the greatest winter…
The ground under Katy is one of the more remarkable pieces of energy engineering in Texas. In the mid-1930s drillers found a natural gas field here so rich that during World War Two it was called the most important…
In old Town Katy there is a neighborhood cafe called Snappy's, the kind of place with regulars who have their own seats. When Hurricane Harvey stalled over the Houston area in 2017 and dropped a year's worth of rain in…
Here is a fun one about the town you are rolling through. The name Katy has two stories behind it, and the historians will tell you honestly that it is not fully settled which one is true. The leading account is a…
Since the leading story says this town took its name from a railroad, let me tell you how that railroad got its own nickname, because it is a neat little bit of wordplay. The line was officially the Missouri, Kansas and…
If the railroad gave this town its name, then the depot is the beating heart of that story, and it almost did not survive. The Katy depot was built in eighteen ninety-eight, and for decades it was the center of…
The railroad that may have named this town also ran one of the most famous passenger trains in Texas, and it carried the same nickname. It was called the Katy Flyer. It first rolled in eighteen ninety-six, the very same…
Freeman (Katy, TX) placed on the 4A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Casen Cooley (4 HR).
Here is something most folks do not know as they drive through. Before this place was ever called Katy, it had a completely different name. The earliest settlers called it Cane Island, named for Cane Island Creek that…
Once the railroad put this town on the map, something unexpected made it famous. Rice. Around nineteen oh one a man named William Eule introduced rice farming to the dry-land farmers here, and rice quickly pushed aside…
Every ribbon cutting in America is the same. Oversized scissors, somebody's wife holding one handle, a red ribbon, a photographer. When Katy opened its heritage museum in 2002, it would not do that. They strung up…
Katy is known for rice, football and freeway. There is one more thing here, and locals do not even use its real name. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is run by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9182 and staffed by…
Bernice Edwards, sometimes billed as 'Moanin'' Bernice Edwards, was an early classic female blues singer and barrelhouse pianist. Blues historians believe she was probably born in the Katy, Texas area in the early 1900s…
That was Kimberly Caldwell, a Katy hometown story. She grew up in Katy and was a stage kid from the start -- she won the junior vocalist title on Star Search five times, sang at the Grand Ole Opry as a little girl, and…
That was Blessing Jolie, a fresh voice with deep Katy roots. She grew up in Katy and started writing her own songs at just fifteen, posting little guitar-and-singing videos online. Those clips built a real following,…
That was Garbage Girlfriend, a homegrown one. They're an all-girl rock band that started in Katy when their drummer, Evelyn Moreno, brought them together out of a School of Rock class. These teenagers got good fast --…
The land around Katy is flat, coastal prairie, a gentle slope heading towards the Gulf. Buffalo Bayou meanders lazily, a dark ribbon through the sawgrass, and you might just spot an alligator sunning itself on the bank.…
That was Cooper Wade, a Katy, Texas original and a throwback to real, honest country music. He came up in a musical family — piano as a little kid, then drums, then guitar — and played well enough to earn a percussion…
Old downtown Katy grew up around the railroad. The town started as Cane Island in eighteen-seventy-two; the M-K-T — the Katy line — pushed through in the eighteen-nineties, and the depot you're near was built in…
Katy did not grow up and then get a railroad. The railroad came first, and it built the town. Before the tracks there was only a thinly settled prairie spot called Cane Island, named for the nearby creek and known…
For its first decades, Katy barely needed a lawman. Volunteer night watchmen and county deputies from Harris, Fort Bend, and Waller handled the rare trouble, and the worst headache was kids toilet-papering storefronts…
You're cruising through Katy, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. Imagine this: November 20th, 1898. Reverend T. L. Scruggs leads the very first meeting, with just twelve charter members, many from…
Built in 1905 by Giles Elam Romack, a carpenter who came from Illinois, and his wife Ephilus Elizabeth Milnor Romack (the spelling 'Ephilus' is correct, confirmed across three sources). Unlike many early Katy homes, it…
That was Clint Black, and here's a little Katy bragging right. Before he was a country superstar, he was just a kid out in Katy, west of Houston, teaching himself guitar and harmonica and playing the Houston club…
You're cruising through Katy, a town with roots stretching back to the Karankawa Indians who hunted buffalo right here as late as the 1820s. The road you're on might even follow the old San Felipe Road, used by Stephen…
That was Jesse Woods, and here's a Katy story you wouldn't see coming. He grew up in Katy, and at first he wasn't chasing music -- he was chasing a football. He was a wide receiver good enough to play at Texas A and M,…
Built in 1898; long home to the Wright family of the Stewart and Wright Drug Store (founded 1904 by Dr. J. M. Stewart and John H. Wright). A Wright family druggist is credited with installing Katy's first telephone…
Built in 1898 for the W. H. Featherston family. When the Great Galveston Hurricane leveled all but two buildings in Katy in September 1900, this sturdy survivor was pressed into service as the town's temporary school…
Built in 1915 by W. B. and Anna Peck. Their son Fred Peck took over Katy's telephone exchange in the early 1920s and operated the switchboard from the east parlor of this house. In that era a call meant a manual…
If you wander the Katy Heritage Park, you are walking through one man's dream. John L. "Johnny" Nelson, born in Houston in 1938, grew up a Katy rice farmer and cattleman, and he never let the town forget where it came…
Built in 1916 for Adam Henry Stockdick, hired in 1895 as the MKT Railroad's first land agent and considered Katy's first real-estate agent. He platted and sold the rice prairie and recruited about 15 pioneer families…
Katy began in 1895 as a stop on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, the 'K-T' or 'Katy' (the town-name folklore about a railroad official's wife is false; it's the railroad's nickname), and grew into a rice-farming town…
Tucked among the historic homes at Katy Heritage Park sits a humble white clapboard building that has worn more hats than almost anything in town. Built sometime before 1920, it became the fourth post office in the town…
You are standing in Katy Heritage Park, and the whole place is a rescue story. Back in 1979 a handful of Katy folks watched the town's oldest buildings sliding toward the wrecking ball and formed the Katy Heritage…
At the heart of Katy Heritage Park stands an open-air bandstand, raised in 2005 and named for the bank that paid for it. Tradition Bank began life as Alief Alamo Bank, chartered on January 17, 1980 (Texas Department of…
The cluster of concrete towers looming over old Katy is the J.V. Cardiff and Sons rice dryer, and for about eighty years it has been the tallest thing for miles. Brothers Charles Cromwell Cardiff and John Victor Cardiff…
No Label Brewing has one of the best settings of any brewery in the Houston area, because it sits right in old Katy's historic rice complex, with the towering concrete silos and the old industrial bones left exactly as…
If you want to drink in the most Katy spot imaginable, head to the Katy Beer Garden, built right into the historic rice dryer complex beside the giant silos in old downtown. It opened in 2024 as part of The Dryer, the…
Here is the thing most people get backwards about Katy rice. The rice fields were not simply found here. Katy's farmers engineered them. This was dry coastal prairie, good for grazing cattle, not a natural swamp. Rice…
To understand Katy, look up at those concrete towers. Katy sits on flat coastal prairie with a tight clay layer underground, and around 1901 a German immigrant named Wilhelm Eule hand-dug the area's first deep…
This house has sat crooked to the street for over a century. It was built in 1898 (the year Katy's railroad depot was finished) by Frank Hart and Milton Campbell for William Patrick Morrison. In September 1900 the Great…
The giant concrete silos standing over old Katy are not grain elevators in the usual sense, they are a rice dryer, and they exist because of a problem in food science. German immigrant William Eule introduced rice to…
Texas Tradition is the comfort-food anchor of old Katy, a family-owned spot that has been open since 2002. The reputation rests on the chicken-fried steak, the hand-pressed burgers, and country gravy on just about…
Cardiff's towers get the attention, but they were not the only rice silos in Katy. A few hundred feet west, also hard against the Missouri Kansas Texas railroad on First Street, stood the dryer and silos of the American…
A rice field runs on a calendar as strict as any school year. Around Katy the work starts in spring, with planting from the middle of March into April, because rice will barely sprout until the soil warms past the…
That was James McCoy Taylor, a Katy country story. Before he was making records, he was a Katy High Tiger out on the football field -- the way he tells it, his singing career started in the locker room, when a teammate…
You're driving through Katy, and right here is the site of the First United Methodist Church, a congregation that started way back in 1898. It wasn't just Methodists, though. The very first Sunday School was a Union…
That was Paige Lewis, a Katy story about second chapters. She grew up playing softball with nineties country pouring out of her dad's truck radio. At fourteen she picked up her mom's old guitar and started writing…
You're driving past the site of Oak Hill Baptist Church in Richmond. In 1915, eighteen African American residents, former members of Pleasant Green Baptist Church, gathered under the leadership of Rev. A.C. Ray. They…
Katy Fort Bend Road carries one of those plain frontier names that simply tells you where it goes. Running south out of Katy from the Interstate 10 corridor, it points toward Fort Bend County and the county line below…
Built in 1915 by a builder named Adcock for Leroy Wilkinson (1888-1973). The plaque's 'Mason Adcock' most likely means a mason (builder) named Adcock rather than a man named Mason. Leroy later passed it to his mother,…
That was Hayden Baker, a Katy kid making real noise in Texas country right now. He was the very first artist ever signed to a publishing company started by one half of the biggest duo in country music history. He's…
You're driving past Oak Hill Cemetery, established in 1918. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2004.
Beckendorff Farms sits on land this family has worked for well over a century. The Beckendorffs left Berlin, Germany, in 1848. Robert Beckendorff was born in 1850 on a farm where Rice University stands today, and in…
Built in 1905 for Martha Jane Tucker specifically as rental property. In a brand-new MKT railroad and rice town, a purpose-built rent house near the depot served the workers pouring in. It was rented or resold until the…
Cinco Ranch's history is deeply rooted in the land grants of Texas. It began as part of the Blakely Ranch, where Bassett 'Papa' Blakely owned 15,000 acres of land inherited from his grandfather, who was one of the Old…
You're driving past the site of Thompson's Ferry near Richmond. On April 14, 1836, a pivotal moment in Texas history unfolded right here. A river crossing was a bottleneck no army could skip, because with the Brazos…
A trio of multicolored fiberglass steers mounted to look like they are leaping skyward and salvaged from the 2001 CowParade Houston charity event now rises…
Everybody who drives through here and then shops at a Brookshire Brothers somewhere down the road makes the same assumption. Same name, must be the same place. It is not. In the fall of 1921, two brothers named Austin…
For decades this small agricultural town played a critical role in the high-stakes world of oil and gas. Look at the street sign: Koomey Road. It's named for Paul Koomey, who back in 1950 dreamed up a hydraulic system…
Brookshire as a town dates to 1893, when the railroad came through and the plats got filed. There is a graveyard here from 1846. William Wade was a wealthy Mississippi planter who was in Texas by the 1820s and put…
The city of Brookshire is named in honor of Nathan Brookshire, a significant figure in the area's history. Nathan Brookshire was not only a large landowner in the vicinity but also a captain in the Texian Army, known…
There were people here before there were rails. Anglo settlers took up this strip between the Brazos and the San Bernard back in the late 1830s, and by 1873 the place had a post office under the name Bovine Bend. What…
Wallis is a civil-engineering artifact. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe came through this settlement — then called Bovine Bend, settled since the late 1830s — in 1880. Seven years later the San Antonio and Aransas Pass…
In 1830, the first Anglo-Americans settled in the area between the Brazos and San Bernard rivers. The settlement was named Bovine Bend when it got a post office in 1873. After the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was…
Three days after four-year-old Joy Norwood was struck and killed on a rural road near Simonton in April 2000, a deputy, David Fischer, noticed a white-and-maroon Ford Ranger with a strange-looking dent parked outside a…
As you explore Wallis, you'll notice a strong Czech heritage, and the building that embodies it is Guardian Angel Catholic Church. The parish was organized in 1892 by Czech families who had moved down from Fayette…
Legacy Stadium in Katy, Texas, opened in 2017 at a cost of about $70 million for Katy ISD, seating roughly 12,000. At its opening it was the most expensive high school football stadium in the United States, and the…
Cumings is located north of the center of Fort Bend County, with coordinates 29°34′25″N 95°48′12″W. It is bordered to the south and west by the city of Rosenberg, and the southern and eastern edge of Cumings is the…
You're driving past Wallis, and right here is the story of William Henry and Lydia Ann Guyler. They came to Texas in 1859, setting up a homestead and building a trading post, sawmill, and cotton gin that served folks…
You're driving past the Wallis Cemetery, also known as the Protestant Cemetery. This burial ground has served the Wallis community since the 1890s, with the earliest known burial being Virginia Pennington, who died in…
You're driving through Waller County, near Pattison, in the heart of Stephen F. Austin's original colony. Right here, in 1824, Isaac Best arrived from Missouri and claimed a large sitio of land. He was one of Austin's…
You're driving through Waller County, not far from Houston, and you're passing through Pattison. This town's origin story is pure Texas legend. Back in 1839, James Tarrant Pattison bought this land and built a…
The fields between Mason Road and Katy-Fort Bend Road, boxed in by Franz Road and I-10, were once the working farm of Frederick Eugene "Gene" Hoyt, Jr. Gene started out hoeing for a neighbor at a dollar an hour, then…
Mason Creek is a short six-and-a-half-mile stream out by Katy, rising near the road that shares its name — Mason Road — and running southeast to Buffalo Bayou. Whether the creek named the road or a settler named Mason…
You're driving past the Rosenberg Cemetery, which began as the Woodmen of the World Cemetery back in 1905. This eight-acre plot was originally for W.O.W. members and their families. Over time, it absorbed two adjacent…
If old Katy's identity is the rice silos and the barbecue shack, the new Katy's identity might be Katy Asian Town. Anchored by an H Mart Korean grocery that opened in 2018, this development off Colonial Parkway grew…
Morton Ranch Road carries the name of a real Katy family that put down roots and never left. In October 1896, Elbert M. Morton and his wife Margaret moved from the Springfield, Missouri area to Katy with their children,…
Out at 3818 FM 359, the pits have gone cold, but for half a century this address was where Richmond went for smoke, dancing, and barbecue. The Swinging Door opened in 1973 as a barbecue restaurant and dance venue, and…
Beginning around 1890, Czech immigrants settled the land around Wallis, and their faith left the town's most striking landmark. A congregation organized in 1892 by Czech families from Fayette County first worshipped in…
The 1900 Galveston hurricane is remembered for the coast, but its violence reached far inland toward Wallis. Hurricanes weakening over land often spawn tornadoes, because the storm's spiral bands wrap fast-moving air…
The Farm to Market Road Seven Twenty Three overpass in Rosenberg, the bridge that carries traffic over the Union Pacific tracks, is the John M. Arredondo Bridge. John Arredondo was born in Blanco in nineteen fourteen…
You're driving through Wallis, and right here, you're passing the site of Guardian Angel Catholic Church. This congregation started in 1892, organized by Czech families who moved here from Fayette County. They held…
The town outside your window exists because a neighbor turned the railroad down. In the late 1870s the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway wanted a route through Fort Bend County, and Richmond, the established county…
You're driving past the site of the old Cole Theatre in Rosenberg. Opened in 1919 as the Liberty Theatre by Czech immigrants, it was renamed Cole Theatre in 1935. This place hosted stars like The Ink Spots and John…
The Ol' Railroad Cafe sits at 1901 Avenue G, inside part of the 1910 Vogelsang Building, and a meal here now comes with a survival story attached. The cafe opened around 2012 in the historic brick block, serving…
Wallis began as a bend in the prairie called Bovine Bend, which got a post office in 1873. Everything changed with steel rails. After 1880 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway pushed a Galveston-to-Brenham line…
Bob's Taco Station at 1901 Avenue H started about as humbly as a restaurant can. In 1991 Bob Alanis launched it with his parents, Joe and Maria, selling New Orleans-style snowballs out of a reused gas-station building.…
You're driving through Rosenberg, and right here is the story of the Fort Bend Telephone Company. It all started back in 1914, when Charles H. Waddell bought just nine phone lines and set up a central switchboard in…
You're cruising through Rosenberg, and right here, you're passing the site of a family business that helped shape this town's downtown. The Robinowitz brothers, Cecil, Abe, and Libby, came to Texas from Russia sometime…
You're driving past the Vogelsang Building, a piece of Rosenberg's early commercial history. Built back in 1910 by Jacob Gray, this spot quickly became a hub for local shoppers. In 1916, Louis Vogelsang leased the space…
You're driving past the site of a man who helped build Rosenberg. Charles Harvey Waddell arrived in Texas as a boy and by 1910, he was selling cars! Just four years later, he started the Fort Bend Telephone Company,…
You're driving through Rosenberg, a town that grew up fast thanks to the railroad. Established in 1881, just a year after the town itself was founded on the Santa Fe line, this post office was a key part of that growth.…
You're driving past the site of the Wallis State Bank, founded right here in January 1906 with just ten thousand dollars. It started in a small frame building, but by 1912, this two-story brick structure went up, even…
You're driving through Wallis, Texas, a town that owes its existence to the railroad and a man named J.E. Wallis. It started out as Bovine Bend back in 1873, when the post office first opened. But when the Gulf,…
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