In 1843, Sam Houston toiled away at a desk in a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot log cabin not far from the muddy banks of the Brazos River. From that makeshift office in Washington-on-the-Brazos, about halfway between Austin and Houston, the then-president of the new Republic of Texas penned letters inviting the chiefs of several Native American tribes to join him for a council meeting. Many of the chiefs came, among them leaders from the Caddo, Delaware, and Shawnee tribes. They spent nearly two weeks in the rough-around-the-edges little town, meeting with officials, demonstrating skills, dancing and playing music, and signing a treaty.
Today, there’s not much to indicate the significance of the spot where Houston’s cabin once stood, at one end of the long-vanished town of Washington-on-the-Brazos. This place is nicknamed the birthplace of Texas, since the declaration that created the Republic of Texas was signed on March 2, 1836 (in Independence Hall, just a few hundred yards from Houston’s cabin). But only a few wooden stakes are punched into the dirt to mark the place where Houston’s cabin once stood. That’s about to change.
Archaeologists recently completed excavations along the town’s main road as part of a $51 million, five- or six-year project to improve the Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, operated by the Texas Historical Commission. The state set aside some of the land for a small park in 1915. More land was later added, and in 1970, the 22,000-square-foot Star of the Republic Museum opened. But the museum, along with a riverside picnic area and a re-creation of Independence Hall, never fully conveyed a sense of what this frontier town was really like. Now architects are preparing to rebuild some of the ramshackle old community where so much Texas history took place.
When the project wraps up, by late 2025, visitors will be able to visit seven full or partial re-creations of structures that once lined La Bahia Road, a major thoroughfare that carried goods and travelers hundreds of miles across the state, from Goliad to Nacogdoches. Besides Houston’s office, they’ll be able to stroll past a drugstore where townsfolk bought basic supplies, poke their heads inside a carpentry shop, look down on the foundation of a typical home, and step inside a pool hall and tavern that doubled as a meeting place for government officials. The project also includes renovations at the park’s visitors center and new exhibit space at the Star of the Republic Museum, which houses maps, documents, and what’s believed to be the only existing flag from the Lone Star State’s nearly ten-year period as an independent republic. The revamped site may also include a dry-docked re-creation of a ferry that transported travelers across the Brazos River, just down the hill. “We’d like to get people in the mindset that they’re on a street grid,” says Jonathan Failor, manager of the Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site.