Uncovering Traces of the Past in Historic Aerial Imagery

What if the layers of modern development could be peeled back, revealing secrets of the past? Since the late 1940s, urban and suburban areas across the country have undergone rapid and continuous expansion. While some historically significant sites receive protection, countless older structures, or even traces of them, are lost to the march of progress. Historic aerial photographs offer a unique window into the past, preserving landscapes transformed over decades. These images provide crucial evidence of structures – houses, farms, ranches – allowing us to glimpse a world before its absorption into sprawling suburbs.

Often, evidence of a structure's past existence is limited to sparse historical records or detailed maps, which may pinpoint a general location. The extensive collections of aerial photographs, spanning many decades, are invaluable in pinpointing these locations. By examining images across time, researchers can trace changes and potentially deduce a structure's fate. By allowing us to peer through the layers of modern development, aerial images from past decades might reveal clues to vanished structures, potentially solving historical mysteries.

Finding the Site of Francis Lubbock’s Ranch

While countless structures and their traces vanish over time, aerial photographs offer a chance to reclaim these lost pieces of history. Let's examine one such case: the ranch of Francis Lubbock, a figure whose legacy is a blend of ambition and controversy. Though his own autobiography paints a flattering portrait, a deeper look into Lubbock's life reveals a less than noble side, as evidenced by his attempt to enslave a freed woman. Despite these troubling aspects of his character, my passion for history compels me to understand figures like Lubbock, as they undeniably played a significant role in shaping Houston and Texas.

Born in South Carolina in 1815, Lubbock arrived in Texas in 1836 and swiftly rose through the ranks of public affairs. Before his controversial tenure as Texas Governor during the Civil War, he served as Harris County district clerk and Texas State Treasurer.

Lubbock's position as district clerk exposed him to the unique economic realities of the time. Cash was scarce, and litigants often paid legal fees with livestock. Recognizing an opportunity, Lubbock began accumulating livestock, which in turn spurred his decision to purchase 844 acres of land in southern Harris County in 1841. This area, now part of the Glenbrook Valley district, lay within a vast expanse of prairie ideal for cattle ranching (and later, Houston's William P. Hobby Airport). Lubbock's land was originally a portion of the much larger Allen Ranch.

Despite warnings from his friend Judge Patrick C. Jack about the potential legal entanglements of ranching, Lubbock eagerly capitalized on the growing livestock-based economy. "Very soon I had a comfortable and desirable home," he recalled.

His ranch boasted substantial improvements, including "good buildings, fencings, barns...and pastures." Lubbock even invested a significant sum in the construction of a particularly elaborate chicken house, which I’ll discuss more later. While I knew it was a long shot, I wanted to know if any portion of Lubbock’s ranch had been preserved; were there any traces of it left.

The exact location of Lubbock's house on his ranch has long been elusive in historical records. We rely heavily on the description of its location that Lubbock himself provided: It was “on the south side of Simms [sic] Bayou about six miles from the city of Houston…located on a line of travel from Houston to Galveston.”

As it was the principal road toward Galveston at the time, we know the road to which he is referring is what is now Telephone Road. We need only to follow this road south from Houston until we come to the south side of Sims Bayou. His homestead was on the south side of the bayou. Easy enough… except if we go to the site today, or view it on Google Earth, we’ll find that Lubbock’s Ranch has been completely consumed by modernity. As you can see in Figure 2, there appears to be no trace of what was once here.

On HistoricAerials, it’s easy to find this area even without an address. Using the Viewer tool, you can search for “Sims Bayou, Houston” or “Telephone Road, Houston,” as I did. You don’t have to follow Telephone Road south from Houston very far before you come to Sims Bayou, the south side of which was the location of the ranch.

The earliest available Topographic map is from 1915, which is a great resource, as this information is much more contemporary than modern imagery. On this map, the oldest structures existing that would be where Lubbock had described are just south of the bayou and east of Telephone Road, as shown in Figure 3.

As we zoom in to the map (Figure 4), it’s clear that this is a set of structures in the same area. This is the most likely location of Lubbock’s homestead. But we are left with uncertainties. Based on this map alone, we don’t really know what these buildings were. We can only speculate on the approximate location of his house, but not the exact location. Without aerial imagery, this would be the limit to what we can find out..

Fortunately, there are aerial photographs of this area. HistoricAerials, with the largest database of historic aerial imagery, let’s us peer through time to see what this place looked like in previous decades. They recently added new, orthorectified imagery from 1930 and 1947! We can now view seamless aerial photographs of much of Houston and Harris County, Texas from nearly a century ago! Having imagery from 1930 gives us the benefit of seeing this landscape before the beginning of urban sprawl that started at the end of WWII.

Let’s zoom out for a moment to get some sense of the size of Lubbock’s ranch. As mentioned before, he initially purchased 844 acres of land from Samuel Harris. While not the actual boundaries of what was his property, Figure … below encompasses an area of that size.

As we zoom into the homestead site, amazing details are revealed. The 1947 imagery is the best, in my opinion. Many details about the structures and layout of the ranch can be seen and analyzed. The site is compartmentalized with fencing and corrals. A large house is a prominent feature on the site, and there are several outbuildings around, connected by a roads and walkways. While the original house burned down, it seems evident in the layout that the new house was built on the same site as the original.

This alone is a wealth of information for experts in various fields who want to answer certain questions, whether they’re researching the history of Francis Lubbock, the history of Texas, or the history of Ranching! My objective was to find the site of the ranch. So for that I will use the tools available in the Viewer on HistoricAerials.

In the left panel, I went to the ‘compare’ category and selected the ‘spot’ tool. This brings up another panel on the right. To compare the location of the house shown in the historic image to what the site looks like now, I selected the aerial imagery for 2020. By sliding the “spot” over the site of the house, I can easily determine what is there now. This is the definitive answer that I needed! Not only do we now know the exact location of the house, we have what may be the only photographic images of what’s left of Francis Lubbock’s homestead.

What about the Chicken house?

Oh yes! As mentioned above, Lubbock’s description of his chicken house was an interesting inclusion in his autobiography. As Lubbock explains:

In the early fifties a craze swept over Texas and the Union generally for Asiatic poultry. Having determined to introduce and raise some of the choice breeds of fowls from Asia, I made elaborate preparations for their care and propagation by having erected on my ranch a commodious chicken house 50x18 feet, three stories high, and conveniently subdivided for the different breeds. It was placed near the center of an acre lot, set out with fig and plum trees, and inclosed [sic] with a high fence of cypress pickets. Painted white and surmounted by a cupola, this building presented a creditable appearance to passers by.

The chicken house is even featured in the illustration from Lubbock’s book. While the artist doesn’t seem to have gotten the dimensions right, it is clear that he was trying to sketch a 3-story building with a cupola on its roof. Note its proximity to the main house in the illustration.

Being such a prominent building, as he says, I wondered if there were any traces of it. While it’s a longshot for a wooden chicken house to have survived up to 1930, there was still a possibility that it still existed. I decided to investigate, utilizing the measurements he provided. Here I will note that much of this is just conjecture. But it demonstrates how theories can be developed and further explored by experts in various fields.

Back to the aerial imagery, I wanted to use the oldest available year – 1930. Just north of the house is a smaller building in what could be the middle of a one-acre lot. Using the ‘measure’ tool in the left panel and clicking “Create new measurement,” I clicked four points around this possible lot. The tool calculates the measurements between these points, showing that it’s just shy of an acre (Figure 8).

This could be the one acre lot Lubbock mentions. Does the building match the 50x18’ measurement he gave? I zoomed in further to the building and used the same tool to measure the building itself.

The image is fuzzy at this resolution. In Figure 9, the measurement line is highlighted with the total length showing on the left panel – 50 feet!

The width of the building is much harder to measure. But the measurements I got after several tries is between 22 and 25 feet wide. While the size of a building’s roof could be larger than the building itself, it’s hard draw a firm conclusion about whether this is the chicken house that Lubbock described.

It could be the correct spot, but another building built in its place. The existence of what appears to be a driveway tells us this may have been converted into a garage. While this exercise is inconclusive, I’ll still believe that this is where Lubbock’s chicken house stood until an expert tells me otherwise.

We began with only vague references to the site and only a general idea of the location of Francis Lubbock’s homestead site. Without historical aerial imagery, we might never know more about this place than those descriptions and vague maps. With just a few clicks, we can trace the transformation of a landscape, from a cattle ranch in the Texas prairie to a suburban street. These images are not just snapshots of a moment in time; they hold clues to unlock larger narratives – economic shifts, the evolution of communities, and even the legacies of individuals like Francis Lubbock. Historic aerial photos give us a powerful tool to reclaim these histories, ensuring that the past does not completely vanish beneath the layers of the present.

Citations

City of Houston. Archaeological & Historical Commission. "Houston Glenbrook Valley Historic District Designation Report." [Report], 2010. Accessed March 10, 2024. https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/HistoricPres/HAHC_20101118/II_Glenbrook_Valley_Historic_District.pdf. Francis Richard Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas; or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, governor of Texas in war time, 1861-63, ed. Cadwell Walton Raines. (Austin, TX: B. C. Jones & co., printers, 1900).