J.E. and Esther Davis House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Out in Nolan County, there's a house that has something to say for itself, and it says it loud, right there in the rock. It starts in 1916, when a man named John Barton Wimberley, folks called him J.B., purchased a tract of land from the Orient Land Company.

He built a frame house on it, nothing too fancy, just a solid place to stand. That might have been the whole story, except it wasn't. In 1926, a rancher and mercantile store owner by the name of Joseph Edgar Davis, J.E. to those who knew him, and his wife Esther, they purchased the property.

And for a while, the old frame house stayed just as J.B. had left it. Then, around ten years after J.E. and Esther took ownership, they made a decision. They hired local contractors, and what those contractors built is something you'd have to see to properly reckon with.

The home was remodeled into a front-gabled craftsman style, which already tells you something, but that's not the part people remember. The exterior is what stops you cold. They called it a giraffe rock finish.

Native rock and raised concrete, embellished with petrified wood, quartz, and fossil rocks. Petrified wood. Quartz.

Fossil rocks. All of it pressed into the walls of a house in Nolan County, Texas, like the land itself decided to show off. And underneath all that spectacle, the bones of the place are classic craftsman, overhanging eaves, a wide front porch, interior wood accents running throughout.

The kind of details that say someone cared. J.E. and Esther lived with all of that around them, and the house held on long after them both. It was sold in 1992, after Esther's death.

Some houses outlast their people by staying ordinary. This one did it by becoming something stranger and more permanent than ordinary ever could.

What the marker says

In 1916, John Barton "J.B." Wimberley purchased land from the Orient Land Company and soon after built a frame house. Rancher and mercantile store owner Joseph Edgar "J.E." Davis and his wife, Esther, purchased the property in 1926. Around ten years later, J.E. and Esther hired local contractors to remodel the home into a front-gabled craftsman style with a "giraffe rock" exterior. Native rock and raised concrete is embellished with petrified wood, quartz and fossil rocks. Classic elements of craftsman architecture, such as overhanging eaves, a wide front porch, and interior wood accents, are present throughout. The home was sold in 1992 after Esther's death. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK - 2023