R. M. Wheeler Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just as straight. Now, out here in Crosby County, there's a place that doesn't need much embellishment, because the facts alone carry the weight. The R.

M. Wheeler Home. Built in 1915.

And before you picture some grand ribbon-cutting, some proud new beginning on fresh ground, you need to know what it replaced. A half dugout. Half in the earth, half out of it, the kind of shelter that says: this land is hard, and we are harder.

Someone decided, come 1915, it was time to step up. And they built. A real home rose where that half dugout had stood.

Now here's the part that lands quiet but lands solid. The family continues to occupy that home as ranch headquarters. Not occupied once.

Not occupied for a season or a generation and then abandoned to the mesquite and the wind. Continues. Present tense.

The same place, the same purpose, the same family. Out in Crosby County, that 1915 house is still doing exactly what it was built to do. Some stories end.

This one just keeps going.

What the marker says

Built 1915. Replaced half dugout. Family continues to occupy as ranch headquarters. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966.