The Double Log Cabin

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say: straight from the record, out here on the Parker County road. Now, most old buildings just sit there. Maybe they creak a little in the wind, hold a few memories in the walls.

But out at Holland's Lake, there's a structure that holds two stories under one roof, and I mean that in more ways than one. They call it the Double Log Cabin. Two rooms.

Two histories. And together, the State of Texas saw fit to raise a monument to it in 1936, calling it what it truly is: a monument to the pioneers of Parker County. Let's start with the west room.

That one was built in 1855 as Dan Waggoner's headquarters ranch house. Eighteen fifty-five. Parker County was young, the land was wide, and Dan Waggoner planted his stake right there.

That west room was where the business of the ranch got done; the center of something that mattered. Now. The east room is a different kind of story.

The walls in the east room are scarred with bullet holes. They're still there. And those marks tell you exactly what happened: because in 1873, George McCleskey was killed by Indians in that very room.

The walls remember it. The wood kept the evidence, and the years didn't smooth it away. You walk in there, and history isn't something you read about.

It's something you're standing inside of. Two rooms. One built as a home base for a working ranch.

The other, the site of a death that the building itself refuses to forget. And here's the thing that makes this place something else entirely: after all that weight, after everything those logs witnessed, the Double Log Cabin out at Holland's Lake became the adopted meeting place for the Old Settlers Reunions. The pioneers of Parker County came back to it.

Gathered in it. Remembered together inside the same walls that had already seen so much. Erected by the State of Texas in 1936, this monument doesn't have to reach for drama.

The bullet-scarred walls do that all on their own.

What the marker says

At Holland's Lake * A monument to the pioneers of Parker County * The east room with bullet scarred walls shows where George McCleskey was killed by Indians in 1873 * The west room was Dan Waggoner's headquarters ranch house built in 1855 * Adopted meeting place for Old Settlers Reunions. Erected by the State of Texas 1936