The Old Rock House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Fisher County, there's a one-room rock house that's seen more than its walls let on. Let me set the scene.

It's the 1880s, and a man named Andy Long, born in 1850, is quietly putting together something impressive. Ten thousand, three hundred acres of Texas land, piece by piece, until the whole spread surrounds what would eventually become the town of Sylvester. He called it the OB Ranch, and he meant business.

In 1883, somebody laid up the stones for this little rock house, and from that point forward, it was the headquarters of the whole operation. Now, Andy Long wasn't roughing it by necessity. He kept a proper home for his family down in Sweetwater, twenty-five miles to the southwest.

But when the cattle needed tending and the work pulled him north, this one room is where he stayed. Just him, the wind, and whatever the foreman had going on, because this same house doubled as living quarters for the ranch foreman when the occasion called for it. One room doing the work of many.

You have to appreciate that kind of economy. The OB Ranch ran on through the years, Long working his cattle across all those acres, the rock house standing quiet at the center of it all. Then came 1901, and Andy Long sold the OB Ranch to the Compere brothers.

And the purpose stated plain: colonization. That land that one man had assembled acre by acre was handed over to become something else entirely. The rock house is still there.

Still one room. Still made of the same stones laid in 1883. Everything around it changed.

It didn't.

What the marker says

In the 1880s Andy Long (b. 1850) began acquiring his 10,300-acre spread known as the "OB" Ranch. His landholdings surrounded what is now the town of Sylvester. This one-room rock house, built in 1883, served as ranch headquarters. Long stayed here while he was in the area working his cattle but maintained a home for his family in Sweetwater (25 mi. SW). The Old Rock House at times also served as living quarters of the ranch foreman. Andy Long sold the "OB" Ranch in 1901 to the Compere brothers for the purpose of colonization. (1984)