HOME AND FAMILY
The endless Plains provided very small amounts of building materials.  The pragmatic Texans made SHELTER from the building sources at hand.  Dugouts were fashioned in the sides of hills.  Stone from the canyon became walls.  Soft cottonwood logs were the only wood source.  What inventions of the day would eventually change the lives of the early settlers?

DUGOUTS
Shelters dug into the side of a hill to a depth of four feet had an above ground segment constructed of cottonwood poles and branches.  Buffalo hides often formed the roof and door.  This type of shelter was used by Comancheros (traders), ciboleros (buffalo hunters) and pastores (sheep herders).  Later ranchers, cowboys and other settlers found a dugout to be a satisfactory temporary shelter.  How would you fare?
      

THE ROCK HOUSE 1877
"Emenn and Pete Sullivan were the stone masons.  Berry was the carpenter.   The stone was quarried from Blanco Canyon.  McGuire burned the lime in a nearby quarry.  Catfish Creek furnished the water.  Cowboys and all hands took part in the building," [M. Gordon.]  The lumber for flooring, door and window frames, ceiling and roof was hauled 298 miles by ox wagon from Fort Worth, Texas at a charge of $90 per hundred pounds.  A REPLICA OF THE ROCK HOUSE, the facade of CROSBY COUNTY MEMORIAL MUSEUM houses the history and memorabilia of H.C. and Elizabeth Boyle Smith, the first permanent settlers of the region.
     
   

96'x98' mural, an oil painting of the Rock House by artist, Gary Perkins 1997.

THE LAND, AS SEEN BY THE FIRST FARM FAMILIES, 1881   "As we swung around the rocky cliff  and mounted the final ascent, there opened before our eyes the mighty stretch of the Great Plains of Texas.  We paused for breath and with vast wonder beheld the virgin land.  No plow had turned its sod.  No fences marking boundaries cut the sweep of the rolling terrain.
 
The prairie grass, lush and green, covered the land.  The Yucca stalks, crowned with festoons of white blossoms, grew in profusion.  The rich blossom of the prickly pear and wild flowers sang a silent symphony.  The morning sun, seemed a vast emerald shield embossed with gems and silver.

Standing there, one little family of American pioneers, dauntless and determined, breathed deeply of the sweet rare air of the prairies, and gazed and gazed.  A lone buffalo drew slowly towards us.  Hundreds of antelope, their red backs and white sides twinkling, were nearby.  A drove of mustangs, the wild leader with his long uncurried mane and tail flying in the morning wind, gave life and movement to a picture framed in ever receding horizons.

'Well,' said father at last in his deep voice, 'we are on the Plains.'  My mother sat on the wagon seat with steady, unfathomable eyes of the frontier woman, gazing into infinity, and said nothing."  [J.W. Hunt, THE OLD QUAKER COLONY 1933.]