Historical Marker #13542
This one is a little closer to home than the last one. Today's historical marker is in Heritage Park in Pflugerville. It turns out this is the park where my sweetie and I took the kids to "The Halls of Horror" Haunted House in the Green Red Barn last year, which is actually red and also serves as a sometime farmers' market. The haunted house was a canned food drive for Blue Santa. My 9-year-old son was full of bravado when we stood in line, saying he was going to hold the flashlight and lead the pack, but when we finally got to the front, he deferred to me. It was scary enough, but not too scary for 7, 9, and 12. Good times.
The historical marker in front of the house tells the tale of the Bohls property. It's a tale of agriculture and architecture, with none of the thrilling elements of massacre, scalping, and fiery, red-haired Indian fighters that made the last one so much fun. It's also not a random spot near a bank of mailboxes on a rural roadside, but a well-used and beautifully maintained park space.
I've always wondered what a Queen Anne Free Classic house with hipped cross-gabled roof, dormer windows, and fishscale shingles looks like.
Gottlieb William Bohls (1878-1961), the oldest of Heinrich and Julie Schroder Bohls' ten children, was born on his family's farm near this site. In 1906, G.W. married Bertha Timmerman (1883-1967), and five years later they purchased a 95-acre farm on the Austin-Hutto Road, formerly the site of the Carrington Ranch School. They lived in a small home until this two-story, eight-room house could be completed in 1913. After twelve years, G.W. sold the property to his younger brother, Otto Walter Bohls (1898-1973), and his wife, Laura Emma Anna (Fuchs) (1898-1992). Otto promoted soil conservation practices on the farm and in the area, serving as chair of the Travis County Agricultural Adjustment Administration for 13 years. Contour farming, planting cover crops, building stock tanks, rotating crops and planting new seed varieties reduced wind and water erosion and kept the soil intact during periods of drought. The Bohls family deeded the property to the City of Pflugerville in 1993 to promote and interpret the city's heritage and culture. The Queen Anne Free Classic style house features a hipped cross-gabled roof with dormer windows and fishscale shingles. Prominent elements include a wraparound porch, main door sidelights, a longleaf pine interior, and cutaway bays with wooden brackets on the front-facing parlor and side-facing dining room. Original outbuildings included a barn, two homes for farm hands, a smokehouse, an outhouse and a carriage garage. The original rain harvesting system, including a 4,000-gallon brick and concrete underground cistern and a 2,000-gallon galvanized tin cistern above ground, was the home's only source of drinking water until 1975. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2005
I need to plan a new road trip just to stumble across new historical markers. Finding ones in my usual stomping grounds seems like cheating. Where should I go? Maybe this calls for a Sunday drive. I wonder if I'll find as I go along that more historical markers are along these lines, commemorating land grants to growing cities, rather than raucous adventure tales. Let's find out together, shall we?
