History
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Cy-Fair School District: Humble Roots Have Grown a Mighty Tree
Cy-Fair ISD was founded with an election to consolidate Cypress and Fairbanks districts in December 1939. The election passed by only three votes in Fairbanks; Cypress was more in favor of the consolidation. The first bond issue referendum passed in August 1940 with 189 for and 172 against. The results illustrate how small the district […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Elmer Kleb and his Black Vulture
Kleb Woods Nature Preserve and Historic Farm exists today because of the stubbornness of Elmer Kleb and the vision of Commissioner Steve Radack. While giving tours of the 1896 farm house at the site, I often tell the story of Elmer and his Black Vulture as it was relayed to me by two of Elmer’s […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Gail Borden’s Impact on the Dairy Industry and the Republic of Texas
Invented in 1856, Eagle Brand Milk has had an important role in saving lives. You may have a can in your cupboard, which features the familiar Elsie the Cow emblem. Its creator, Gail Borden, became obsessed with preserving food for travel after watching children die aboard ships. If the cows taken on board died, children […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Happy Mother’s Day: Remembering Mothers
When I was 5 or 6 years old, one of my great-grandmothers and I were sitting at the table eating breakfast, and she confided to me that it hurt her teeth to eat the toast. Aunt Ruth would scold my great-grandmother and tell her to eat her breakfast, as if she were a child my […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR San Jacinto Day
by Fred Collins San Jacinto Day (April 21) was once a state holiday and virtually every school kid in Texas had the day off. The San Jacinto Battleground was a likely destination for the holiday. In older family photo albums from both sides of my family are photos of people picnicking among the oaks festooned […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Thoughts of Spring
Tennyson wrote in 1835, “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” In 1925 the Richmond dispatch printed, “In springtime a young man’s fancy turns to – baseball.” But what of a young woman? If she was a rural housewife like the residents of Cypress in the early 20th century, […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Flu Season 100 Years Ago
This new year 2018 is the centennial for many great tragedies and some triumphs that occurred in 1918. During the coming months we will examine some of those. It’s flu season and we can be thankful that we do not again have to survive the flu season of 1918. The so-called Spanish Flu was perhaps […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Which Santa is Yours?
Santa Claus has been around for many generations in America. The custom seems to be rooted in British and Dutch lore with some German aspects added along the way. The image of Santa Claus that remains with us today came from the 1823 poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas. The description in the poem is […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR When Postum Rivaled Coffee as America’s Drink
The coffee-alternative drink Postum was the brainchild of C. W. Post, who was born in 1854. The young entrepreneur started a hardware store and sold it a year later at a profit. He took to selling farm implements as a traveling salesman but also invented and patented several. By 1885 he was exhausted and had […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR The Hot Wells of Cypress
A wildcatter crew looking for oil in the old Hamblin homestead in 1904 near the Cypress, Texas train depot lost their drill bit. They spent two weeks searching down the hole for it. In the process they broke into an artesian mineral water deposit that began flowing hot water. In those days hot mineral water […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Cypress Folks Have Always Stood Out
One of the best sources for the history of this area during the 1835-1838 era is the journal of William Fairfax Gray, who visited Texas between January 28 and April 25, 1836. The journals of his travels were published in 1909 by his son under the title From Virginia to Texas. The book is rare […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR A Bicycle Expands a Boy’s Horizons
This photo is from one of the Juergen family photo albums that were donated to the Cypress Top Historic Park collection. It shows a boy of about 12 with a shiny bike which may be new. He is in front of the old Juergen Store in Cypress. The photo dates from the 1920s or early […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR Operators and Smooth Operators
Today, phone calls are considered personal and secure. Chances are you carry a cell phone with voice mail, and you can expect to receive all your calls, important or not. Telephones had come into general use by the early 1900s but the calls, while personal, were seldom secure. Chances were good that others might be […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – E.F. Juergen, A Man with Many Hats
The land, buildings and furnishings that make up Cypress Top Historic Park were once owned and operated by E.F. Juergen. He was “Mr. Cypress.” E.F. Juergen was born in 1871 and by 1895 had constructed a general merchandise store in Waller for Ed Weygand, Sr. Ever the enterpriser, he married Weygand’s daughter in December. They […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – The Juergen House at Cypress Top Historic Park: An 1856 Hotel
Like all the old buildings at the Historic Park, the Juergen House has an interesting history. Unfortunately the walls don’t talk. Helping to unravel the ongoing mysteries of its past are a family oral history and a property title policy purchased by E. F. Juergen in 1910. On Feb. 27, 1856, William R. Baker purchased […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Antiques All Have A Story
Some may question our fascination with all the old stuff in Juergen’s Store at Cypress Top Historic Park. After all, that small display case on the end of the counter is worn and not pretty. Yet it tells a story about the store, entrepreneurship, an American business success story and ultimately, America’s story. The display […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – March 2nd — More than Texas Independence Day
Representatives from much of Texas met at Washington on the Brazos in late February 1836 and quickly drafted a Declaration of Independence. Sam Houston and the other representatives signed it on March 2, 1836. Stephen F. Austin is known as the Father of Texas because he managed to get the Spanish government — and later […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Valentine’s Day Cards
Th Valentines from the 1950s from the author’s collection. I still love, with a great dose of nostalgia, the cheap little kids’ greeting cards that we exchanged in elementary classes each Valentine’s Day back in the 1950s. The pack of 24 cards was more than enough to have one for every classmate. It was with […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Feelings and Images of Christmas
The Christmas season conjures up unique feelings and images in all of us. No two people would share exactly the same concept of the season. It is shaped by family tradition and also by the barrage of images that we experienced in our formative years. In reading letters from the early 1900s, people in the […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Glass Insulators: Beauty on America’s Telegraph Poles
Glass insulators used to be a common sight perched on utility pole crossties. If you are more than 60 years old, you might remember seeing the final vestiges of them as the same system was used with early telephone lines. There were so many glass insulators because each pole had so many wires requiring insulators. […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Cypress Historical Society, Preserving Cypress History
The Cypress Historical Society (CHS) was the evolution of a core group of volunteers who helped Commissioner Steve Radack prepare Cypress Top Historic Park for its opening in November 2008. This intrepid group of volunteers was led by Diane Neff and Debbie Ward. They were joined by other key people, including Helen Callender, Joyce Kleb, […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Bois d’Arc Fence Posts
by Fred Collins The old invoices from the Juergen Store in Cypress Top Historic Park lead us down many curious paths that often intertwine with the landscape and the history of Cypress. One such invoice shows where E.F. Juergen shipped 1,100 Bois d’arc fence posts to one Has Andrews of McKinney, Texas. He charged Mr. […]
HISTORICALLY CY-FAIR – Fascination with Feathers
Birds’ feathers advertise health and fitness to potential mates. This message was not lost on humans who took to adorning themselves with feathers. The Mayan chiefs, who declared themselves gods, wore a head dress of three-foot-long Quetzal plumes. The most powerful Plains tribes of Native Americans wore war bonnets of eagle feathers which they […]
