Deer Park

The Handbook dates the subdivision and its post office to 1893 and puts a Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway station here by about 1894. In 1896 Deer Park had forty people, a hotel, a general store and three resident carpenters. The post office closed in 1919 and reopened in 1930, and an independent school district followed in the 1930s. In World War II came refineries and toluol plants for TNT, the Shell plant alone making ten million gallons of toluol a year, and in the 1950s the town grew sixfold, from 736 people to 4,865.

What the plaque says

Deer Park Illinois native Simeon Henry West (1827-1920) settled in this vicinity in 1892 hoping to develop the area, with its mild climate and proximity to waterways, into a farming and trading center. By the year's end, he had purchased property and platted the town of Deer Park, naming it after a nearby private park inhabited by many deer. After completing the Deer Park Hotel in 1893, West marketed his development primarily to Northerners. More than ninety settlers moved here, attracted by the prospects for fruit and tobacco farming and the trade links to the Houston & Northern Railway and Houston's waterways that West was developing. The promising town was nearly destroyed in the hurricane of 1900, after which every family except one returned North. A few people moved to Deer Park in later years. In 1905, the Edwin Rice Brown family leased as their family home the Deer Park Hotel, the focal point of area social life. However, the town's population remained very small. Not until 1928, when Shell Chemical Company relocated here, did a new period of growth begin. Deer Park's business district, churches, and schools were reestablished, and in 1948 the citizens of Deer Park voted to incorporate. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 4.4 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 10 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 15 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 15 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Home in 1836 of Dr. George Moffit Patrick — steps away
• Battle of San Jacinto — 2.3 mi
• Texas Army Attacked in Four Divisions — 2.3 mi
• Home of Mrs. Margaret McCormick — 3.6 mi