Lynchburg Town Ferry

Lynch's ferry has its own row; the town he tried to build beside it is the quieter story. In 1834 or 1835 Nathaniel Lynch laid part of his land out in blocks and named the plat Lynchburg, but the settlers he counted on never came. A post office opened in 1835, closed by 1843, returned in 1870 and ended in 1927, when mail began coming from Pasadena. Lynchburg counted 205 people in 1840; by 1892 it had a saloon and two general stores. In 1905 the White school had thirty-one pupils and the Black school four.

What the plaque says

Lynchburg Town Ferry The Lynchburg Town Ferry, founded in 1822 by Nathaniel Lynch, crosses the Houston Ship Channel downstream of the confluence of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. In 1829, the authorities at San Felipe de Austin requested that Lynch move his ferry service, which had been running from Crystal Bay, upstream to a peninsula formed by a meander of the San Jacinto River. He satisfied the requirements in 1830, moving to an area near the present landing. Lynch passed away in 1837, but his family continued to operate the ferry service until 1848. Between 1848 and 1888, various operators bought and ran the service. During this time, Lynchburg experienced many changes. A fire in 1874 and a series of storms dating from the late 1800s to the early 20th century devastated the town and hastened its decline. In 1888, Harris County purchased the ferry and in 1920 put the diesel-powered, cable-free Chester H. Bryan boat into service. They added the Tex Dreyfus in 1945. The two boats were replaced in 1964 by the William P. Hobby and the Ross S. Sterling, which have served the area for a number of years. By the 1950s, business returned to Lynchburg; a shipyard, marine service companies and the Coastal Water Authority all opened in following years. Today, the ferry continues to serve Harris County residents who work at the Port of Houston and at petrochemical plants along the ship channel. It remains an important economic contributor to the area, promoting tourism and helping to maintain Lynchburg as a focus of industry on the Houston Ship Channel. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 1.1 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 — 15 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 — 17 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 — 18 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

• Lorenzo de Zavala — 0.9 mi
• Freeman Wilkinson — 1.0 mi
• Peter Jefferson Duncan — 1.1 mi
• de Zavala Plaza — 1.1 mi