Historical Marker
Old Evergreen Tree
Lincoln, Lee County · Texas
Erected 1967
The tree outlived the town that took its name. Evergreen began as a stage stop on the Old San Antonio Road, and in 1856 Randall D. Heck and Herman Doughterly surveyed and platted a townsite here. Just before and after the Civil War it had four stores, a school and a church served by circuit-riding preachers. The end came with the railroad: in 1890 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass built through nearby Lincoln instead, most residents followed, and within a few years Evergreen was abandoned. By 1990 a small cemetery and this tree were all that remained.
What the plaque says
Old Evergreen Tree Said to have sheltered in 1714 explorer Louis de St. Denis-- probably first white man ever here. Site of pioneer court trials in 1870's. (1967)
Where it stands
30.27015, -96.95420 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 11 miA museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
- Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 14 miTwo park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
- Round Top and Festival Hill — 21 miA German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
- Bastrop State Park — 23 miThe westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.