Historical Marker
Site of Old Wallisville
Wallisville, Chambers County · Texas
Erected 1968
Wallisville was lost to a plan, not a flood. In 1957 the Corps of Engineers, the Trinity River Authority, the navigation district and the city of Houston signed on to a reservoir that would also hold salt water back from rice fields, and the federal government bought the townsite. Construction began in the 1960s. Then environmental groups and a shrimping representative sued, and a federal judge stopped the work when the project was about three-quarters built. The Corps wrote off $23 million. In 1979 residents formed Wallisville Heritage Park, and the townsite reached the National Register in 1982.
What the plaque says
Site of Old Wallisville Settled in 1825 by Elisha H. R. Wallis, a pioneer from Georgia, on land in grant of Joseph Vehlein, a contractor working to place colonists in Texas. Chambers County was organized in 1858; wallisville was made county seat. A post office was granted in 1859, and town became a thriving retail market. Many county records were burned in a courthouse fire in 1875. A brick and stone courthouse, with a jail and an unique hanging tower (for executions) was completed in 1886. By 1900 the town had 728 people, a shipyard, a lumber yard, a cotton gin, a skating rink, several stores and an export house. By land, there was daily hack service to Liberty; and sloops made regular runs from here to Galveston. Chambers County's first newspaper, "Wallisville Age," was published here. the town remained county seat until 1908 when the courthouse was moved to Anahuac after the famous "County Seat Hog War" over issue of letting animals roam at large. In that year Wallisville lost few people, but in 1915 a storm almost destroyed the town. Part of the historic townsite is now included in Wallisville Reservoir, constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. (1968)
Where it stands
29.83841, -94.73600 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 22 miThe 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 — 29 miThe 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.