The Klein Community

Adam and Friederika Klein were natives of Stuttgart, and Klein's stint in the California goldfields had been a successful one. The post office in Blackshear's store on Spring-Cypress Road came through Adam Klein's own efforts. When the rural school district became the Klein Independent School District in 1938, it covered eighty-eight square miles. The area has had no post office of its own since 1906, yet in 1977 the legislature officially designated the district as Klein, Texas. Its schools were later named for early settlers, and the Klein, Texas, Historical Foundation was formed in 1988.

What the plaque says

The Klein Community A farming community developed in this area after a group of German immigrants settled on the banks of Cypress Creek in 1845. The settlement was later named for Adam Klein, who left Germany in 1849 and joined the California gold rush before moving here with his wife Friederika (Klenk) in 1854. Farmers in this vicinity raised cotton, potatoes, and corn, and marketed their produce in Huston, a two-day trip by wagon. Center of community life was Trinity Lutheran Church, organized in 1874 by the Bernshausen, Benfer, Brill, Kaiser, Klein, Lemm, Theiss, and Wunderlich families. The Klenk and Strack families joined soon after the charter was signed. The settlement was called Big Cypress until Klein Post Office was established Sept. 8, 1884. William N. Blackshear, the first postmaster, operated the postal facility in his general store. It was replaced by rural free delivery in 1906. Although never platted or incorporated, the Klein community formed the nucleus of a school district. In 1928 five districts were consolidated to create Rural High School District Number One. Many early schools had only one room and one teacher. In 1938 the district became Klein Independent School District. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 20 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.
• The Menil Collection — 21 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 21 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 22 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Saint Paul A. M. E. Church — 6.8 mi
• Old Salem Lutheran Church Site — 10 mi
• City of Humble — 15 mi
• Humble Lodge No. 979, A.F. & A.M. — 16 mi