Winters--Wimberley House - Wimberley, TX
Posted by: WalksfarTX
N 29° 59.882 W 098° 05.930
14R E 586919 N 3318908
The ca. 1856 Winters-Wimberley House occupies a five-acre site on a high bluff overlooking Cypress Creek, at the northern periphery of Wimberley, a small but growing Hill Country town in southwestern Hays County.
Waymark Code: WM12HR8
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 06/01/2020
Views: 3
NRHP Nomination Form
"The house is a vernacular l-story, side-gabled limestone dwelling with matching limestone chimneys centered on the gable ends. An attached 3-bay porch supported by turned posts stretches across most of the front facade and matching pilasters are affixed to the wall. Multiple frame additions extend to the rear. Although its symmetrical 3-bay appearance suggests a center-passage plan, physical evidence indicates that the original house was built as a simple, 2-room hall-parlor dwelling. The walls are built of 18" thick ashlar blocks while the frame additions are covered with various wood siding, primarily board and batten. A crimped metal roof recently replaced an earlier metal roof that in turn replaced the original cedar shakes.
In 1856, William C. Winters purchased a 34-acre mill site along Cypress Creek near the frontier trading post of Glendale, the site of present Wimberley. Once he established his business. Winters chose a home site on a limestone promontory that rose high above the creek within view of the mill below. It was a simple, though substantial, rectangular limestone dwelling with a near-symmetrical, 3-bay primary facade. Winters probably built several small auxiliary structures near the house soon after its construction. As business increased, a wagon path soon developed between the trading post and the mill. Passing between the house and the creek below, the path eventually became part of the county
road system. Wimberley's town square lies just to the southwest of the mill and house, connected by the old road, now Ranch Road 12.
As the mill changed hands, so too did the name of the settlement. When Winters' son-in-law, John Cude, assumed ownership about 1864, the community became known as Cude's Mill. The settlement again changed names after Pleasant Wimberley purchased the property in 1874. Finally, it was shortened to Wimberley."