LBJ National & State Park, TX

LBJ National Park & State Historic Site is located in the Texas hill country between Fredericksburg and Johnson City.  The National Park Service manages the Texas Whitehouse and the Texas Parks and Wildlife manages the Sauer-Beckmann Living History Farm. 

The Bluebonnets and other flowers were beautiful.

Sauer-Beckman Living History Farm

Life on the farmstead is presented as it was in 1918. Park interpreters wear period clothing, do the farm and household chores as they were done at that time, and also conduct tours for the visitors.  Johann and Christine Sauer, along with their four children, settled this land in 1869. Their family prospered and grew and, by 1885, several stone buildings were built near the original rock and log cabins. Eventually, the Sauers had 10 children. One of those, Augusta Sauer Lindig, served as midwife at the birth of President Johnson.  The Beckmann family acquired the property in 1900. A good cotton crop in 1915 allowed Emil and Emma Beckmann to build a new barn, to add a frame room onto the old rock structure, and to construct porches connecting to a lovely Victorian house covered with fashionable pressed tin. In 1966, Edna Beckmann Hightower sold the site to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Archeological surveying and restoration work was undertaken and the farm opened to the public in 1975. Since then, time has stood still and the farm remains forever a small piece of Texas as it was at the beginning of the 20th century.