RIVER OAKS

River Oaks is named for the trees that line the banks of Buffalo Bayou.

 

SPRING BRANCH

This community is named for the creek that intersected Buffalo Bayou at the spot where German farmers began settling in 1830. How that creek came to be called Spring Branch is unknown.

 

TANGLEWOOD

Tanglewood was developed by William Giddings Farrington. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls was one of his daughter's favorite books.

 

WEST UNIVERSITY

This place is west of Rice University.

 

MEMORIAL/CAMP LOGAN

Camp Logan Development outside the Interstate 610 loop began in the 1950s along Memorial Drive. That arterial road was named in honor of the men who served in Camp Logan, a WW1 emergency training center, which is now the site of Memorial Park.

 

A Brief History of the Memorial Villages:

 

Just ten miles west of downtown Houston, the Memorial Villages offer a tranquil setting from Houston’s vibrant city life. Once an area of 5-20 acre rambling country estates nestled in a landscape of native pines, the Memorial Villages have maintained their peaceful residential quality even as commercial and retail establishments prospered along their borders.  In 1824 John D. Taylor received title to 4,428 acres of land which straddled Buffalo Bayou and at the southernmost bend in the bayou became known at Piney Point.

 

In 1906, Hedwig Jankowski joined her sister and other German immigrants in what is now the Spring Branch Memorial area. She met and married Henry Schroeder, and the two set up a farm in what would become Hedwig Village.

 

Following World War I, more tracts of land were sold for lumber to neighboring sawmills (few houses were built).  After World War II, subdivisions were laid out as street access to downtown Houston improved.  Motivated by a desire for residential zoning and maintaining their country living, the residents filed a petition in October 1954 to incorporate a two-square-mile area that would be named Hunters Creek Village.

 

Hunters Creek Village – name for Hunters Branch Creek in its midst

 

Three more villages were quickly incorporated.

• Piney Point – named for the original Pine Point.

• Bunker Hill – named for the road running through it boundaries which was originally called Bunker Road for an early landowner, Isaac Bunker.

• Hedwig – named for Hedwig’s Road’s namesake, Hedwig Jankowski Schroeder, whose family farm was in the area.

A year later two villages were incorporated north of Katy Road:

• Spring Valley – bounded on one side by Spring Branch Creek

• Hilshire – named by landowner Frank Bruess for a country estate in England called Hilshire

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The six villages cover approximately 10 square miles and claim a population of just under 20,000.  Each village is a separate municipality with a mayor-council form of government that provides service for its residents through locally based police and fire departments, and a joint water authority.