Surveying the land

Historical feature -- Part 2

  • The 1859 Lampasas County land patent map. Obviously, the land surveyors were picking the land along the creeks and rivers first. Ten years later, there were no vacancies left. University of North texas - The Portal to Texas History
    The 1859 Lampasas County land patent map. Obviously, the land surveyors were picking the land along the creeks and rivers first. Ten years later, there were no vacancies left. University of North texas - The Portal to Texas History

    Staking a claim and recording property boundaries brought numerous challenges -- some deadly

    Editor’s note: Lampasas historian Jeff Jackson has researched a number of history topics. The following tells of an early-day surveying expedition that encountered a large band of Comanches on the frontier northwest of Austin.

    In the summer of 1838, Albert Silsbee and Milton Hicks were in a shallow valley on…