Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
"This is my country, the hill country of Texas. And through the years when time would permit, here is where I would always return, to the Pedernales River, the scenes of my childhood.” - LBJ
Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, loved the beautiful, rugged country along the Pedernales River in central Texas. His roots ran deep here. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park preserves his grandfather’s first ranch house and part of the small town of Johnson City, which his family founded. The park also includes the places where he was born; grew up; began his long political career; returned again and again during his years in Washington as congressman, senator, vice-president, and president; retired; died; and lies buried. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park contains two distinct areas, Johnson City and the LBJ Ranch, that together, along with the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site, interpret President Johnson’s story.
Johnson’s term as president was one of the most complex and poignant in the 20th century. Sworn into office with the nation still reeling from John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Johnson successfully pushed many of Kennedy’s and his own legislative proposals through Congress. Personally committed to liberal social policies and civil rights, he used all of his considerable skill at political negotiation to get an unprecedented number of important pieces of legislation passed. His administration ultimately foundered on two crises, the Vietnam War and the explosive urban riots of the mid-to-late 1960s. In March 1968, he announced he would not seek re-election. He retired to his Texas ranch at the end of his term of office and died there four years later.
The Johnson family lived in this area dating back before 1867. Newly married to Eliza Bunton Johnson, Lyndon’s grandfather, Sam E. Johnson Sr. established an open range ranch in the area in 1867. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park restored Sam Johnson Sr.’s small log dogtrot house to the period when he lived there. Sam Johnson’s nephew, James Polk Johnson, bought the property in 1872, when the ranch operation collapsed. James Polk Johnson improved the property and founded Johnson City.
Lyndon Johnson was born August 27, 1908, in another small dogtrot house on the land that belonged to his grandfather. He was the first of five children of Rebekah Baines and Sam E. Johnson, Jr. An open central passage, or "dogtrot," separated the two main rooms of the one-story frame house. President and Mrs. Johnson constructed, on the site of the original birthplace, a guesthouse similar to the house in which he was born. Thus, the LBJ Birthplace has the distinction of being the only presidential birthplace replica constructed, furnished, and interpreted by an incumbent chief executive. The home is a five-room, Texas dogtrot house, typical of the late 19th century with stone foundation, frame construction, board-and-batten siding, and a wood-shingle roof. An open central hallway runs between two large rooms on the east and west sides. In the outer wall of each room is a stone fireplace with wooden mantel. A partially enclosed wooden porch extends across the front of the building with a nursery room extending out from the porch. An ell to the rear of the western room contains a dining room, an old kitchen, and a modern kitchen. To the east of the dining room are a back porch, a shed room, and a modern bath. Johnson family items and period pieces furnish the home.
Sam E. Johnson, Jr. moved his family to Johnson City in 1913, when Lyndon was five years old. The Johnsons purchased a handsome, one-story home the following year. The house consisted of the original five-room house built in 1901, plus a west wing addition with two more bedrooms and a “tubroom,” containing a tub and possibly a washstand. The house also had two L-shaped porches on the front, a screened porch in the back, and another open porch behind the west wing. Many people in Johnson City thought this was one of the nicest houses in town. Lyndon Johnson grew up in this house until he went away to college. It was his home from the age of five until he married at the age of 26, except for two years between 1920 and 1922 when the family returned to their farm. In 1934, Johnson married Claudia “Lady Bird” Alta Taylor. By this time, he had already embarked on his political career. In 1931, he went to Washington, DC as secretary to Democratic Congressman Richard Kleberg and by 1935, was a successful administrator for the National Youth Administration in Texas. When Congressman Joseph Buchanan died unexpectedly, Johnson decided to run for his seat. He returned to the front porch of his boyhood home to make his first political campaign speech in 1937.
Reelected five times, Johnson served in the House until 1948; in 1941 he unsuccesfully ran for the Senate. He became a master of the legislative process and attracted the attention of powerful House Speaker Sam Rayburn, another Texan, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He served in the Navy during the early days of World War II, until the president called all congressmen back from active duty to Washington, DC. In 1948, his second run for the Senate was successful. He soon became known as the “Master of the Senate,” and by 1953 was the youngest minority leader in history. When the Democrats took control of Congress the following year, he became majority leader. He and Republican President Eisenhower worked together to secure passage of a number of important bills, including the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, the first such legislation in over 80 years.
As his political career flourished, Johnson spent much of his time in Washington, DC, but returned to Texas as often as he could. In 1951, he bought a 1,500-acre ranch, 15 miles west of Johnson City, near Stonewall, Texas, from his widowed aunt. The ranch and its comfortable house were his home until his death 22 years later. Everyone in the country soon came to know the “LBJ Ranch.” Johnson and his wife remodeled and added onto the existing house, which faces south towards the Pedernales River. The two-story frame house, painted white with green shutters, eventually grew to 28 rooms. The Johnsons also added swimming pools and carports for their Lincoln Continentals.
Johnson actively sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, but ultimately agreed to accept the position of vice president. His campaigning in the South played an important role in Kennedy’s election, and he was an unusually active vice president. Sworn in as president just hours after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson moved quickly to break the logjam in Congress that was blocking many Kennedy initiatives. He also began to develop his own “Great Society” reform program. During his first two years in office, he signed a record number of important pieces of legislation including increases in foreign aid, reductions in taxes, and laws supporting wildlife preservation and mass transit systems. When he ran for president in his own right in 1964, he overwhelmed Republican Barry Goldwater.
President Johnson worked closely with black leaders to gain passage of two pieces of landmark civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited segregation in public accommodations and strengthened fair employment regulations in industry. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed the restrictions that blocked African Americans in the South from exercising the rights granted them almost a century before with the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution. He began the food stamp system, established the Job Corps to train unemployed youth, and created community action agencies to improve health services such as Medicare and Medicaid. He formed the Office of Economic Opportunity to coordinate the new programs and initiated the War on Poverty. He also is also responsible for a number of important environmental laws and initiatives, such as the National Historic Preservation Act, which he signed in 1966. President Johnson has more education legislation to his credit than any other president, before his time or since.
Despite his many accomplishments, Johnson faced mounting difficulties at home and abroad. Fiercely committed to fighting communist expansion in Southeast Asia, he steadily expanded the American presence in Vietnam that the Eisenhower administration initiated. Bombing of North Vietnam began in 1965. As the draft took increasing numbers of young men and casualties grew, antiwar demonstrations began to take place all over the country, and Johnson became the focal point of much of the controversy. In the late 1960s, the cities of America exploded, as African Americans vented their frustration in a series of violent and destructive riots.
During these difficult years, President Johnson often sought refuge in the serenity of the “Texas White House,” far from the shouts of “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” and the smoke of burning buildings in Washington, DC’s segregated black neighborhoods. Altogether, he spent a total of 490 days at the ranch, about a quarter of his presidential term. Use of the house as the “Texas White House” required many changes to the complex. Communications facilities kept Johnson abreast of developments in Washington and the world. Secret Service guard stations and barracks protected him from the threat of assassination that was in everyone’s mind after Kennedy’s death. An airstrip made it easy for the president to move between the “Texas White House” and the White House in Washington, DC.
In March 1968, Johnson suddenly announced a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam, invited the communists to negotiate, and stunned the nation by saying that he would not run for reelection. Retiring in 1969, Johnson returned to the LBJ Ranch in Texas, where he concentrated on running his registered Hereford cattle operations and wrote his memoirs. He died there in 1973 and lies buried in the family graveyard on the ranch along with his parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother. Lady Bird Johnson, who died in 2007, rests beside her husband.
The National Historic Site consists of two parts: the Johnson City District and the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch Unit. The Johnson City District contains the Boyhood Home, restored to the period of the late 1920s; the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Hospital, built in 1968 and now serves as a Visitor Center; and a number of other historic Johnson City buildings. The Johnson Settlement Complex, about one-half mile away from the Boyhood Home, includes the Sam Johnson, Sr. Log House, restored to the 1869 to 1872 period, and a number of related farm outbuildings. The LBJ Ranch House or “Texas White House” is the centerpiece of the LBJ Ranch Unit, about 14 miles from the Johnson City District. The reconstructed birthplace is located on the ranch about three-quarters of a mile away from the Ranch House. The Secret Service Compound lies behind the house. The Show Barn Complex highlights the importance of the Hereford cattle operation, in which Johnson was actively involved, even when he was in Washington, DC. The airplane hangar, painted "LBJ-green" the customary color for outbuildings throughout the ranch, is northwest of the Ranch House. The hangar not only housed the presidential plane but also was a place to watch movies and hold parties and press conferences. The Junction School, which four-year old Lyndon attended for a year, and the family cemetery are also part of the LBJ Ranch Unit.
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park is a unit of the National Park System. Click here for the National Register of Historic Places file: text and photos. The Johnson City Unit is open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. The Visitor Center, on Ladybird Lane in Johnson City, TX is open from 8:45am to 5:00pm. Guided tours of the LBJ Boyhood Home are offered seven days a week. Self-guided tours of the Johnson Settlement are available from 9:00am until sunset seven days a week.
The Visitor Center for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch Unit is located in the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site, 2 miles east of Stonewall on US Highway 290. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park work together to interpret the Hill Country and its influence on Lyndon Johnson. To see the LBJ Ranch, visitors take a National Park bus tour from the Texas State Park Visitor Center. Bus tours are conducted from 10:00am to 4:00pm seven days a week. For more information, visit the National Park Service Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park website or call 830-868-7128 ext. 244.
