Its Sunday afternoon and I am heading towards Conroe Texas from San Antonio. I usually take different routes and today I decided to pass through Round Top. The last time I was through here I was not able to stop at all the markers. Ive said it before and I will say it again. If you are in this area you have to stop. Round Top has lots to do and lots to see. The last time I came through here I stopped at the Replica of Saxony Home of Carl Siegismunde Bauer – Round Top, Texas
Round Top is located on the old La Bahía Road between La Grange and Brenham in Fayette County. Being a roadside home, travelers often stopped to rest. People here opened there homes to them. There are many cabins to visit if you stop by. Round Top is also home to Sam Lewis and his family. This stop became know as the Old Sam Lewis Stopping Place
Historical Marker Reads:
Early Texas Hotels and Inns
Two miles east, at Winedale, is the Old “Sam Lewis Stopping Place” of the 1850s–a typical early Texas inn, now a University of Texas Research Center. Built 1834, as a settler’s 2-room log cabin of hand-hewn cedar; then enlarged twice and (with work of local German craftsmen) improved in style, it was home after 1848 to Lewis, his wife, eight children; also entertained guests from passing stagecoaches. It was near roads connecting major Texas cities. Many roadside homes in early Texas were inns. The horseback traveler would shelter his pony in the barn, share family meals, get a room for the night. All stage lines depended on such accommodations– for changes of horses, for passengers’ meals, and for overnight stops. With travel difficult at best, such inns rendered a service of great public necessity. A frontier inn might even be a dugout, where the guests rolled up in blankets and slept on the floor. (Travelers sometimes had to sleep under a tree, so any sort of sheltering house was usually welcomed.) Most stage stops dispatched and received U.S. mail for the community. Towns originated at many stops. In early Texas, famous hotels included the Tremont, Galveston;The Old Capitol, Houston; several in Austin.
Recorded Historical Marker Year 1967