Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum

02/07/2025

Congratulations to our friends from the Nelson family on joining the ranks of Katy ISD namesakes!

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum will be open Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

02/03/2025

Happy ! It’s a bit warm for February, but with the 2025 Katy FFA Rodeo and Parade coming up, we’re not going to complain! A few years ago, it was so cold that we had trouble getting our tractors started in the morning. The Katy ISD Livestock Show dates to 1943, when L.D. Robinson began the tradition as part of his effort to rejuvenate Katy High School’s Vocational Agriculture program. The museum has a large collection of FFA catalogues, ranging from 1946 to 2015. Many of these are available for research.

For a complete schedule of events, visit: https://www.katyisd.org/domain/5853

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

01/31/2025

TGIF! The first weekend of the month is here, and you know what that means! Take advantage of the lovely weather to visit Katy Heritage Park this weekend! Our friends at the Katy Heritage Society will be conducting tours of their historic house museums on Saturday and Sunday from 12pm to 4pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum at the VFW Post 9182 & Auxiliary - Katy, Texas will also be open on Saturday from 10am to 2pm.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

01/30/2025

Thank you to railroad author and friend of the museum Dave Mrozek for sharing this find from American-Rails.com with us. That MKT engine is a looker! As Dave tells it, the MKT 152A "was one of 6 model PA-1 locomotives owned by the MKT. The railroad also acquired 8 model PA-2 locomotives that were similar in appearance. Some considered the PA locomotives the most attractive passenger locomotives ever built." Easy to see why. That would make a stylish addition to our O-gauge layout!

An American Locomotive builder's photo featuring new Katy PA-1 #152-A; May, 1949.

https://www.american-rails.com/mkt.html

01/27/2025

Happy ! It’s hard to believe, but the first month of the new year is almost over. It was a great start, as we’ve begun the year by setting a new record for January attendance. Now that we’ve had a moment to pause and reflect, we’d like to take the opportunity to thank you, our friends, neighbors, and supporters, for helping the Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum reach a worldwide audience!

In 2024, the museum welcomed over 5,700 visitors. Our guests came from 60 countries, 38 U.S. states, and 2 U.S. Territories. We were invited to our first outside speaking engagement, at a local nursing home whose residents could not visit the museum. Also, for the first time, we were invited to exhibit at two Texas historical sites, San Felipe de Austin and the George Ranch. With the help of our friends at the City of Katy Fleet department, we were able to restore three additional vehicles to working order, and continued the tradition of showcasing our collection of working tractors and Model Ts in the FFA and Rice Harvest Festival parades. The tractors also put in a repeat appearance at the Folk Life Festival at Katy High School’s Outdoor Learning Center, and, new for 2024, at National Night Out at Katy City Park. The museum was asked to contribute research for a book on the MKT Railroad, and consulted with Keep Katy Beautiful to help plan the new murals in Katy’s historic town square. We also partnered with the Katy Fire Department to present a new program for Katy ISD’s Gifted/Talented Challenge program students, utilizing our 1952 pumper truck and a modern ladder truck to present a lesson on technology and innovation.

Thank you again for helping make 2024 such a memorable year. We’re proud to serve an audience that increasingly extends far beyond our wonderful city. We look forward to seeing you all again in 2025. The only thing we love more than first-time visitors, are repeat visitors!

01/23/2025

Good morning, Katyites! Don't worry, we're not snowed in! The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum will be open normal hours this week, Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

Featured in this post is a children's book from the museum's collection. It was a gift to Johnny Nelson to celebrate the opening of Katy Mills Mall.

01/20/2025

CITY FACILITY CLOSURES DUE TO WINTER STORM ENZO ❄️🌨

Please be advised that the following City of Katy facilities will be closed on Tuesday, January 21, due to anticipated hazardous weather conditions from Winter Storm Enzo:

• 🏛️ City Hall
• ⚖️ Municipal Courts
• 🏞️ Parks & Recreation
• 🏛️ Museums
• 👵👴 Senior Center

We will continue to monitor conditions and will make a decision regarding operations on Wednesday, January 22, by 5:00 PM on Tuesday. Updates will be communicated promptly.

Additionally, all outdoor park facilities, including fields, courts, and pavilions, will be closed through Thursday, January 23. 🏞️ For questions about park reservations, please email [email protected]. Any affected reservations will be refunded upon request.

⚠️ Please use caution if visiting parks, as surfaces may be slippery. Avoid walking under trees with ice-covered limbs, as they may unexpectedly fall. We will continue to monitor the weather and reopen any closed facilities as soon as conditions allow for safe operations.

The safety of our employees and community remains our top priority. 🙏 Factors considered in these closure decisions include road conditions, safety assessments from local officials, and potential disruptions to city services.

For immediate assistance during this closure, please contact non-emergency dispatch at 📞 281-391-4848.

Stay tuned to official City of Katy communication channels for further updates and sign up for emergency alerts at www.cityofkaty.com/KTAlert. You can also read more updates at www.cityofkaty.com/winterstorms. Stay safe! ❄️

01/20/2025

Happy ! Last week we examined a Texas map that curiously excluded Katy. Today, let’s take a look at another oddity from the museum’s collection: a photo of Katy misidentified as a different town.

The first picture depicts three of the Katy rice dryers. Note the men standing on top of leftmost dryer, with a camera on a tripod. The second photo, taken from nearly the same angle, is labeled on the mat as “Goose Creek, Texas.” Also present are two names, “Carew & Hencke”. It’s unknown who Hencke is but Carew is almost certainly Herbert Carew, a Baytown photographer who also took the 1947 city panorama which hangs in the museum’s front room. His son, Rick Carew owned a photography studio in Katy and took many of the photos hanging in the museum.

According to the Texas State Historical Association, the former town of Goose Creek, located thirty miles southeast of Houston, bore many similarities to Katy. Like Katy’s earlier moniker, Cane Island, the earliest settlement at Goose Creek was named for a nearby stream, and a townsite was later laid out along the railroad tracks. Like Katy, the residents of Goose Creek cultivated rice, and the discovery of oil at the site brought investment from Humble Oil, which built a refinery at Baytown, adjacent to the Goose Creek field.

Goose Creek, Texas was annexed by Baytown in 1948. With their similar history and the photographer’s Baytown-Katy connection, it’s easy to imagine how the photo might have been mislabeled. Both prints are on display in the museum, hanging next to each other.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

01/13/2025

Happy ! It’s often said that rice put Katy on the map, but did you know that 100 years ago, Katy literally didn’t appear on some Texas maps? Katy was settled in the 1890s, and our MKT depot opened in 1898. But this excerpt from the 1924 Rand McNally Commercial Atlas of America suggests that the first town west of Houston is Brookshire. Rand McNally published maps for a variety of purposes, and Katy does in fact appear on their 1924 map of shipping routes, likely because of our depot.

Image courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries. You can view these and other historic maps online and in person at Stanford University's David Rumsey Map Center.

https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/yz7jct

https://library.stanford.edu/libraries/david-rumsey-map-center

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

01/06/2025

Happy ! The City of Katy celebrates its 80th birthday this year, recognizing the anniversary of our incorporation in 1945. The town of Katy was settled about 50 years prior to incorporation, and one of the most common questions we get at the museum remains, who is Katy named after? Despite claims that our first postmaster, James Oliver Thomas, named the new town after “the saloon keeper’s wife,” or a “a railroad executive’s daughter,” the truth is that the town was named for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, or MKT, railroad. After all, the townsite was purposely laid out along the tracks, and the MKT referred to itself over the years as “The Katy,” “Katy Lines,” and “The Katy Railroad.”

The earliest reference to the MKT as “the Katy Railroad” that we’ve been able to find dates to June 15, 1905, in the records of the Department of the Interior, "Applications for Enrollment in the Five Civilized Tribes, 1898–1914." According to the finding aid, “This series contains the original applications for tribal enrollments under the act of June 28, 1898, as well as supporting documents such as birth and death affidavits, marriage licenses, transcripts of testimony taken by the Commission, correspondence relating to the status of the application, and decisions and orders of the Dawes Commission. Commonly called the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, the Dawes Commission was appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1893 to negotiate with the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes. In return for abolishing their tribal governments and recognizing state and federal laws, tribe members were allotted a share of common property. Heads of families, orphans, and children could receive 40 to 160 acres of land by proving their tribal membership.”

On page 2 of the attached images, the government agent conducting the interview asks a question about “the Katy Railroad.” See the links below for the record and full series.

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45022049?objectPage=21

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/617283

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

12/30/2024

Happy ! The New Year is right around the corner. As we prepare to greet 2025, let’s look back 80 years, to when the Katy Gas Plant played host to not only workers, but their families as well. Mrs. Susan Creech Stormer recently donated several photos of the gas plant to the museum, which show the rows of on-site housing. Mrs. Stormer grew up living at the Katy Gas Plant and was kind enough to share a bit of family history with us. In her own words,

“My dad, Sid Creech, was a chemist at the Humble refinery here in Katy. He went to work right after World War 2. In fact, he was still in uniform when he went to the office in downtown Houston to get all his paperwork filled out.”

“As it turns out, my mom was working in the personnel department and working in the accounting department there downtown, and she was the one assigned to help him with his paperwork and after they finished, he asked her out and the rest is history. They started dating, got married, and moved to Katy to live in the gas plant.”

“I was born here, as were my two siblings, and we all grew up here in Katy. And my dad worked for Humble until his retirement. But one of the things that I think is most interesting about the gas plant is the fact that when they opened it, there was no housing in Katy. The few houses actually in the City of Katy were owned by rice farmers who’d built a home in town rather than living on their farm.”

“And so, there were no options for the people being brought in by Humble. So Humble created here in Katy what we called “the camp.” And they did something similar in several of their areas where they had refineries around the state. And these were all paved roads, curbs and gutters, sidewalks; and the way it was designed all the houses were exactly alike. They were frame houses with a little porch, you had two bedrooms and a bath, and a large common area, a kitchen, and then a back porch. A lot of people enclosed the back porch completely and made it into an additional room, but every house had the exact same footprint. And the way that they were designed, the whole camp was, you would have a house, and then there would be a driveway with a garage, a two-car garage because families only had one car back then, and then another house. And then a greenspace, and then a house, garage, house, greenspace, and that was it, that was how all of the streets were designed on both sides.”

“And it was real interesting, as an adult, how many of the people I know have memories of us growing up there, because it was very, almost communal. Because everybody knew everybody, and your parents knew that if you got in trouble at someone’s house that... they were gonna know about it before you got home. And so, it was a fun place growing up, then gradually as families got bigger, and... people moved... as we did, into the City of Katy and eventually the camp was taken down. But it was a fun place to grow up.”

Thank you to Mrs. Stormer for sharing her family’s story with us. If you have a personal story about the Katy Gas Plant, we’d love to hear and record it.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

12/23/2024

Happy ! Christmas is almost here, and the Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum will be open normal hours from Thursday the 26th – Sunday the 29th.

All we want for Christmas is YOU! Bring your friends and family and help us end the year on a high note. There’s still time to hang a wish on our Christmas tree, listen to Christmas songs on our antique player piano, and take a photo on one of our historic tractors. We also have scavenger hunts offering multiple difficulty levels for you (and your kids!) to challenge. Bring the whole family and learn about Katy’s heritage!

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

12/18/2024

Good afternoon, Katyites! Our friends at the Coastal Prairie Conservancy are holding a series of open house events through the end of the year. This is a great opportunity to learn about the important work they do in "Sustaining a resilient Texas by preserving coastal prairies, wetlands, farms, and ranches to benefit people and wildlife forever." It's the perfect time to go and visit while this Goldilocks weather lasts!

The Coastal Prairie Conservancy is helping sustain a resilient Texas by preserving coastal prairies, wetlands, farms, and ranches to benefit people and wildlife forever.

12/16/2024

Happy ! On this day in history, December 16, 1773, colonists in Boston staged a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. This event is popularly known for at least some of the participants having disguised themselves as members of the Mohawk tribe of Native Americans. The colonists dumped over 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, another spark in the buildup to the American Revolution.

Did you know that on at least one occasion, the MKT Railroad also disguised one of its men as a Native American to carry out an act of sabotage? The story is related in V.V. Masterson’s “The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier” (1952). According to Masterson, in 1870 when the MKT was locked in a race with the Border Tier Railroad to reach the border between Kansas and the Indian Territory, and so win exclusive rights to continue south through the Indian Territory to Texas, MKT agent Bob Greenwell conspired to dress up as a Quapaw chief, and trick the Border Tier surveyors into thinking they were closer to the territory line than the really were. The idea was that the Border Tier would prematurely end construction and thus allow the MKT to catch and pass them.

Did this event actually happen? Who knows. In any case, the MKT reached the Kansas-Indian Territory border on Monday, June 6th, 1870, winning the exclusive right to continue building south. Perhaps the Border Tier got karmic justice in the end. The MKT never received the 3.1 million acres of land grants promised to them in the Indian Territory. After decades of legal battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1914 that the land rightfully belonged to the Native Americans.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

12/09/2024

Happy ! Christmas is right around the corner, and tomorrow is the last day the museum is collecting Toys for Tots. Although we’re not open today, you can call the museum to arrange a drop off of new, unwrapped toys before 5pm.

Speaking of toys, we have an exciting new donation to share with you, courtesy of Mr. David McCoy, who gave his collection of model trains and accessories to the museum for use in our layout! These trains were produced by Marx, and were designed as a lower cost alternative to Lionel. Despite the lower price, the quality was very high. According to The Train Collectors Association, Marx’s policy was to "Give the customer more toy for less money," and "Quality is not negotiable." Marx grew to become the largest toy company in the world, and later became the first inductee into the Toy Hall of Fame. These handsomely decorated 7-inch cars are made of stamped, lithographed tin, and were produced for only a few years in the early-mid 1950s. These and other cars and accessories from the donation will be displayed or incorporated into the layout as they undergo cleaning and refurbishment.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum and MKT Depot Museum are open Thursday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. The Katy Veterans Memorial Museum is open Monday-Friday and the first Saturday of each month from 9am to 2pm. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

12/06/2024

Good afternoon, Katyites! Tomorrow is December 7th, the "date which will live in infamy." It's also the first weekend of the month, which means our friends at the VFW Post 9182 & Auxiliary - Katy, Texas Katy Veterans Memorial Museum will be open for tours on Saturday from 9am to 2pm. It's a very meaningful day for a visit, so consider stopping by.

Our neighbors at the Katy Heritage Society will also be hosting Christmas at the Park tomorrow from 6pm - 8:30 pm. For more information or to RSVP, visit https://www.katyheritagesociety.com/event-details/christmas-at-the-park-2024.

The Johnny Nelson Katy Heritage Museum is open Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. We're collecting , and this is the final weekend to donate before collection ends on December 10th. Please consider bringing a donation when you visit the museum this weekend. Anyone can be Santa, and every gift helps bring Christmas cheer to a child in need.

12/05/2024

Calling all Katyites! We'll be collecting Toys for Tots at this evening's tree lighting event. If you're coming out to see Santa, please consider bringing a donation of new, unwrapped toys. We promise we won't let the Grinch steal them.

Weather Update from our City of Katy Office of Emergency Management

Event Weather Details for Thursday Evening:
• Temperatures: In the 50s during the event, but with wind chills dropping into the 40s due to gusty winds.
• Winds: Northeasterly at 10 mph, with gusts up to 20 mph, making it feel colder.
• Conditions: Cloudy and damp with high humidity levels. Light drizzle or mist remains possible.
• Rain Chances: Low to none. The damp ground and humid air could contribute to a moist environment.

Winter is coming to Katy, Texas! Bundle up and join us tomorrow night as we light up the Historic Town Square.