In Cypress, Texas during the 60s, there were only three places to go without driving into Houston.



    There was Ripper's store at the triangle plot of land at Huffmeister Rd. and Telge Rd. and the Rippers lived in a house behind the store. Across the road from the store was the cousins land that fronted on Telge Rd..  Ripper's Store was a little white building with a front door facing the triangle parking lot. The store area in the front had one free standing shelf with a few can goods and a cold meat case with cold cuts like Bologna...sometimes. Like many old stores back in the day, it was mostly a bar in the back with a side door facing Telge Rd. where the beer drinkers would park.




     Juergen's store was another destination heading west, at the end of Spring Cypress Road and Facing Hempstead Hwy..
It was half grocery/dry goods and half bar, with a long bar running from the front to the back on the right side of the building and the grocery/dry goods area was on the left side. There were two doors to enter the store or the bar and there was only a partial wall in between the two sides. The dry goods were on the left had mostly items left over from days gone by and they weren't restocking anything new by the 60s. I would love to go back into the left back corner where the old sewing items were, everything looked antique to me, because it was.  There was a meat counter at the rear on the left side near the center dividing wall. If we were lucky they would have some beef or other cold cuts but it was always minimal and you bought what they had because there was nowhere else to grocery shopping without driving about 10 miles east to Fairbanks Grocery store or to Houston.
When microwaves were first invented during the 70s the bar began having pre-made microwave sandwiches and soft drinks and if there were no adults in that area we were allowed to sit on the bar stools at the long bar and order a sandwich. I always loved all of the old neon bar signs and they had a huge collection of them, I remember. The younger Juergens couple lived upstairs over the store and the older Juergens couple lived in the old house to the west.  There was a little one room white building to the right/east of the store which was a barber shop at one time but became a liquor store later, then just sat vacant.

     Just down the road, east on Hempstead Highway, there was Hot Wells Swimming pool. It was located south of  the Hwy over the RR tracks. The summers were great swimming at the huge pool that was as big as a football field. The water was always very warm and I remember that there was a little room off to the side of the pool where all of the old ladies would go into and sit in a tub. The water was very hot with steam coming off of it. It was probably one of the first hot-tubs.
They had the tallest set of high diving boards I've ever seen.



When I was a child, I would spent hours playing in the woods building forts, bike trails and making  caves on the side of Dry Gully. We would go into the Baker Ranch next door and fish in the lake which is now in Coles Crossing, it was swarming with Water Moccasins at the time.  There was a wooden raft built on old barrels that we would paddle around the lake on.  Although the lake was built over during the development of Coles Crossing, I still found a little puddle that is the remnants of the old lake in between two houses. There was a second lake more to the east on the property also.


The woods were full of animals. Deer, red fox, bobcats, wolves and coyote. We had a wooden bridge back in the woods that my Grandfather built to cross Dry Gully to reach the other side of the ranch, this was a bridge large enough to support a vehicle but now surrounded by woods and vines. I would love to hike back into the woods and sit on the bridge for hours and watch the animals come to drink water out of Dry Gully.

There was an old one room house on the Ranch where an old man who worked for us once lived and he would help us take care of our cattle. His name was Moses. We still had an old hand pump water well which I loved to use because the water was nice and cold in the summer. The little house was being used to store hay in the 60s.


There was another interesting little old man who lived alone on Skinner Road in a one room white house for years and into the 60s. It was the only house on Skinner Rd. in between Spring-Cypress and Hempstead Hwy.  My father gave him his first television for Christmas one year after he finally got electricity. His name was John Solomon.  John was the son of slaves and he would sometimes tell us stories. When we found road kill we would bring it to John and he would cook it.  He traveled around Cypress on his tractor and would pick-up odd jobs. In the 50s John did something bad for a man who had a couple of acres down the road from the ranch. He helped the man move the fence onto our property and stole 14 acres. My Grandfather was dying so nothing was done about it right away. That land is located on Spring Cypress Rd. where the big Cy-Fair ISD complex sits as well as the newer US Post Office which are near the corner of Spring-Cypress and Skinner Rd.
My father forgave the little old man, and still bought him the television for Christmas.

The Baker Ranch in Cypress, Texas encompasses what is now the Subdivisions of  Western Trails which was developed by Joseph Baker's grandson George Baker, and Coles Crossing.

J.W. (Joseph) Baker

J. W. Baker purchased 2,000 acres of land during the late 1800's in Cypress, Texas.
His Ranch was located approximately 1 1/2 miles east of Cypress on the south side of Spring-Cypress Road.

The exact location of the Ranch began on Spring-Cypress Rd. near Skinner Rd. heading east on Spring-Cypress Rd. crossing over Dry Gully, approx. 1 1/2 mi. to Huffmeister Rd., turning south(right) onto Huffmeister Rd. and following for 1/3 mi.; then turning south again onto the right fork named Telge Rd. Following Telge Rd. 1 1/2 miles past Jarvis Rd. (which did not exist yet), then turning west through the property, over Dry Gully toward Skinner Road again.
J. W. Baker ranched cattle here as did three more generations of Bakers to follow.

Mr. Baker was among the first born in Houston during the years when Texas was "The Republic of Texas".