Welcome! Thursday 3/28/2024     11:57 PM  

History of Our Area

We are currently looking for a local historian to help us compile the history of the area.  Contact us if you would like to help.

From the early days of the Akokisa until after World War II, the area making up the Briar Forest neighborhood was one which people largely passed through on their way to and from places such as the Habermacher ranch to the west, or from Dairy (now known as Alief) on the road (later Dairy Ashford road) to the Ashford stop on the Houston & Texas Central Railroad. Along the way, they would follow or cross over the neighborhood’s most significant landscape feature, Buffalo Bayou. For those who chose to stay in the area, rice and cotton became a way of life, with farms and mills providing a large portion of the jobs and livelihoods for many residents up until the last three decades of the 20th century.

By the 1960s, urban sprawl resulted in bedroom communities, such as Ashford, Lakeside and Briargrove Park – developed by Walter Mischer, Sr., emerging from the forests. Farms disappeared and a small two lane road became a massive thoroughfare and anchor for successful commerce – Westheimer - bordering the southern boundary of the neighborhood. By 2000, at least 42,000 Houstonians chose to call the Briar Forest area home.

Whereas the Briar Forest area was once far from Houston, it now sits on the edge of what is rapidly becoming the very center of the entire metropolitan area. Westchase District, the first management district of its kind in Texas, supports the southern portion of the neighborhood, with outstanding business and commercial opportunities, tremendous beautification efforts and master plan style management. The Energy District sits just to the west and north and City Centre, Town & Country and Memorial shopping are a stones throw to the northeast.

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