The LBJ Ranch: The Texas White House on the Pedernales
Near Fredericksburg, Texas
About fourteen miles east of Fredericksburg, along the north bank of the Pedernales River at the hamlet of Stonewall, sits the property where Lyndon Baines Johnson was born, raised, and chose to spend as much of his presidency as the office would allow. Johnson was born on the ranch on August twenty-seventh, nineteen oh eight, in a small dogtrot farmhouse near the river. As a United States senator in nineteen fifty-one, he and his wife Lady Bird bought a rundown ranch house there from relatives.
After extensive renovations, they moved in the following year. When Johnson became president following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of nineteen sixty-three, the ranch became his second White House, officially designated by that name.
Johnson spent roughly twenty percent of his time in office at the Stonewall property, hosting nearly a hundred barbecues beneath the live oaks for foreign dignitaries, cabinet members, members of Congress, reporters, and neighbors. In December of nineteen seventy-two, Johnson and Lady Bird donated the ranch to the National Park Service while retaining a life estate. He died at the ranch in January of nineteen seventy-three, just over a month after signing the deed.
Lady Bird Johnson continued to live there until her own death in two thousand seven. The property is now part of Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, accessible by bus tour from the visitor center at the adjacent state park, and it remains one of the most personally revealing presidential sites in the country.
