Claiborne Kyle Log House Fried Chicken Dinner

Come out to the Claiborne Kyle Log House for the Annual Fried Chicken Dinner. This annual event is the only fundraiser for the upkeep of the historical site. 

Claiborne and Lucy Bugg Kyle married in 1829 in Tennessee and moved to Texas in 1844. Kyle, a former Senator from Mississippi, relocated to Texas after experiencing some financial hardships. In 1850, they built this massive log house on a bluff overlooking the Blanco River. With help from his farm workers, he built this log house of alternating courses of cedar logs and rock grouting, square notched at the corners and secured by wooden pegs.

The Kyle Log House is a most unusual type known as the “linear four-pen dog trot” and is the only one of this type left in Texas. The home has four rooms, each about 16 feet square and lined up with two on either side of the
dog trot. It housed the couple, their eight children, and one adopted son.

It is listed in the Terry Jordan book Texas Log Cabins, and a picture and story appear in the book Nineteenth Century Homes. On September 22, 1980, the Blanco River Bluffs, Inc. deeded the Kyle Log House to Hays County. A Claiborne Kyle Log House Commission was appointed to direct the restoration and maintenance of the house. On May 28, 1981, the Claiborne Kyle Log House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. A Texas Historical Marker was dedicated in 1982.