Bransford Park – Colleyville, Texas
Bransford Park is one of the smaller parks in Colleyville, but it has a lot to offer. It’s home to the historic Webb House and the Lyman Whitaker wind sculptures, which provide visitors with unique sites to explore.
It also has a lot of open space so that your kids can run and play while you sit out in the sunshine and enjoy some downtime on your own.
One of Colleyville’s smaller parks, Bransford Park is a two-acre mini-park that includes the wind sculptures of Lyman Whitaker, the historic marker of Bransford, and the historic Webb House which presents a distinctive site for visitors to explore. The park also features several open spaces for sitting, running around, or relaxing under the sun.
Built around 1914, the Webb House is one of the popular historic sites in Colleyville. The historic house serves as an example of a 20th-century regional housing design. The one-and-a-half-story Webb House features a gabled roof, a roofed porch in columns that are full-hipped, and a T-plan design. By the community effort, the house was restored and preserved as a sample of the early 1900s regional architecture.
Lyman Whitaker wind sculptures
Lyman Whitaker’s wind sculptures are whimsical and playful while still offering incredible craftsmanship and a genuine philosophy and worldview. He uses his concern about the environment and our societal impact on it to fuel his artwork, forcing viewers to appreciate the natural world that brings out the best in his pieces.
Webb House
John Rueben Webb worked on the Cotton Belt Railroad for 44 years, was the unofficial mayor of the town that became Colleyville — and manager of a fiddle band called the “Grapevine Rabbit Twisters.”
The Tennessee native who came to Texas in 1897 also was the man who built one of Colleyville’s few historic landmarks, the house named after him at 405 Shelton Drive. The old home shares an expanse of grass at Bransford Park with a train caboose and an antique baggage cart, relics of a time when the area that is now Colleyville was the town of Bransford.
Webb, the owner of the last general store in the town, built the house in 1914 to replace a family home that had burned down, according to the 2006 book “Colleyville: Then and Now.”
That year at the store, the book says, snuff and lard vied with flour and baking powder for top sellers. Summer sausage and canned salmon also were big, because refrigeration wasn’t available. Rub-boards, shoe nails, and castor oil were kept in stock. Supplies came to the store by train on Wednesdays.
Webb built his new home in the style of a T-plan house, meaning that the gables are perpendicular, in the shape of a T. The ceilings of the porches are painted blue, to keep away wasps and prevent birds from nesting, said Mona Gandy, communications and marketing director for the City of Colleyville.
The city purchased the house in 1979 as part of the property where it planned to build a water tower and service area. By 1985, the Texas Historical Commission decided the house should be saved because its architectural style is representative of the region.
The city eventually restored the house, and it was dedicated in 2002.
Webb, who died in 1953, had closed his store in 1925 when he said “autos and the highway killed Bransford,” according to the book.