Michaelis, M.G., Ranch

This 288-acre ranch near Kyle in Hays County, Texas, began in 1898 when Max Gustav Michaelis Sr. acquired the land. Its focal point is a one-story Modified L-plan house with Queen Anne detailing, including a wrap-around porch, bay window, patterned shingles and a turreted gazebo. The house was built in 1898 and remodeled in 1902, and descendants of the founder have lived in it ever since. Around it stand stone and frame barns, open sheds, silos, pens, a mule scale, a well and an old gasoline pump, along with dry-stack rock walls and interlocking cedar fences. Michaelis built a large business breeding mules, which were sold to the U.S. military and exported to mines and plantations abroad. After a fire destroyed the great barn in the mid-1930s, smaller barns and sheds replaced it. From 1955 the ranch became known for breeding and exhibiting Charolais cattle. The district counts 27 contributing and 6 noncontributing resources.