Pictured: E.R and Ann Taylor Park in Houston, Texas. Photo courtesy of WanderWisdom.
For many, ecological and historical restoration is mutually exclusive. That is not the case for the Houston Parks and Recreation Department (HPARD). Restoration, in any form, involves the active preservation of resources. For one Houston park, preservation of natural ecosystems perfectly aligns with preserving the history of its former human inhabitants. For many of Houston’s parks, preservation involves actively restoring prairies, forests and wetlands to their historic ecological conditions. It has also taken the form of historical preservation, where historically significant lands, their structures and the knowledge stored within them are preserved; with their significance to the communities who built them acknowledged. For HPARD, ecological restoration expands past the bounds of green spaces and wetlands to bring out the humanity in these efforts as seen in E.R. and Ann Taylor Park.
Seemingly tucked in plain sight south of downtown Houston, E.R. and Ann Taylor Park spans 25.6 acres and centuries of Texan history. Examining aerial imagery from the 1940s shows the site and surrounding areas to have once been coastal prairie pothole habitat, a critically endangered ecosystem that spanned much of the coastal areas along Texas and Louisiana. In fact, trees were a rare occurrence throughout much of Houston except along the linear bayou corridors that flow down into Galveston Bay.
With lands being developed for agricultural and urban use, pristine coastal prairie habitats became scarce. Even the undeveloped prairie land became overgrown with trees, an expected occurrence when the natural processes that maintain prairie habitat, such as fire and grazing, are removed. Since the donation of the land to HPARD in 1986, the park has been known as a forested natural area. Today, under the leadership of HPARD’s Natural Resources Division, the park is being restored to align with its historic coastal prairie habitat conditions.
HPARD’s Natural Resources Division has been working to restore habitats within Houston for almost a decade. In 2022, the City of Houston passed a Nature Preserve Ordinance, preserving the highest quality natural habitats in parks, limiting development of those areas, and highlighting the importance of protecting and managing natural habitat for local communities and native wildlife. In alignment with restoration goals, natural habitats are restored to their pre-urban development conditions. E.R and Ann Taylor Park, along with other prairie Nature Preserves, are cleared of most trees. In their place are planted a mix of native grasses and forbs, all grown in HPARD’s greenhouse with hand-collected seeds from remnant prairies around Houston. HPARD prairies are managed with tools that mimic natural prairie processes, mowing to mimic animal grazing and prescribed fire to mimic natural wildfires. The process of ecological restoration highlights the importance of connecting land back to its history.
E.R. and Ann Taylor Park is also the setting of abundant human history and significance to many, including the Sunnyside community of Houston. Edward R. Taylor was born in 1845 to a family who later became successful in the cotton industry and influential in the public education system in Houston. After contracting tuberculosis as a prisoner of war in the Confederate Army, Edward was discharged and cared for by a young woman who was enslaved, named Ann George from Hungerford, Texas. Edward and Ann fell in love and unofficially married as interracial marriage was illegal at the time in Texas. Following the birth of their first child, they moved to the land we now call E.R and Ann Taylor Park and established a 640-acre farm and homestead with their children. The park, donated to HPARD by the family, is the location of the original homestead and contains the cemetery where Ann is buried with three of her children.
HPARD works with community groups across Houston to share the ecological and human history at the site through habitat restoration events and the creation of interpretive signage along the trail system. It also fosters a venue for community events, such as The Witness Series from the Artist Community Collective based in Houston. The series explores Indigenous, African American, Latino and Asian connections to nature and art. The E.R and Ann Taylor Park was one location in the eight-part series that took place in March 2025. The restoration efforts of HPARD allow Houston community members to have access to and connect with histories that may have otherwise been lost.
Parks and recreation provides an invaluable service to the community by preserving both the natural environment and the history that shaped it. Through the efforts of HPARD, Ann Taylor and her life can be commemorated, with the environment surrounding her final resting place preserved. The power of community and parks and recreation can be felt by every park user as they experience the land for outdoor recreation, volunteering for restoration projects, birding and community events. This ability to preserve, educate and honor both spaces and people is at the center of parks and recreation.
Kelli Ondracek is the natural resources manager for City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department. Barbara Kapustin is a program manager for community and environmental resiliency at NRPA.
Acknowledgements
Special thank you to the dedication of park and recreation professionals in Houston who make this work possible and to the CITGO Petroleum Corporation for their funding support.
Special thanks to the following individuals:
- Dr. Beverly J Dorsey Stevenson
- Kristi Rangel
- Ann Hamilton
- Joy Hester
- Houston Audubon Society