PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
APRIL 2016
and big open house,” Mary said with
a sense of satisfaction. The open
house idea caught on and 36 years
later has become a Texas Tradition
here in Parker County. The Kemps
started out opening up the cabin for
school tours, allowing school kids to
file through while they “oohed and
awed” at the simple utilitarianism of
the structure — to them a tangible
portal to a way of life long gone. After
a few years they opened the doors to
the general public. Not wanting to
interfere with Easter celebrations, in
44
the early years, the Kemps held their
open houses in March. Then concerns
over nasty weather caused them to
move it up to April; the last few years’
events occurring the second Saturday of the month. And the scope has
changed a bit. The once all-day affair
is now a half-day afternoon event.
“Half of my volunteers died,”
Mary said. “It takes over a hundred
volunteers to put it on the way we
used to do it. They died, got old; it
just got to where we couldn’t do it.
When we had it open a full day, we
would have three to four thousand
people. Now we have about 1,500
people in four hours — still a good
crowd. And some people come up to
me and say: ‘I enjoyed this so much.
This year it wasn’t so crowded.’”
Nine rustic structures make up
Kemp’s nostalgic Nebo Valley village.
The pre-Civil War Shaw-Kemp cabin
built in 1856 is the jewel in the Nebo
Valley crown. A board-and-batten
room was added on the west side of
the log structure in 1876 — the coun-