By Brandt Mannchen
On Saturday, September 13, 2025, the Houston Sierra Club visited the Varner-Hogg (VHP) and Levi Jordan Plantations (LJP) in Brazoria County. These two historic sites are managed by the Texas Historical Commission. Both Maggie and Reece at VHP and LJP respectively, were very helpful during our tour of the two sites.
The VHP was bought in 1824 and contained a league of land, about 4400 acres, which bordered the Brazos River on the east and included part of Varner Creek in what was then Mexico. It was part of Stephen F. Austin’s “Old Three Hundred” Anglo settlers’ colony which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to near Bryan, Texas, along the Old San Antonio Road (El Camino Real).
VHP also later was the home of Texas Governor Jim Hogg and provided a place at the turn of the 20th Century to relax, grow Pecan trees, run cattle, and pump oil from the West Columbia Oil Field.
The LJP was purchased in 1848 and was on about 2200 acres. It grew cotton and sugar cane (which was processed for sugar and molasses).
It was the slave labor of Africans that made both of these plantations successful. This horrible and sad time has been admirably documented at both historic sites. You can follow the history of these two sites and see how plantations were run. The complicated and intertwined communities of free and enslaved people are shown and how they lived with each other at both VHP and LJP.
The structures, tools, and processes used during plantation time and in later years at the two historic sites are documented and written about in plain but interesting narratives.
In addition, at both sites, there is remnant “Columbia Bottomlands” forest. This unique coastal forest has Pecan, Live Oak, Hackberry, Water Oak, and many other trees and vines, Dwarf Palmettoes, and other plants. This forest provides a background, baseline, and set-piece for how people found the land and what they did to the land after they settled it.
It was a great outing and those who attended had a wonderful time, plus some good BBQ in West Columbia. A little history never hurts anyone when you can do this in the “Columbia Bottomlands” in Brazoria County.