A brief history of Quanah Parker’s Star House

The Star House was built in 1889 by Texas cattlemen on what is now Fort Sill’s west range for Quanah Parker and his family as a reward for leading his tribe and the Kiowa and Apache tribes to enter a lease agreement for five North Texas ranchers to graze cattle on the reservation with annual payments going to the tribes. He lived there until his death in 1911 and his daughter purchased the property.

With 10 stars painted on its roof, the house became an iconic symbol of Parker, who became known as the “Last Comanche Chief.”

Among the notable guests to visit Parker at his Star House were President Theodore Roosevelt; Commissioner of Indian Affairs R. G. Valentine; Texas cattlemen Charles Goodnight, Burk Burnett, Tom Burnett, and Dan Waggoner; Gen. Hugh Scott, Gen. Nelson Miles, and Gen. Frank Baldwin; Sioux Chief American Horse, Comanche Chiefs Wild Horse, Isa-tai, and Powhay; and Apache medicine man Geronimo and other Indian leaders, according to Bill Neeley, author of “The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker.”

In danger of being demolished in 1956 when Fort Sill expanded its artillery range, the Army moved the house to near the road between Cache and the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Herbert Woesner Jr. bought the home and moved it to Eagle Park Amusement Park on the grounds of the Cache Trading Post.

It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.