ROCKHOUSE, TEXAS (Austin County). Rockhouse was a small farming community four miles west of Industry on State Highway 159 in extreme western Austin County near the Fayette county line. Settlement in the vicinity began in the late 1850s when Victor Witte, an immigrant farmer from Hanover, Germany, constructed a stone house at La Bahia Prairie on the headwaters of Pastoren Creek. As other German settlers took up residence nearby, the town came to be known as Rockhouse. When a post office was established in 1871 the town lay in eastern Fayette County, but a boundary alteration not long after shifted it into Austin County. The community was bypassed in the 1890s by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway and began to decline. The post office had been discontinued by 1907. In 1918 there were twelve pupils enrolled at the Rockhouse School. In 1936 the community had a population estimated at twenty-five and one business. In 1948 the population stood at an estimated twenty-five. In 2000 the population was thirty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rudolph L. Biesele, The History of the German Settlements in Texas, 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930; rpt. 1964).
