Background

The Edwards Plateau where the national park is located was first inhabited by the Tonkawa and later the Comanche people. The soils in this area made the land suitable for agriculture and began to attract European American settlers in the 1840s. The ancestors of Lyndon B. Johnson followed shortly afterward. Rounding up unbranded, free-ranging longhorn cattle that had been introduced to the region by Spanish explorers allowed individuals, including Lyndon B. Johnson's grandfather, to establish their fortunes in the Texas cattle business. Cattle drives were a part of that business in the 1860s and 1870s, but this period in the region's history came to a close by the end of the 1880s when the open range was fenced with barbed wire, and improved breeds of cattle and new varieties of pasture grass introduced. Agriculture is still important today, but the beauty of the Hill Country attracts tourists and recreational users as well, and many ranchers lease their land for sport hunting.

Johnson's birthplace and boyhood home in Johnson City became a national historic site in 1969. The LBJ Ranch district, which includes the "Texas White House," was donated to the National Park Service in 1972 with the request by President Johnson that it "remain a working ranch and not become a sterile relic of the past." The national historical park is honoring President Johnson's request by continuing to operate a cattle ranch using the best modern scientific methods available. The park raises and maintains a herd of Hereford cattle that are of the same genetic strain as those raised by the president. Park staff have also worked with Texas A&M University and the National Park Service (NPS) Santa Fe Support Office to design and implement an integrated pest management (IPM) program that greatly reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides in comparison to the 1950s and 1960s.

The park is working with neighboring property owners to create viewshed easements that preserve the rural character of the land. Because an important part of the interpretive story for the national park is the period of the cattle drives, the park has begun a program of prescribed burns in some areas to remove nonnative vegetation and return the landscape to its presettlement appearance.

The national park operates in association with the Lyndon B. Johnson State Historical Park to provide opportunities for visitors to experience the local and regional context that shaped the policies and programs of the last frontier president's administration.