How Timberwood got here

What the record shows

• The subdivision dates to 1977. Sections 1 and 2 were both filed with the Harris County Clerk on September 13, 1977, and the neighborhood was laid out in numbered sections the county roll still records on every parcel. The plats are public and searchable by subdivision name.¹ Every parcel, shaded by the section it was platted in:

1,018 parcels carry a Timberwood section number, spread across nine sections. The numbering runs to 10, but there is no Section 8: it appears in neither the County Clerk's plat index¹ nor the full countywide appraisal roll.² The section counts in the table are this Record's own tally of the appraisal district's public data file.²

It is not built out. Section 10 was platted in 2020 and replatted in 2023,¹ and 75 of its 76 lots are still owned by the builder on the appraisal roll.² The last section of Timberwood is a subdivision under construction, not history.

A separate plat called Timberwood Condo shares the name and nothing else. It is in Houston 77015, about twenty miles from here, and its 160 accounts are not counted above.²

• Harris Central Appraisal District groups much of it under codes beginning 2403, one labelled "TIMBERWOOD PT 3,4,6 YB>90".³
• Timberwood Park sits on Kingfisher and is maintained by the City of Humble. The city says "The park was established in 1986".⁴ The park reserve itself was dedicated on the 1977 plat, and the city gives no source for 1986. See parks for the size, which the city and the county do not agree on.
• The houses were built in two blocks, not one. Zero homes on the appraisal roll were built between 1985 and 1990, which is the oil bust showing up in the record.² The stock is early-1980s and 1990s, with scattered newer infill, a handful after 2005 and a few after 2015. Any description of this neighborhood as late-1980s construction is wrong.
• Streets were named for birds from the beginning.

Not yet documented

Almost none of the interesting history is online. It sits in the county clerk's filings and in the memories of the people who bought here first. This page is incomplete, and the gaps below are the reason.

The original developer and builders. This is findable, not lost. Each section plat is on file with the Harris County Clerk and has the developer's name on it, and the deed restrictions filed with it name who sold the land. Nine plats, nine filing dates, and the build order of the whole neighborhood falls out of them. The builder of Section 10 is a matter of record: Candlewood Homes, which still holds almost all of it.

Why the numbering skips 8. Section 8 was never filed. Whether it was planned and abandoned, or renumbered into another section, is not in the plat index.¹

What stood here before 1977. Timber, pasture, or part of a larger tract.

What the houses originally sold for. Somebody has an original closing statement in a box in a closet.

Whether a civic association ever existed. Texas associations governed by Chapter 209 of the Property Code have to file a management certificate with the Texas Real Estate Commission, and the public can search that database by name or location.⁵ No Timberwood association is in it, which fits with there never having been a required one. A volunteer civic club is a different thing and would not be listed there anyway.

Photographs. Of the entrance, a street under construction, the park before the playground, a flooded ditch, a Fourth of July.

A neighbor who moved in during the eighties is the only available source for most of this. Nothing on the internet has it.

See also

• About Timberwood
• Deed restrictions and no HOA, which explains what those 1977 filings still do