Timber Cove, a small subdivision on Taylor Lake, was where many of the early astronauts settled when the space program moved to Houston. Gus Grissom and Wally Schirra, two of the original seven, lived next door to each other on Pine Shadows. Scott Carpenter and John Glenn lived on Sleepy Hollow Court, as did Pete Conrad of the second astronaut group, and Jim Lovell, also of that second group, lived on Lazywood Lane. The neighborhood pool on Shorewood Drive was built in the shape of a Mercury capsule. Launch days turned the streets into a press camp. Before a flight, television crews put up transmission towers and camera platforms in front yards, and photographers shot over back fences. Sightseers on tour buses asked the neighbors which house was whose, and the neighbors, by the Houston Chronicle's account, practiced creative misdirection: they lied.
The neighborhood also lived through the program's losses and its narrow escapes. Grissom died in the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967. In April 1970, when Lovell came home from Apollo 13, neighbors with flashlights walked his car down the street to his house, and he told them he was glad to be back.
Its developers had conceived it in 1958 as a lakeside getaway, before the space center was planned. The astronauts' former houses are private homes.
Getting there
29.5783, -95.0511
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