Along the JFK50 Geotrail: The House on Neely Street

Neely Street house where LHO and family rented
the upstairs apartment upon return from Russia.

While you are still in the Oak Cliff area, another stop along your JFK geocaching tour will take you to a big yellow house on Neely Street. 

What makes this house of interest, besides the geocache located nearby of course, is the now infamous photo of house resident Lee Harvey Oswald posing in the back garden with the gun that would allegedly be used to shoot JFK and a communist newspaper.



While there, I was able to take a look in the backyard where the photo was taken and posed in the same spot against the fence while holding a copy of the very recognizable photo. 

Another surreal Dallas moment for me as nothing has really changed since the time the original was taken and if you imagined really hard you could see Oswald standing there with gun and paper in hand and his wife Marina snapping the camera.


It was here in this rented upstairs apartment that Oswald and his wife, Marina, had lived with their small child after they returned from Russia.

Oswald apparently was quite proud of that photograph, for he would later send a copy of it to his political confidante, a Polish instigator and expat named George de Mohrenschildt.

On the back of the photograph, Oswald has inscribed it to his friend and added the line in Russian, “Hunter of Fascists. Ha. Ha. Ha.” When de Mohrenschildt discovered the photograph in his papers years later, he would call it Oswald’s gift from the grave.

Although Marina acknowledged taking the photos, conspiracy theorists have long suggested they were faked in order to frame Oswald.

LHO and Marina with their daughter

Fake or no, it was still an interesting bit of history to relive!