Boots, Chicano Soul, Conservation, Land, Texas, Water, Water

Forgotten Crossings at the Edge of Texas – Richard Parker’s book

April 17, 2025 No Comments

https://www.texasobserver.org/forgotten-crossings-el-paso/

Editor’s Note: Author Richard Parker died early last month, days after publication of his book The Crossing. “My dad was a person that loved learning about the world around him, and we saw that in his writing,” his daughter Olivia told the Albuquerque Journal. He was 61.

For years, one of my favorite places to visit in El Paso was the crossing where the Spanish conquistador Don Juan Onate and several hundred Spanish, mestizo, and Indigenous settlers crossed the Rio Grande/Río Bravo—El Paso del Norte—in 1598 on their expedition from Mexico to northern New Mexico.

The spot has all kinds of significance. The first Europeans entered present-day Texas here. It’s where the expansion of the Spanish empire to California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas began. The El Camino Real trail to Santa Fe and Taos runs through here.

Part of the site’s appeal is how it has been ignored and willfully hidden. The four-acre site is a little sliver of forgotten territory squeezed between the 15-foot border fence and the channeled river to the west and Paisano Drive, the CanAm Highway, railroad tracks, and Interstate 10 to the east. It’s hard to get to and maybe too close to the border for the Border Patrol’s liking, I guess.

For years, I’d take a meal at La Hacienda Mexican restaurant in the old house built in the 1850s by Simeon Hart, who operated El Paso’s first mill, so I could get a close up view of the crossing. Even when the restaurant was open, the area felt deserted. On one afternoon visit, I watched three teenage males emerge from the brush by the border fence and make haste toward Paisano Drive, having made their own crossing.

Just beyond the restaurant’s parking lot is a paved semi-circular plaza consisting of four markers along with a fountain that no longer flows, a mere stone’s throw from the fence and the miserable channel that passes for the Rio Grande. The markers commemorate the place as the major east-west link for telegraph lines and railroads in the United States and James Magoffin and Simeon Hart, portrayed as civic leaders and agents of the Confederacy during the Civil War who helped thwart Union soldiers from taking El Paso.

Since the closing of La Hacienda, access to the crossing has been blocked by a chain-link fence.

Behind La Hacienda is the pocket-sized Doniphan Park with a small playscape and half court, plus the original Fort Bliss, a two-story adobe that was long forgotten since the military installation relocated east of Mount Franklin long ago.

I was always puzzled why the site was willfully forgotten, as if it was a history city and state leaders didn’t want you to know about.

The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story is the title of Richard Parker’s new rich cultural and political history of El Paso. By virtue of the book being about El Paso, it’s an adventure into the Other Texas. El Paso has never really belonged to the Lone Star State. It’s in a different time zone. The landscape is sprawling desert pocked with dry mountain ranges, far from forests, lakes, and anything green. It’s dry and dusty, the antithesis of Texas alongside and east of Interstate 35, where most of the population lives. El Paso is the American West, geographically closer to Los Angeles than to Orange, Texas.

Parker writes about the tribes and traders who lived and traveled through the region before the Europeans arrived, and he makes the case that agriculture was practiced in the Lower Valley of El Paso before just about anywhere else on the continent. Even after the arrival of Juan Onate, Parker writes, the different folks who passed through El Paso generally got along—excepting the fierce Apache people—until the arrival of Anglos, the United States, and Texas.

As part of New Spain, then Mexico, El Paso prospered as a trading center and commercial hub where many cultures mixed and mingled. The troubles started, according to this telling, at the end of the Mexican War in 1848 when the Rio Grande was declared the international boundary and Mexico ceded all claims to Texas and the Southwest.

The new immigrants arriving in El Paso came mostly from the east, not the south, and included all kinds of outlaws, hustlers, and rapscallions, leading to a half-century of bloodshed (Cormac McCarthy’s sweet spot) and El Paso’s reputation as the Gunfighter Capital of the World. This mythic Marty Robbins-and-Felina-at-Rosa’s-Cantina version of El Paso has substance: Plaques on downtown streets identify where John Wesley Hardin was killed and where four men were shot dead in five seconds.

Parker profiles a very different Pancho Villa from the one portrayed in legend, and he cites Villa’s numerous ties to the city.

Mexican Americans suffered discrimination from “Juan Crow” segregation laws in Texas, often forced to attend separate schools and routinely refused service in restaurants and public facilities, even lynched because of the color of their skin. Efforts to delouse Mexican immigrants who commuted to and worked in El Paso with poison gas in the 1930s were successfully stopped, although the method caught the eye of German Nazi scientists, who employed a similar method in their concentration camps.

Parker also writes of tolerance and progress, such as when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to make inroads in El Paso in the 1920s and was rebuffed; of Company E and the Texas Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division and other uncredited Mexican-American heroes of World War Two; the Bracero program that admitted farmworkers from Mexico; the election of Raymond Telles as the first Hispanic mayor of a major city in the United States when he was picked to lead El Paso in 1957; and the Texas Western College Miners winning the NCAA basketball championship in 1966 with its starting lineup of all-African-American players beating the all-White University of Kentucky Wildcats.

He writes of the military, immigration, the drug war—elements that define life in the borderlands—and of the Guggenheim-owned ASARCO copper smelter smokestack, the tallest in the world when it was built, and its history as a spewing font of noxious lead, arsenic, and cadmium.

The negative Anglo/U.S./Texas influence culminates in the murder of 23 shoppers at an El Paso Wal-Mart by a 21-year-old racist from the Dallas area in 2019. Parker makes clear the killings were the end product of the hate-spewing, Mexico-bashing U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Parker’s manuscript could have used a more thorough edit. He sometimes tries to connect the dots between dates and events to make a point but doesn’t always hit the mark, particularly when breaking down the dynamics between Indigenous tribes in the region and delving into details of the Mexican Revolution.

A photograph caption reads: “A view of contemporary El Paso’s East Side, with the Franklin Mountains, rising to seven thousand feet above sea level, in the background.” But the actual image, taken from the top of the Doubletree Hotel downtown, is of El Paso’s Westside, along with Juárez, with the Juárez mountains in the background.

But The Crossing brims with El Paso pride, citing elements that give El Paso its character, teasing out the small stuff that makes it unique and unlike the rest of Texas, to the point that Parker suggests El Paso secede from Texas and join New Mexico because they’re more aligned culturally, socially, and politically, as well as geographically.

Parker tells his own story, too, growing up on El Paso’s Westside, i.e. the more prosperous side. His Arkansas-born Anglo father managed a maquiladora across the river in Juárez. His Hispanic mother came from Monterrey. Parker has been a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, an opinion writer for The Atlantic and the New York Times, and an instructor at the University of Texas and Texas State University. His previous book Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America suggested Texas portends where the United States is headed.

Halfway through the book, I started wondering how Parker was going to frame his storytelling for Texas media at book events, whether he’d pull punches or be as blunt as he is in print. Then, days after publication, Parker was found dead in his residence.

Two years ago, a non-profit called Abara House announced plans to restore Hart’s Mill/La Hacienda restaurant and repurpose the site as a multi-use borderlands center. A master plan has been designed, but to realize the project funds have to be raised.

For now, the crossing is closed to people like you and me. The best I can recommend is to Google 1720 Paisano, and when you get there, drive real slow and peer through the chain-links and the brush, and you might catch a glimpse of the four historic markers and forlorn fountain in the grassy clearing.

With Parker’s passing, The Crossing becomes a coda for his relationship to the borderlands, a place he portrays as a model of different cultures working together, tolerance, and understanding—a few things, he contends, the rest of Texas could learn from.

Blog, Books, Conservation, Film, Land, Marfa, Stewardship, Texas, Travel, Water, Water

Water Wars in West Texas

November 15, 2024 No Comments

https://landreport.com/water-wars-dell-city-el-paso

My story in The Land Report about water, springs, aquifers, Dell City, El Paso, Fort Stockton and Far West Texas.

RULE OF CAPTURE. The protracted legal battle over monetizing water rights in the Dell Valley hinged on age-old British common law.

Published On: October 30, 2024

Table of contents

It’s a familiar story: Big city needs water and is willing to pay for it. Property owners with extensive landholdings and abundant groundwater want to sell their water. Billionaires swoop in and buy surrounding acreage. Then, the local groundwater district redraws key boundaries restricting landowners’ ability to sell their water. Lawyers descend. Court battles ensue.

That’s the gist of the documentary film Water Wars, which has been screening at film festivals after debuting at the 2024 Dallas International Film Festival, where it won a grand jury prize. Directed by Mario Mattei, Water Wars is an engaging tale about an extremely complex issue.

Rule of Capture is a property right in Texas. If you own the land, you also own the water under your land. The landowner is able to capture all the water under their property. It’s theirs to do with as they please. That’s the theory, at least. But in Texas, a state that champions property rights, those rights are not as absolute as some landowners might think, and they come with all kinds of restrictions and limitations.

PIONEERING RANCHERS. Phil Guitar’s family began ranching in the Dell Valley long before its prodigious water resources were identified.

Guitar Ranch

Water Wars tells the story of Phil Guitar, a rancher whose properties are spread out across West Texas, including more than 30,000 acres in the Dell Valley. The valley surrounds Dell City, an isolated town of 245 that’s less than a square mile in size and is distinguished by the prettiest view of the Guadalupe Mountains, the highest range in Texas, as they rise majestically from the snow-white salt flats at their base. The view is especially scenic in the fall, with fields of red chiles ripening in the foreground.

That mountain range is now part of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Similarly, Dell City and Dell Valley have changed over the years. Phil Guitar’s granddaddy started ranching in this high plain in the Chihuahuan Desert after buying up part of the historic Figure 2 Ranch during the Great Depression. He was an entrepreneur who recognized value in owning land. The expanse included a watering stop for the old Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach service, which implied that a steady supply of water was available. Someday, there might be value in that, he thought.

The Lynch family, ably represented in the film by Laura Lynch, was a part of the next wave of immigrants to the Dell Valley: The farmers who moved in after geologists searching for oil found water instead in 1948. The Bone Spring-Victorio Peak Aquifer, 50 to 100 feet below the dry, rocky surface, contained a huge pool of water, most of it runoff from the Sacramento Mountains 100 miles north in southern New Mexico. So much water existed below the surface that when tapped, a well could produce more than 3,000 gallons a minute. With that much water, farmers could irrigate fields and grow crops, and the aquifer would recharge, filling up all over again.

In 1948, an ocean of water was discovered beneath the Chihuahuan Desert.

The Valley of Hidden Waters

Promoters declared Dell City “The Valley of the Hidden Waters,” and an influx of farmers responded. During the 1950s, enough cotton was farmed to keep six local cotton gins busy, including those owned by the Guitar family, who also had cottonseed oil mills and compresses. Alfalfa, chiles, melons, and onions were also cultivated.

Even with this sea of water, farming in the desert was a hit-or-miss proposition. In 1964, the end of the Bracero Program, which had brought millions of Mexican guest workers into the US labor pool, put many farmers out of business. In 1966, a torrential flood inundated Dell Valley, washing away crops and causing an estimated $4.3 million in damages. By the 1990s, Dell City had dwindled to just two cafes, a convenience store, a hardware store, and a bar. Ninety percent of the valley’s 40,000 acres of cropland was water-intensive alfalfa.

Meanwhile, approximately 90 miles west of the Dell Valley, the population of the El Paso-Juarez metropolitan area, which relies on the Rio Grande and the Hueco-Mesilla Bolsons Aquifer for drinking water, was approaching 2 million. A city utility, El Paso Water, went on the prowl for more dependable water and saw Dell Valley as a potential source.

The mission of the El Paso Water forced the agency to look far and wide for dependable water sources.

El Paso Water

For all their concerns that their big-city neighbor was out to steal their water, large Dell Valley landowners eventually reached a consensus: Pumping and shipping water to El Paso was potentially a lot more profitable than pumping water to their alfalfa and pepper fields.

On the other end of the proposition, Woody Hunt, El Paso’s most prominent developer, whose interests included pipeline construction, saw the writing on the wall and purchased 5,000 acres of farmland in the Dell Valley. Philip Anschutz, who ranks N^o. 88 on the 2024 Land Report 100, also started buying farmland in the Dell Valley. As a major investor in Union Pacific Railroad, Anschutz controlled a right-of-way crucial to the construction of a pipeline.

With the specter of a big water play, the board of Hudspeth County Underground Water Conservation District No. 1 voted that in order to determine how much water a landowner could export without impacting the aquifer, a landowner must have irrigated his acreage during a 10-year historical-use period from 1992 through 2002. Land that was not irrigated did not qualify. That restricted the Lynch family, who had put significant acreage into a government conservation program. It set up a classic battle pitting farmers against ranchers. Farmers pumped as much water as necessary to water their crops. Ranchers were far more conservative in their water use, utilizing stock tanks to provide water for their livestock, eschewing irrigation pumps. The district had effectively limited the Guitars’ and the Lynches’ opportunities to sell groundwater.

“Five percent of the property gets 95 percent of the water rights,” is how Jim Lynch put it.

The phrase water wars has a long history in the annals of the American West concurrent with its settlement by European immigrants two centuries ago. No matter where you go out West, water remains a contentious subject. There’s never enough.

Rule of Capture

As I watched the documentary film, I felt like the past 30 years of my life as a journalist were passing in front of me. I knew Dell City and the story of the Valley of the Hidden Waters and its future as a source of fresh water for the people of El Paso, 75 miles west. I recognized many of the characters in the film. And I knew about Rule of Capture.

My interest dated back to the mid-1980s, after I had become an avid swimmer at Barton Springs, a natural pool in Austin fed by artesian springs. I was visiting my friend Kirby Warnock at the Warnock homestead five miles east of Fort Stockton, a West Texas town that is a popular gas and rest stop along Interstate 10. On our way into Fort Stockton on a back road, I noticed sluice gates in the sandy scrub, concrete embankments, what appeared to be canals, and faint remnants of crop rows. What was up?

“There were 200 small truck farms out this way,” Kirby explained to me. “They were fed by Comanche Springs in town,” he said, referring to a historic gathering spot for Native Americans, Spanish explorers, and pioneering settlers that comprised the largest complex of artesian spring water in West Texas.

In 1955, landowners west of town, including Clayton Williams Sr., one of West Texas’s most distinguished civic leaders, drilled wells and installed diesel pumps to feed their crops and newly planted pecan orchards. After the irrigation got up to full speed, the springs stopped flowing for the first time in recorded history. The motorized pumps flooding alfalfa fields and pecan orchards were intercepting groundwater flowing from the Glass Mountains south of Fort Stockton toward Comanche Springs.

Comanche Springs

The truck farms east of town, and Fort Stockton’s biggest tourist attraction, the Comanche Springs swimming pool, soon dried up. Smaller landowners sued the irrigating farmers, but the Texas Supreme Court upheld Williams, et al’s rights to pump all the water they cared to pump, citing Rule of Capture. In Texas under Rule of Capture, the landowner owns the water under the surface. If the landowner can capture the water, they may do what they wish with it. Groundwater, the court ruled, was too “secret, occult, and concealed” to regulate.

Rule of Capture was established in England and adopted by Texas when it became a state back in the mid-19th century, when much of the Lone Star State meant the eastern, wetter half of present-day Texas. In the 21st century, Texas remains the only western state where Rule of Capture is a property right.

It seemed other greedy landowners could do what the pumpers did to Comanche Springs because groundwater transcended property lines.

Antelope Valley Ranch

In 1995, I attended a community meeting at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Fort Davis, a historic Texas mountain town, to gauge the potential impact. The small gathering included prominent area ranchers who had come to learn more about El Paso Water’s recent purchase of the 25,000-acre Antelope Valley Ranch between Marfa and Valentine. If El Paso was to continue growing, the city needed that groundwater.

There was a palpable fear among the ranchers at the Fort Davis meeting that El Paso Water threatened to drain them. Austin developer and attorney Richard Suttle explained what recourse they had, which wasn’t a whole lot.

“Up until tonight, I believed that the right to capture groundwater was an inalienable right,” a neighboring rancher, Chile Ridley, told me for a story I wrote for Texas Monthly. “But I have never been faced with this prospect. When something your neighbor does affects you, I say maybe we should look at the way things are currently designed. As property owners, we’re caretakers and stewards of the land. El Paso wouldn’t conserve it. I’m not at all clear what is the right thing. I’m just concerned about waking up some morning and not having water to drink.”

Another rancher close to Antelope Valley, Lynn Crittendon, added, “As a neighbor, I hope they act responsibly.”

Judge Lucius Bunton

In I997, I drove to Pecos to visit Judge Lucius Bunton. Four years earlier, Bunton made an exception to Rule of Capture in a decision that protected endangered species. Bunton mandated limits to how much water could be taken from the Edwards Aquifer, a vast groundwater complex that has long sustained San Antonio and surrounding communities.

Bunton’s decision led to the creation of the Edwards Aquifer Authority by the Texas Legislature and, indirectly, to Texas’s first comprehensive water plan.

“I’m not going to take credit for that,” Judge Bunton told me for a profile I wrote for Texas Monthly, “But I encouraged some years ago, long before this water bill and the aquifer authority, that the legislature do something. The state of Texas ought to do something. This is a step in the right direction.”

Bunton grew up on a hardscrabble Presidio County ranch located between Marfa and Presidio not far from the old Shafter silver mine. The judge allowed how Rule of Capture worked pretty well in the eastern half of the state. But in the part of Texas where he grew up, Rule of Capture was a direct threat: The biggest pump rules.

I had already visited Dell City, identified by a weathered billboard as The Valley of the Hidden Waters, where the shadow of El Paso loomed large.

Hudspeth County Herald

The Hudspeth County Herald had been covering the rural versus urban water issues extensively. One of Laura Lynch’s uncles, Jim Lynch, had been farming in the Dell Valley since 1950. He was a major landowner, and he was also in charge of the weekly Herald.

“My thinking is, if we have to give up our water, all of us should share in the money,” he told me. “If a few farmers sell out, they’ll make money, the water will diminish, and everyone else will have to go out of business without compensation.”

Lynch understood the dynamic well. “We all know El Paso is bigger than any of us, and if they choose to take this water, we don’t have the money collectively to fight them. Phil Anschutz is one of the wealthiest men in America. If he’s together with Hunt, there’s no stopping them,” Lynch said. The Lynch family eventually entered into a partnership with Anschutz.

State Water Plan

In 1997, the Texas Legislature, under the direction of Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, enacted Senate Bill 1, a 50-year “ground up” plan to provide for water in anticipation of Texas’s projected growth. The State Water Plan avoided directly addressing Rule of Capture — legislators and state leadership regarded the property right as sacrosanct and too hot to handle — and instead established 16 regional planning areas, each region charged with balancing rural and urban needs while championing creation of groundwater districts that could restrict water use in order to preserve the resource, subject to voter approval. The rub was that since the state did not provide budgets for the districts that were being created, most districts would be understaffed and underfinanced. A single lawsuit could gobble up a district’s annual budget.

Today in Texas, regardless of Rule of Capture, if the land you own is within a groundwater district, your groundwater use may be restricted (although that has rarely been the case). If the land you own is outside a groundwater district, you can use as much water as you can pump. And so can your neighbor, who may or may not have a bigger pump or intentions similar to yours.

Despite those efforts by the state, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed the right of Ozarka, the bottled-water company, to mine a spring in East Texas for commercial purposes, even though the mining caused neighbors’ wells to go dry.

Kinney County, about 125 miles west of San Antonio, was a vivid example of a local groundwater district trying to do the right thing minus finances. The district was challenged by a handful of landowners who wanted to sell and ship their groundwater to San Antonio, an idea that generated pushbacks from farmers and ranchers who wanted to continue to use their groundwater locally and feared a few greedy landowners would dry their wells.

Water marketers, legislators, attorneys, and lobbyists joined the fray, arguing over how much (if any) water could be pumped and sold outside the county without impacting springs, creeks, and streams inside the county. The argument led to accusations of mismanagement, ballooning legal fees, and groundwater district meetings being videotaped by landowners who wanted to sell water.

“Eight-tenths of one percent of county property is irrigated,” Kinney County judge Tully Shahan said, “and the irrigators are trying to tell us what to do with 100 percent of the water.” Darlene Shahan, Tully’s wife, was the general manager of the groundwater district.

T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens saw the potential in water as a commodity made possible by Rule of Capture. He organized landowners in the vicinity of his 65,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch near Pampa in the Texas Panhandle to form a compact to sell water to thirsty cities. If landowners organized, they could avoid the contentious infighting in Kinney County.

I visited Pickens’ Mesa Vista Ranch, studied his plans, and wrote an article for Texas Monthly titled “Boone Pickens Wants to Sell You His Water.” Even though the amount of water that had already been pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer made irrigated farming no longer feasible in the Texas Panhandle, Pickens and his allies perceived value in pumping and shipping the precious commodity.

Ten years later, I ran into Pickens at an event in Dallas and reintroduced myself. His eyes narrowed in recognition.

“You cost me a lot of money,” he said acidly. “What happened?” I asked.

He told me how the compact he’d organized ended up having to sell its groundwater not to Dallas or to Fort Worth but to the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority that serves Amarillo, Lubbock, and other communities in the Texas Panhandle and the South Plains.

“At least you sold it to your neighbors,” I said, congratulating Pickens on doing the right thing.

50-Year Plan

In 2001, I spent a day in El Paso driving around the city with a water cop, looking for telltale signs of water spilling over the curbs of residences and businesses around town. I also took a meeting with Ed Archuleta, the longtime general manager of El Paso Water. Archuleta did his best to make the case that when it came to water, El Paso was the most conservation-focused city in the entire state.

Archuleta cited El Paso Water’s 50-year plan designed to meet the projected needs of 1.3 million people. Eight million gallons of treated wastewater were being recycled into El Paso’s Hueco-Mesilla Bolsons Aquifer each and every day. Rationing ordinances and rate increases had reduced overall demand by 20 percent. In addition, El Paso Water had a desalination plant that treated and cleaned 29 million gallons of brackish and otherwise undrinkable groundwater every day.

El Paso Water intended to secure its water responsibly. This wasn’t going to be another Chinatown where Noah Cross and other power players engineered the theft of water rights from Owens Valley farmers to build a new and better Los Angeles. If El Paso Water purchased faraway land for future use of the water beneath it, then it was imperative to continue farming on that ground as long as it was economically feasible.

Dell Valley landowners did their homework and got on the same page. The science was clear. Fifty-thousand acre-feet of water could be pumped annually, and the aquifer could still fully recharge.

Unlike most modern water stories, this one had a happy ending for the landowners — with a couple of caveats.

Phil Guitar, whose right to use the water beneath his property had been restricted by the board of Hudspeth County Underground Water Conservation District No. 1, appealed his case all the way to the Texas Supreme Court — and won. Guitar’s argument boiled down to the definition of the word “use.”

Then Guitar met with the ground-water district and helped rewrite its rules. He was then able to drill test wells on his land to prove up the groundwater so a deal with El Paso Water could be cut to the satisfaction of both parties.

$222 Million in Water Purchases

The Lynches, who were also fighting the groundwater district, sold their 26,470-acre CL Ranch for $50 million in 2016. Phil Anschutz and Woody Hunt got a healthy return on investment when Anschutz’s 16,000-acre CLM Ranch also sold in 2016 for $66 million.

El Paso Water has spent more than $222 million buying 20 properties and now owns 70,000 acres of the Dell Valley, along with necessary permits to pump the water. The requisite pipeline due west to El Paso has yet to be constructed. Meanwhile, the utility has sustained the farming tradition in the Dell Valley, leasing 50,000 acres to farmers growing alfalfa and chiles. A young farmer can now break into the business in Dell Valley without owning any land.

El Paso Water’s deal with Dell Valley landowners led to the sale of the 40,000-acre Antelope Valley Ranch between Valentine and Marfa for $6 million in 2024, a tidy profit from the initial $1.5 million investment in 1995, according to Denise Parra of El Paso Water. The 150-mile pipeline from Antelope Valley to El Paso was projected to cost at least $470 million, far too expensive for the utility.

Keep an eye out for Water Wars in 2025. Think of it as a direct descendant of Jack Schaefer’s classic Shane, pitting farmers against ranchers in the New West. After screening Water Wars, I called Philip Guitar, one of the film’s producers and the son of the plaintiff in the aforementioned Texas Supreme Court case. One of my principal questions revolved around the standard story structure of a Western: Who wore the white hats and who wore the black hats?

MAKING A SPLASH. In April 2024, Water Wars won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Texas Feature at the Dallas International Film Festival.

Takeaways

“This is lined up for the viewer to determine who the bad guy is,” Philip said. “I’m not saying who the antagonist is. I’m not saying who the protagonist is. We are putting it out there for you to determine what you think. You figure out who you think it is. Maybe you think the antagonist is Phil Guitar. Maybe you think the antagonist is Phil Anschutz or Woody Hunt. Maybe you think the antagonist is El Paso Water.”

The board of the Hudspeth County Underground Water Conservation District definitely did not emerge unscathed. In the film, Laura Lynch noted that one board member shot a man twice and did time for another offense.

“What was the takeaway for landowners?” I asked Philip. “What did he want the film’s audience to think about?”

“Be aware of potential consequences that lie ahead,” Philip said. “It doesn’t matter if you have one acre or 10,000 acres. If you’re a landowner in Texas, you should look and ask, ‘Am I in a groundwater district?’ And if you are, ‘What are the rules of that district?’ It’s not a bad idea to get involved and see what your groundwater district is up to, what they’re doing, and what the laws are.

“You may think because it’s Rule of Capture, you’ve got the right to do anything you want with your water. And in most situations, you should. Our ruling helped usher in the idea that all landowners should be treated fairly and equitably. But these districts can be autonomous. They make their own rules. They need to be double-checked to make sure all landowners are being treated equitably.”

“And, if your land isn’t within the boundaries of a groundwater district, it helps to know about your neighbor’s use of groundwater and if their intent squares with yours,” I added.

“You could be drained dry,” Philip said.

There’s a bitter postscript to Water Wars. In 2023, after production on the documentary had wrapped, Laura Lynch, 65, was killed in a head-on collision on Highway 62 between Dell City and El Paso three days before Christmas. The photogenic grandmother was the voice of post-ag Dell City, buying derelict buildings and converting them into Airbnbs that catered to tourists visiting Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

It takes a special person to love a little town like Dell City. That was Laura.

TRAGIC LOSS. A founding member of the Dixie Chicks, Dell City native Laura Lynch was killed in a head-on collision after production wrapped.

#TexasPsych, Art, Big Bend, Land, Marfa, Travel

Gliding over Marfa

November 3, 2024 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/travel/gliding-through-the-skies-over-marfa/

A man in a red button-down shirt and red sunglasses stands next to a small glider plane in the desert. — Sarah M. Vasquez photo – Burt Compton has been flying in Marfa since he moved to town in 2001.

Gliding Through the Skies Over Marfa

By Joe Nick Patoski

October 11, 2024

Long before Marfa was an art town, a wedding events destination, the embodiment of small town cool—and even before the Marfa Lights—there was the Marfa Dry Line. It’s the invisible division where dry Pacific air meets warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that made Far West Texas weather special.

Burt Compton saw it as a teenager. “Dad and I came here in ’67 to fly,” he says. His father, a glider pilot who owned a glider port in south Florida, regarded Marfa highly. The location had all the right ingredients for the pursuit of motorless flight: vast flatlands surrounded by mountains with plenty of thermal updrafts to ride, along with the Marfa Dry Line.

As an adult, Compton became so smitten with the conditions, he sold his glider operation in Miami and moved to Marfa in 2001.

“Marfa’s the place for soaring in America,” he declares emphatically. “The World Gliding Championships in 1970 [in Marfa] was the first championship ever held in the United States. Neil Armstrong flew gliders here before he walked on the moon.”

It was the golden era of gliding thanks to improved technology and use of fiberglass and composites in construction. On July 31, 1964, Al Parker became the first glider pilot to soar more than 1,000 kilometers nonstop when he piloted his Sisu sailplane from Odessa to Kimball, Nebraska, a distance of 647 miles.

Compton’s FAA certification as a gliding instructor and pilot examiner takes him around the United States and frequently to Germany, where soaring first took hold, to certify pilots who want to fly in the U.S. on vacation.

In Marfa, he’s either flying, instructing locals, piloting passenger rides, or hanging out in the hangar, which is the staging area for the current Oktoberfest Annual Vintage/ Classic Sailplane Rally that runs through Oct. 18.

I booked a ride for $160, arriving at Marfa Municipal Airport at the appointed time on a weekday afternoon in late September. I follow the glider signs on the gravel road to an isolated hangar at the north end of the airport, headquarters of Compton’s Marfa Gliders Soaring Center. Compton and his crew of two, James Lewis and Bo Peebles, stand outside, scanning the skies looking for a glider circling high above the airport. A single engine Cessna piloted by John Cone flies by the hangar, dropping a tow rope.

Several white signs that have different town names, states, and countries plus mileage from Marfa are attached to a metal post facing the directions of their location. — Sarah M. VasquezThese flags represent the places Compton has been around the world.

It’s a “Blue Day,” in glider speak, meaning no clouds. Dry thermals, the magic ingredient that gives lift, are hard to see. With clouds, the thermals are directly beneath them. “That’s OK, because there’s still updrafts,” Compton explains. ”The sun heats the ground, the warm air is less dense than the surrounding air, so it rises in a column.” That’s what he’d be looking for.

Think of it as on ocean of air, he says. “There are currents and eddies. My Cessna 182 single engine airplane will tow us skyward with a 200-foot rope, like a motorboat towing a water skier,” he says. “I’m trying to fly just above the tow plane’s wake for the smoothest climb up that we can. That’s the bumpiest part of the ride.”

Lewis and Peebles push the glider, a German Schleicher ASK-13 two-seat trainer with a bright red fuselage and yellow wings, out of the hangar. They scan the skies for incoming air traffic. KMRF, like 95% of all airports in the United States, does not have a control tower, Compton explains.

Once the glider is in position, Compton shows me how it all works inside the cockpit. “There’s one lever here, we don’t know what it does. So don’t touch anything,” he jokes. He explains that the spoilers on the wings are air brakes, which are used to slow down, and how the glider flies without an engine. “Wings resisting gravity makes us fly forward, like a sled on a hill. A motorized plane is like a speedboat. This is like a sailboat, you got to keep thinking about the wind, updrafts. It’s like chess to checkers.”

My small frame allows a relatively easy squeeze into the seat behind Compton, although space is so tight, I remove my gimme cap lest it scrape against the clear canopy. A side vent is left open for air. Compton points to the side pocket where the barf bag was in case of motion sickness.

The day before, my wife reminded me that I’ve tossed my cookies in a helicopter flying over the Grand Canyon and in a DC 3 flying over the Rockies in a very turbulent snowstorm. Heck, I’ve gotten sick on a Tilt-A-Whirl. This would be interesting.

Safety harness secured by the crew, Compton continues the prep. “I’m going to ask you every few minutes, ‘How do you feel on a scale of one to 10?’ 10 being you’re good, 11 being this is the coolest thing you’ve ever done in your life,” Compton says as the cockpit closes. “If you’re below a 9 or 8, I’m going to bring you down smoothly and quickly.”

He completes his checklist, announcing his airbrakes are closed and locked. “Just don’t touch nothing,” he says. “Here we go.”

Compton warned me the takeoff would be noisy but as soon as the tow plane was airborne, I felt like I was waterskiing, sliding over the water from wake to wake. Then came enough of a bump for me to go “Whoa!” loud enough for Compton to chuckle over my response. “As a glider pilot, I’m saying ‘Good! There be updrafts!’”

A small glider plan lifts off the tarmac in the desert. — Sarah M. Vasquez photo Compton flies his glider at the Marfa Municipal Airport.

We release from the tow plane and things go quiet. No more engine buzz from the tow plane, just the sounds of the cool wind rushing through the side vent. Compton’s relaxed, clearly in his element, as he begings pointing out features in the brown landscape we’re flying above. “This is the Marfa plateau—desert grasslands. No oil here,” he says. “They keep trying to find it. There’s Cathedral Peak out there. There’s our golf course over there, with the trees. Highest in Texas, nine holes. There’s Marfa town.”

He keeps asking about my welfare and I tell him I’m a 9 or 10, although I did say 9 or 8 once. It’s an exciting sensation floating on an ocean of air, enough of an exotic thrill that Compton’s experience and constant monitoring of my well-being puts me at ease. As he reminds me, “I can land anytime you say.”

In the bright blue sky, I squint to see the Chisos Mountains of the Big Bend visible to the south through a faint haze.

“We’re just riding the waves,” Compton says. “Isn’t this beautiful?’

He talks about the history of Marfa as an 1880s railroad water stop named by a rail engineer’s wife who was reading the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Our conversation turns casual to menu prices at local restaurants while the side vent blows cool breezes into the cockpit like a big fan. Although summer is peak season for thermal updrafts, Compton says he prefers gliding in late spring and early fall to avoid the heat.

After about 20 minutes of circling over the Marfa Highlands, Compton checks in with the crew on the runway to see if it’s clear to land, then announces with a trace of resignation, “Well, I guess I better go on in.”

“Noooo” I protest.

“You want to go again?” he asks as we descend.

So we do. The second time around, Compton catches more updrafts, with the needle on the variometer in front of me jumping as the glider climbs hundreds of feet in altitude in a matter of seconds. No barf bag needed. In that moment, I know what it feels like to be a bird. Maybe even better.

Art, Blog, Events, Land, Texas, Travel

The Cadillac Ranch at 50

June 7, 2024 No Comments

The history of the Cadillac Ranch for TexasHighways.com

https://texashighways.com/travel-news/fifty-years-of-cadillac-ranch/

How the Amarillo art installation became an iconic American roadside attraction

By Joe Nick Patoski | Photographs by Wyatt McSpadden

The vintage Cadillacs at their original location in the 1970s

Fifty years ago on the summer solstice, three experimental architects and artists completed Amarillo’s iconic Cadillac Ranch. Facilitated by a larger-than-life eccentric millionaire, the permanent installation of 10 Cadillac sedans buried nose first at a 60-degree angle into the dirt of a flat field within eyeshot of Interstate 40 has become the Panhandle city’s No. 1 tourist destination and biggest roadside attraction. It’s a must-see for road trippers touring Route 66, America’s Mother Road, seen by more than 1.4 million visitors a year.

Cadillac Ranch at 50, an exhibit documenting the strange and quirky history of the site at the Amarillo Museum of Art, opens June 1 and runs through Aug. 15, with a special celebration on June 21. One hundred enlarged photographs by Wyatt McSpadden, who has documented Cadillac Ranch since its inception, share space with videos, drawings, and ephemera from Chip Lord from the Ant Farm art and architecture collective that dreamed up the project.

Lord and fellow outsider architect Doug Michels formed Ant Farm in San Francisco in 1968 for underground design projects. “We were doing concepts, sketches, and photo collages of imaginary landscapes and environments,” Lord says. “It was a way to realize some ideas that would expand on conventional architecture.”

When Hudson Marquez joined the group, the three bonded over their shared obsession with automobiles. “At Ant Farm, we were car crazy,” Marquez recalls. “It was always drawing cars, collaging cars, making art with cars. I had an idea to make seed packs where you could plant seeds that would grow cars. You could have a field of ’49 Fords or ’59 Cadillacs that would grow out of the ground.” But to realize any concept, they needed a physical site. And money.

Installing the vintage Cadillacs was no easy feat

The Ant Farm sent out letters with their idea to a number of eccentric millionaires around the country. Prominent Amarilloan Stanley Marsh 3 answered back with an oversized letter written in 36-point type. “I’d love to do something with you, but I only do things here in Amarillo,” Marquez recalls him saying.

Lord and Michels stopped in Amarillo after finishing the House of the Century, a tubular ferro cement lake house near Angleton built with Houston architect Richard Jost. By the end of their visit two days later, Marsh asked Lord and Michels to draft a proposal. “We went back to California and drew up this idea of making a monument to the rise and fall of the Cadillac tailfin,” Lord says. The drawing had a text box in the corner—the budget. They would need $250 to hire a backhoe, and $300 for each of the 10 cars. Marsh gave the Ant Farm the green light.

The Ant Farmers descended on Amarillo. They placed ads in the Amarillo Globe-News seeking used Cadillacs and checked out Marsh’s land holdings. They picked a site near Interstate 40 and the old Route 66. “They were mysterious, these three hippies,” says Wyatt McSpadden, the young photographer who worked for Marsh at the time. He remembers Lord, Michels, and Marquez lived on the property while putting the site together. “They were gone a lot because they were out shopping for cars, trying to make deals, get cars as cheap as they could.”

Finding the first car, the 1949 Cadillac, proved to be a struggle. They found one on the east side of Amarillo, though it cost them a whopping $700—far over budget. “As soon as Doug had the title, somebody pulled the canvas off the bed of the truck,” McSpadden remembers, “and it was full of sledgehammers and axes. Doug took an axe out and started beating on the front of the car. They didn’t care what the front of the car looked like. That was my first involvement with the Ant Farm and the Cadillacs.”

The Cadillacs were moved from their original spot to its current location in 1997

The first hole was dug, and they got the car into the ground. “We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Marquez says. “We hadn’t dug holes to put cars in before, and we didn’t know anyone who did, so we were just flying by the seat of our pants. We just dug some holes and drove the cars in at 60 degrees, same angle. We didn’t talk about that. It just happened to be. It looked good.” The whole endeavor took less than a week.

The day after the Cadillac Ranch was finished, Marquez rose before dawn and drove out to the site to watch the sunrise. “I was blown away,” he says. Marquez remembered a talk the radical French artist and sculptor Marcel Duchamp gave in Houston. His idea was that when someone sets out to create, they start from what they think is zero and in their mind is 100% of what they want to create. “It’s in your mind, but you never get to 100. That doesn’t happen,” Marquez says. “But that morning was as close to 100% as I ever got.”

On June 21, 1974, a huge party was held in celebration of the ranch, a big tent, open bar, and Amarillo notables included. Shortly after, the Ant Farmers returned to San Francisco to work on other ideas. “When it was first built, it wasn’t hyped yet,” says David Turner, who was the assistant director at the Amarillo Art Center at the time. “People didn’t know what it was. It was just this oddball group of cars some crazy rancher planted in his field.”

There was no signage identifying the site, making it hard to convey the installation was an artist-made sculptural piece. Seeing the installation up close required some want-to. “You used to have to stop on the road, take your life in your own hands, go through a barbed wire fence, and hope for the best,” says Tom Livesay, director of the Amarillo Art Center in 1974.

Though grafitti wasn’t part of the original plan, it’s become tradition for visitors to leave their mark

A year later, journalist Charles Kuralt, host of the folksy On the Road program on the CBS television network, passed by in his bus, pulled over, and put Cadillac Ranch on the map. He was charmed. “At first, we thought someone might be trying to raise little baby Cadillacs,” Kuralt says. “Then we thought maybe the farmer just parked them this way each year after he bought a new model.”

Marsh talked up the Ant Farm and compared the Cadillac Ranch to Stonehenge, declaring, “It’s the most important roadside attraction of our generation.” Kuralt ended the segment waxing poetic over “a cowboy herding steers out there where the tall tailfins grow and the traffic heads west on Route 66 and the Texas sun goes down on the chromium bumpers of the American dream.”

Next came the bullet holes, an instinctive reaction around the Panhandle. If there’s something out there and you don’t know what it is, shoot it! “People would take their keys and scratch their initials into the paint,” Lord says. “Eventually, we went out there and signed it, to copyright.”

Then came the spray paint. First as simple graffiti tags—names, expressions of love, expressions of hate. Then wholesale paint jobs. “I was kind of outraged when people started spray-painting it,” Livesay says. “I asked Stanley what he thought of that, and he said, ‘I don’t give a damn.’ It showed ownership. People had to care enough about it, or hated it enough, to come see it. And they did.”

In 1997, Cadillac Ranch moved 2 miles west to its current location. The city of Amarillo was growing, and parking lot lights were visible at the installation. “That property was getting more valuable,” McSpadden says. “It was harder digging them up and replanting them than it was putting them in the ground the first time. From the road, it didn’t change at all. It was still the same flatland background.”

The relocation coincided with the dawn of the internet. Cadillac Ranch had become a featured attraction on RoadsideAmerica.com. Social media further broadened its reach. Cadillac Ranch remains a metaphor for the Golden Age of the American automobile, but over 50 years, it’s taken on many meanings and interpretations. A search for “Cadillac Ranch” on Instagram retrieves images of the Cadillac Ranch at sunrise, sunset, during dust storms and blizzards, and as a backdrop for selfies.

The scent of Krylon is fairly constant. On Cinco De Mayo, red, green, and white paint have dominated. The Cadillacs have been painted pink for child cancer awareness. After Michels died in 2004, the Cadillacs were painted black, his favorite color.

McSpadden spent two days at the site in October 2022, making portraits featured in the Cadillac Ranch at 50 exhibit. “I got people from England, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland,” he says. “People paint, they leave, and 20 minutes later somebody comes up and paints over what they painted. They don’t just paint the cars, they paint the dirt, they paint the access road, the barriers are painted, the trash cans are painted.”

Four years ago, Marsh’s son, Stan Marsh 4, added a merch truck that sells spray paint, beverages, and tchotchkes on the site. “The Cadillacs are one of the last things in the nation that are truly wild,” he says. “There are no bathrooms. There is no running water. There’s no shade. There’s a different energy out there. It’s an adventure every time.”

Marquez says he’s only had two good ideas in his life. “One was the Cadillac Ranch. The other was copyrighting Cadillac Ranch,” he says. “Ant Farm owns the copyright to Cadillac Ranch. For many years we’ve made money, it’s like an annuity. Commercials, clothing lines, billboards, print ads, everything.”

Marsh’s heirs still own the Cadillac Ranch. Following a series of debilitating strokes, ownership of the land was transferred from Marsh to a family trust. He died in 2014, shortly after facing allegations of sexual abuse by multiple minors. Though perception of Marsh’s reputation may have changed following the allegations, Cadillac Ranch’s legacy continues to stand the test of time.

Today, people come from all over the world to see Cadillac Ranch

Stanley Marsh 4 regards the Cadillac Ranch as a participatory work of art that everybody is welcome to collaborate on. “Every mark is permanent, but it’s also temporary,” he says. “You can say anything you’d like to say with absolute freedom—but it’s going to be covered up in 30 seconds.”

The next 50 years are less certain. “We’re looking at options to preserve and protect the Cadillacs for future generations,” Stanley Marsh 4 says.

Lord is not so sure. “I favor not doing a restoration. With farmers, when a truck stops running, they put it out in a field and it rusts away. Just let it rust down to nothing, which eventually it will,” Lord says. “That’s the most logical end of Cadillac Ranch.”

Whatever Cadillac Ranch’s future holds, Livesay appreciates what it means to the Panhandle city. “It’s wonderful it’s lasted so long and generated so much excitement for the town,” he says. “It’s grown with the times. You can’t argue with the facts.”

Art, Blues, Books, Conjunto, Football, Land, Lubbock, Music, Radio, Reviews, Texas, Texas music, TexasPsych

Terry Allen and The Truckload of Art

April 5, 2024 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/culture/a-new-book-details-the-life-of-terry-allen-and-his-truckload-of-art/

A New Book Details the Life of Terry Allen and His ‘Truckload of Art’

The biography takes readers on journey through the life of the prolific Lubbock-raised artist and musician

By Joe Nick Patoski

March 18, 2024

Terry Allen at Arlyn Studios in Austin in May 2019. Photo by Barbara FG

Maybe you’ve seen Terry Allen’s work.

His sculpture Caw Caw Blues, which contains the ashes of his friend Guy Clark, stands sentinel at the entrance of The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos. Countree Music, a 25-foot bronze cast of an oak tree and a map on the terrazzo floor depicting Houston as the center of the world, accompanied by music, is planted in Terminal A near Gate 17 of Bush International Airport in Houston. Passengers entering security gate D30 in Terminal D at DFW International pass under a 30-foot bronze wishbone titled Wish. A life-size statue of CB Stubblefield of Stubb’s BBQ fame stands on the site of his first restaurant on East Broadway in Lubbock. Nestled in the palmetto palm thicket outside The Contemporary Austin-Laguna Gloria on the banks of Lake Austin is Road Angel, a bronze cast of a 1953 Chevy coupe, the car Allen drove as a teenager, accompanied by more than a hundred audio soundbites (including one of mine), that was permanently installed in 2016.

More likely, you’ve heard Allen’s work.

His song “Amarillo Highway,” about a “Panhandlin’ man-handlin’ post-holin’ Dust bowlin’ Daddy” is a much-covered Texas country classic. The churning “New Delhi Freight Train” was first recorded by the rock band Little Feat. At 80, he’s still out there performing with his Panhandle Mystery Band which includes family and friends, among them son Bukka Allen, pedal steel maestro Lloyd Maines, guitarist Charlie Sexton, and fiddler Richard Bowden— often in conjunction with an art opening.

You may have even seen Allen without realizing it. He and his wife Jo Harvey Allen play Oklahoma couple Aunt Annie and Uncle Jim in the Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon.

He’s been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and is in the West Texas Walk of Fame by the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock. Texas Tech is finalizing plans for the Terry and Jo Harvey Allen Center for Creative Studies.

Call him what you want: the patriarch of Lubbock creatives, the greatest living visual artist from Texas, the other Texas music godfather besides Willie, the storyteller of the American West. It’s all pretty much true.

In 2016, Allen created Road Angel which can be seen at The Contemporary Austin-Laguna Gloria. Photo by Brian Fitzsimmons/courtesy of The Contemporary Austin

Now comes Truckload of Art, a 500-page biography by Brendan Greaves, to explain it all.

The first Terry Allen art I ever saw made me laugh out loud. The Paradise was a stark diorama of three spaces, the primary space—a parking lot—bathed in red light with the word “Paradise” in pale blue neon script on the back wall as the centerpiece. Directly below is a planter with three measly cacti, two plastic palms, a car tire, and a pair of plastic flamingos. Flanking the planter were doors marked Lounge and Motel in red neon. Beyond the vinyl-covered doors was a motel room with shag carpeting and a honky-tonk bar space with a jukebox. Paradise was part of The Great American Rodeo Show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 1976. Eleven artists were given a year to develop a rodeo-inspired piece. Allen paid homage to the kind of spaces where a real rodeo cowboy would feel at home.

The first Terry Allen music I really paid attention to was the 1979 album Lubbock (on everything), marking the artist-musician’s return to his hometown to collaborate with a new iteration of Lubbock music makers, among them singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who was two classes behind Allen at Monterey High. “I always knew I was destined to write songs,” Gilmore told me recently. “But I thought you had to be really old to be a songwriter. Terry was the first person I saw perform original music. He sang ‘Red Bird’ while playing piano one day at Monterey. That really inspired me.”

Allen and Jo Harvey had been living in Fresno, California, when he came back to make Lubbock (on everything). He instantly became the Don of the Lubbock Mafia of music maker. The Allens eventually moved back—sort of—settling some years later in close-enough Santa Fe.

It’s hard to ignore the tall polymath with stooped shoulders, the piercing eyes of a hawk, and a wide rubbery mouth that can hardly contain his unapologetic flatland twang. Art and music are the same coin, as far as he’s concerned, means to tell stories, which he is very good at doing, in many different ways. He’s so prolific, and so driven to create, he demands to be heard.

Greaves is founder and owner of Paradise of Bachelors Records in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which has reissued Allen’s older recordings and released his most recent albums 2013’s Bottom of the World and Just Like Moby Dick in 2020. Greaves, a self-described “lapsed art worker,” met Allen through the gallery where he worked. He’s collaborated on several projects with Allen and received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes, but taking on the monumental task of telling a very dense story while explaining the dual worlds of art and music, working off journals Allen has kept since junior high, was a whole other deal.

Allen’s father, Sled, a former minor baseball player who promoted wrestling and music events in West Texas, including Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, who Terry met on one of the six times he played Lubbock in 1955-56, long before most of the world knew who Elvis was. His mother, Pauline, a onetime professional piano player and full-time alcoholic, was 18 years younger than her husband. The biography shows how both inform Allen’s love of performance, his skill at promotion and showmanship, but most of all, his creative drive, providing the inspiration for his DUGOUT series of works.

Allen got his art education at Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles. One professor brought visiting Dadaists and surrealists such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Leonora Carrington to lecture. The surrealist Man Ray often stopped by the school to talk to students about the life of an artist. Allen was hooked.

Concurrent with his Chouinard schooling was his pursuit of music. The first song he ever wrote “Red Bird” scored him an appearance on the music television series Shindig! in 1965, generating enthusiasm from Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles.

In 1969, he wrote “Truckload of Art,” a song about a real truckload of art from New York destined for Los Angeles to show the upstart West Coast artists how art was supposed to be done, that crashed on the highway. Two years later, a snippet could be heard coming out of the radio of Warren Oates’ GTO in Two-Lane Blacktop, an arty feature film about street racers on a road trip across the southwest.

After graduating from Chouinard in 1966, he began teaching there and followed by teaching gigs at UC-Berkeley and Cal State Fresno.

Truckload of Art focuses on relationships, beginning with Allen’s partner in crime and marriage, the toothsome Jo Harvey. Theirs has been a tempestuous, sometimes competitive coupling while he chased myriad muses and she pursued her career as an actor, playwright, poet, radio producer, and songwriter—whenever they weren’t working together. He thought she should perform only original pieces she created. She enjoyed working in film.

Also documented is Allen’s long friendship with Dave Hickey, the acerbic writer, dealer, curator, and university professor from Fort Worth who opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin in 1967, and became the most incisive art critic of his time. Like Allen, Hickey wrote country songs, too.

Allen’s Corporate Head outside the Citicorp Plaza in Los Angeles. Photo by William Nettles

I’m not schooled enough to pass judgement on the art beyond my immediate reaction, and Allen usually makes me laugh. That was the immediate response when I saw Corporate Head, the life-size bronze of a businessman burying his head in the wall of a Los Angeles office building. The publication Atlas Obscura describes the work as “almost whimsical, yet rather grotesque.”

Sometimes the work has an edge too sharp to appreciate. That speaks to Allen’s interest in Antonin Artaud and his Theater of Cruelty, which strived to “shock the audience.” Allen was drawn to Artaud’s 1937 travelogue A Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara about time spent in Mexico among the Tarahumara people experimenting with peyote. His curiosity led to staging his own play about Artaud Ghost Ship Rodez in Lyon, France.

The downs are as interesting as the ups. Juarez, the first of 13 albums he’s recorded, failed to launch as a Broadway musical, despite his collaboration with David Byrne, best-known as the lead singer of the band Talking Heads. The run of the 1994 theatrical play Chippy: The Diary of a West Texas Hooker, co-written with Jo Harvey for the American Music Theater Festival, turned out to be brief, but yielded the song “Fate with a Capital F” cowritten with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, which remains one of my favorite Allen songs.

Some sweet bits pass by too quickly, such as Byrne’s bewilderment participating in a guitar pull with Allen and friends, and Allen’s dust-up with Tommy Lee Jones over verisimilitude. And I would have enjoyed eavesdropping on Hickey and Allen debating art.

It’s the little things that impress. Allen played in a band in high school with David Box, the teen chosen to replace Buddy Holly in the Crickets after Holly’s death in a plane crash in 1959, only for Box to die years later in a plane crash. In 1972, he played the Dripping Springs Reunion, the precursor of Willie Nelson’s Picnics, thanks to a Dave Hickey booking. Even Andy Warhol and the Manson Family make cameos. He’s been everywhere—Cambodia, France, London, Mexico, and India, telling stories every which way. And he took notes.

With Greaves’ help, Allen tells his most compelling story yet, the story of his creative life.

Austin, Conservation, Land, San Antonio, Stewardship, Texas, Travel, Water, Water

Texas’ Swimming Holes Are Drying Up

January 27, 2023 No Comments

My story about swimming holes in Texas, drought, and climate change in the 50th Anniversary issue of Texas Monthly magazine.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/travel/ode-to-texas-disappearing-swimming-holes/

The Blanco River in Blanco State Park in September 2018. Photograph by Nick Simonite

Texas Icons

An Ode to Texas’s Disappearing Swimming Holes

I’ve spent the past half century immersing myself in Texas’s clear, cool waters. But if development and drought have their way, I may be the last of my kind.

By Joe Nick Patoski

February 2023 1

This article is part of Texas Monthly’s special fiftieth-anniversary issue. Read about the other icons that have defined Texas since 1973.

I lived through the golden age of Texas swimming holes. Having spent my youth submerged in chlorinated pools in and around Fort Worth, I moved to Austin in 1973 and discovered Hippie Hollow before it was a county park and Barton Creek before a mining executive threatened to build a giant development along its banks.

Swimming in clear artesian spring water was a revelation to me. As a child, I’d seen San Marcos Springs when it was the Aquarena Springs theme park, but I didn’t associate the crystalline waters that Ralph the Swimming Pig frolicked in with something that was accessible to me. And yet, to my delight, I came to learn that they were.

The water in a Texas swimming hole is a pale blue or green or a hue somewhere in between that you can see through, often right to the bottom. Your eyes don’t sting when you open them underwater. There are creatures to observe—minnows, perch, crawfish, carp, catfish, bass, turtles, ducks, and maybe even, God help me, a water moccasin. A spring-fed swimming hole means cool-to-cold temperatures. The bottom is limestone, not squishy mud. Spoiled by such wonders, I quickly developed an aversion to cement ponds, as The Beverly Hillbillies’ Jethro Bodine called conventional swimming pools, and flinched at the scent of chlorine.

My then-girlfriend got me hooked on doing widths at Austin’s famous Barton Springs, and pretty soon I had worked up to swimming a round trip along the pool’s roughly one-eighth-mile length. Then it was a half mile and then a full mile. I was addicted. If I missed a day, I got cranky.

My search for clear, clean water turned into a treasure hunt. Hill Country rivers were prime targets: the Guadalupe, the Comal, the west fork of the Nueces, the Blanco, the San Marcos, the Llano, the Frio, the Medina. Creeks that fed the rivers sheltered hidden delights such as Jacob’s Well, Krause Springs, and several Blue Holes.

But I also found swimmable springs near Houston (swimmable but murky—it’s Houston!), near the Panhandle (Roaring Springs), and in the desert (Independence Creek). I became a regular at Balmorhea State Park, in far West Texas, swimming in the pool every month of the year. There are secret spots that I’ve been sworn never to reveal, at the risk of physical harm, and secret spots I can’t share because I trespassed. Having a gun pulled on you when you’re sopping wet is no fun.

Swimming-hole denizens are my tribe. We quietly exchange information about places worth checking out and share where the crowds aren’t. I’m fortunate to have friends who own ranches with secret holes to swim in and to have been invited to the Narrows, a typically off-limits miniature canyon in the Hill Country smack-dab between Blanco and Wimberley.

My obsession grew so fevered that thirty years ago my family and I left Austin for Wimberley to gain regular access to the Blanco River. I found an ideal swimming hole, and for years it has been part of my daily routine during the warm months.

Along the way, I’ve learned about karst topography and other unique features that make Texas swimming holes so abundant. I’ve also learned about the rule of capture, a Texas law that allows property owners to draw as much underground water as they wish, even at the risk of drying up a neighbor’s wells and springs. In the fifties, it effectively killed Fort Stockton’s Comanche Springs, once the largest in West Texas.

It wasn’t the first swimming hole to disappear, and it’s far from the last. In 2021, for the first time in my many summers in Wimberley, the Blanco ran so low that there wasn’t enough river to swim in. Extended drought, exploding population growth in the watershed, and aggressive groundwater pumping had reduced it to a trickling stream.

My bible, Gunnar Brune’s Springs of Texas, Volume 1, had warned me that this would happen. A technical volume published in 1981, it’s an expanded version of a 1975 report that Brune, a Fort Worth geologist, prepared for the Texas Water Development Board. He noted that the decline of Texas springs, in number and in volume, began with the first Spanish colonists and continued to the time of the book’s publication, largely as a result of agricultural, industrial, and municipal use of water, as well as the reduction in groundwater recharge.

That decline continues, primarily fueled by population growth. By 2005 only 17 of the 31 large springs once known in Texas remained. During the drought of 2022, Blue Hole, in Wimberley, and nearby Jacob’s Well were closed to swimming because of low or no flow. The Frio River at Concan went dry. Las Moras Springs, near Brackettville, stopped running. And this sad trend will likely only accelerate: we’re expecting a hotter, drier Hill Country in the future.

Some years back, I toured the Coal Mine Ranch in the isolated Trans-Pecos borderlands northwest of Candelaria. My host paused at a field of sun-bleached rubble. This was an ancient river delta, he said, leaning down and picking up a large rock to hand to me. Up close, I could make out the fossilized remnant of a very large turtle shell.

Will this be the fate of so many of the springs, creeks, rivers, and swimming holes that I love? Will the iconic image of our times be a minnow trapped in a shrinking puddle as the waters retreat? Or will the springs flow again and my beloved Blanco return when the rains come? So far in my lifetime, the water has always come back. But what about the next time?

Though the signs right now are dire, my faith remains strong enough that I recently ordered a new swimsuit, goggles, and earplugs. Perhaps I’m fooling myself. Perhaps hope is the only thing that springs eternal.

This article originally appeared in the February 2023 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “C’mon in, the Water’s Finite.” Subscribe today.

Blog, Conservation, Land, Stewardship, Texas, Travel, Water, Water

Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge – the Wild Rio Grande Valley

December 30, 2022 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/things-to-do/on-the-water/explore-rio-grande-valley-wilderness-wildlife-at-laguna-atascosa-national-wildlife-refuge/

Explore the wilderness and wildlife of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

Creature Comforts

By Joe Nick Patoski

A sunrise view of Laguna Madre from the Plover Point observation deck. Photo by Erich Schlegel; Illustration by Lin Jesse

An illustration of a swimming duck with a bright red head moving through tall grassy reeds

A redhead duck. Illustration by Lin Jesse

Beyond Laguna Madre,

on the ocean side of South Padre Island, a bank of cumulus clouds looms over the Gulf of Mexico. Morning light casts a palette of radiant oranges, yellows, pinks, and blues, minutes before the sun makes its debut above the clouds.

Sunrise in January is prime time at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in the Rio Grande Valley. The tropical humidity and heat, the norm from late March until November, abates, and the winter residents move in. From the Plover Point observation deck, the Laguna Madre —one of only four shallow, hypersaline bays in the world—shimmers with sublime views.

Living creatures are everywhere—in the water, on the land, in the sky. Songbirds flit out of the impenetrable thornscrub brush called the monte, while a pair of scissor-tailed flycatchers pirouette around a Spanish dagger yucca. A clutch of shockingly pink roseate spoonbills stands out among hundreds of white egrets, herons, and ducks congregating in a shallow pond. On the shore of the laguna, shorebirds gingerly step in the shallows in search of breakfast. Redfish, too, their tails extending above the water surface as they feed on shrimp. A brown pelican spies a tailing redfish and quickly scoops it up. On the road through the thornscrub, rabbits and roadrunners crisscross the path where a brilliantly dark indigo snake has just slithered. Coyotes, whitetail deer, and nilgai antelope roam undisturbed across the open savannah. Butterflies and dragonflies flutter around by the dozens.

A collection of palm trees and grasses with water and cloudy sky in the background

Redhead Ridge on the shore of Laguna Madre. Photo by Larry Ditto

Welcome to the wildest part of the wild Rio Grande Valley, which offers a glimpse into the natural world that flourished across deep South Texas before it was settled, farmed, and developed. Coastal, tropical, jungle, and desert all at once, the Valley is where the two major North American migratory bird flyways converge, and it’s a crucial wintering grounds for waterfowl. Laguna Atascosa is at the center of the action.

The rapidly developing region is also attractive to humans. From 2000 to 2020, the Rio Grande Valley population—including Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, and Willacy counties—grew 41% to 1.37 million people. According to the Texas Demographic Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the number is projected to grow another 15% to 1.58 million by 2050, depending on migration rates. But while habitat loss is the usual story in the booming RGV, Laguna Atascosa is all about rewilding.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service established the refuge in 1946, carving about 11,000 acres from a World War II gunnery range to protect wintering bird habitat, primarily the redhead duck on Laguna Atascosa. Over the past two decades, assistance from groups including The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund, along with settlement funds from the 2010 BP Oil Spill, have allowed the refuge to add over 50,000 acres to expand to more than 120,000 acres across multiple units. The South Padre Island Unit protects land on the northern end of the island, and the Bahia Grande Unit protects wetlands between Laguna Vista and Brownsville. Ongoing purchases are creating a new coastal corridor for wildlife to travel between patches of their fragmented habitat, including via special highway underpasses.

“There’s not a more significant place for wildlife diversity in Texas, and maybe the country, than the Lower Rio Grande Valley, from songbirds to ocelots to waterfowl,” says Jeff Francell, director of land protection for The Nature Conservancy in Texas. “Most of the native brush in the Valley was converted to farmland decades ago, and so to enhance the native wildlife populations, it’s important to take some of that land and restore it for wildlife. For example, one of the pieces of property we were able to acquire was an old shrimp farm, and we were able to buy part of it to provide a corridor for ocelots between Laguna Atascosa and Bahia Grande.”

Laguna Atascosa astounds in its diversity: 417 bird species, 130 butterfly species, 45 mammal species, 44 reptile species, and 450 plant species. And the refuge is far enough from the border to avoid lighting, walls, and other disruptive issues that have negatively impacted some refuges along the Rio Grande. Outside of a visitor center, a couple of roads, and a handful of overlooks, the refuge has very little infrastructure. Wildlife conservation is the priority. This is by far the biggest chunk of wild in the Rio Grande Valley

Two people, one with binoculars and another with a camera, look for birds along a watery shore

Birding on the tidal flats at South Bay by the Brownsville Ship Channel. Photo by Larry Ditto

About 15 minutes before daybreak, I meet the refuge’s visitor services manager, Georgie Garcia, in the visitor center parking lot and jump into his high-clearance pickup. Garcia, a Brownsville native and Iraq War vet, drives the truck across Buena Vista Road and opens the gate at the trailhead to Granjeno Trail, the access to Steve Thompson Wildlife Drive. We continue to Plover Point to take in the sunrise before touring the heart of the refuge via roads, trails, and barely visible dirt tracks.

Garcia, one of seven employees, also maintains the trails with a brush cutter to keep the monte from encroaching, stocks the feeders and water features, conducts educational outreach, and coordinates the seasonal volunteers. The Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge group runs the bookshop in the visitor center, and volunteers help cover for Garcia whenever he is away from the service counter, which is the source of permits and information. Luckily, the service counter has a picture window that looks over a bird feeding station.

“Every day I bet my paycheck I’ll see a green jay,” Garcia says of the Neotropical bird rarely seen elsewhere in the United States. “There will be 20 on a feeder sometimes.”

The visitor center reopened in May after being closed for two years due to the pandemic. In 2019, the refuge restored its main thoroughfare, Buena Vista Road, from a potholed country road to a two-lane boulevard with bicycle lanes on both sides, along with eight large speed bumps to keep traffic under the 25-mph speed limit. The “Ocelot Crossing” signs are for real.

The park’s other road—Steve Thompson Wildlife Drive—closed to private motor vehicles in 2013 when a car hit and killed a lactating female ocelot. A 60-person tram operated on the loop seasonally in the 2010s until it broke down in 2018 and was declared beyond repair.

These days, hiking and cycling are the only ways to explore Steve Thompson Wildlife Drive and the 55 miles of other trails.

As we drive through two fallow fields lined with tree tubes containing seedlings and saplings of natives such as mesquite and hawthorn, Garcia says the refuge’s revegetation efforts have stepped up as more land has been added. “All that acquired property was ag fields,” he grins confidently. “Give it 10 years; it’ll be South Texas thornscrub.”

An illustration of a bird with dark brown wings, a white tuft, and small head with a beak sitting on a wooden branch

An Aplomado falcon. Illustration by Lin Jesse

A map of coastal Texas showing the Laguna Madre and Laguna Atacosa areas

Map illustration by Lin Jesse

A boat makes a wide white wake as it traverses a green channel

Boating the Stover Cove area on Laguna Madre. Photo by Erich Schlegel

The ocelot—a small, secretive spotted feline, about twice the size of a house cat—has become a symbol of the refuge. Laguna Atascosa is home to 30-35 ocelots, one of two breeding populations in the U.S.

In cooperation with the refuge, the Friends of LANWR group holds an annual Ocelot Conservation Day in March at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville—March 5 this year—with booths and presentations.

“We know the biggest problem is habitat loss,” Garcia says. “This past trapping season, they were able to trap six ocelots and put collars on them. The ocelot is an umbrella species; it’s at the top. If you restore their habitat, it’s going to help a lot of other South Texas species, some of them endangered or threatened.”

While making the rounds, Garcia chases off several cows that wandered in from a neighboring ranch, watches a gator snag an unsuspecting bird, and fetches the remnants of a mylar balloon snagged on a prickly pear.

We drive south to the 26,000-acre Bahia Grande Unit, an addition to the refuge that is west of State Highway 48 and the Brownsville Ship Channel.

An illustration of a large tortoise walking through green grasses and flowers

A Texas tortoise. Illustration by Lin Jesse

“This was a complete dust bowl,” Garcia says, gazing across rough vegetated lowlands spiked with yucca. “Now we’ve restored it to beautiful coastal prairie wetlands, with lomas, how it used to be.” Lomas are low vegetated hills that exist in only three places in the world. “We’re going to bring in some fresh water, which should balance out the salinity.” The Bahia Grande is hunting grounds for Aplomado falcons, which eat insects, lizards, birds, and small mammals.

We inspect a channel between two small inlets in the estuaries and watch a school of redfish forming a V as they move through. We stop near another small shallow lake, almost dry, and Garcia walks toward a sandy shelf, maybe 5 feet high. Beneath the shelf, dozens of perfectly circular beads no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, each with a hole in the middle, are scattered in the sand around our feet.

“The thinking is this was on a trade route between the coast and the interior,” Garcia says. Once revegetation has taken hold and archeological work is complete in two to four years, Bahia Grande will have public access. For now, it is open to hunters on designated weekends in the winter.

A silhouette of a person riding a bicycle in front of a sunset

Cycling on Steve Thompson Wildlife Drive. Photo by Eric Schlegel

Visiting Laguna Atascosa

Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge offers a look at why the Rio Grande Valley was slow to be civilized for large-scale human population. What’s great for the creatures and critters translates to rough country for people—it’s hot, humid, windy, and buggy.

Park staff members recommend bringing a wide-brimmed hat, bug repellent, sunblock, long pants, high socks, and sturdy footwear to ward off ticks, chiggers, and snakes—regardless of the time of year.

The refuge doesn’t have food or drink for sale, and fuel is 15 miles away at the intersection of SH 100 and FM 510 west of Port Isabel. The nearest hospital is in Harlingen, 28 miles from the visitor center.

Admission costs $3 per vehicle. An annual pass is $10. The refuge trails are open daily, dawn to dusk. The visitor center opens Wed-Fri 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 22817 Buena Vista Boulevard, Los Fresnos. 956-748-3607; fws.gov/refuge/laguna-atascosa

The Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge group maintains a calendar of events and activities on its website, flanwr.org.

We don’t see a soul on our five-hour tour, except for a lone cyclist cruising along the back side of Steve Thompson Wildlife Drive. He is clearly in the zone, steadily pedaling, lost in the rhythm and unaware of our truck inching up behind him. Garcia patiently keeps his distance for a few minutes, then gently taps his horn. The cyclist startles. He pulls over and grins as we pass.

The cyclist is Irv Downing, a 68-year-old former endurance racer who moved from South Padre to be closer to the refuge, which he cycles about “every other day.” Downing calls Laguna Atascosa his Serengeti. “The scenery, the setting, the laguna, it’s just spectacular,” he says. “My son was visiting from Seattle last week, and on our ride photographed 20 nilgai antelope.”

After talking to Downing, I figure I could bicycle this route too—if it wasn’t too windy, too hot, or too cold. “This is a difficult trail because of the distance and wind factor,” Garcia acknowledges. “The way to do this is on an electric bike.”

My ears perk up.

I couldn’t locate any e-bike rentals near the refuge, so I find one to borrow near my home in Wimberley and load it into my SUV. Back at the refuge, I meet photographer Erich Schlegel at the visitor center parking lot just before sunrise.

The narrow, paved route along Steve Thompson Scenic Drive is downright bucolic, especially with the rising sun casting a soft golden glow over the whole scene, straight out of a Van Gogh landscape. I pedal conventionally most of the way, twisting the accelerator handgrip whenever I lag behind Schlegel and whenever headwinds slow
my pace.

We cycle through the monte, up and down a loma, past prairies and estuaries, and along the shores of shallow lakes, bogs, mudholes, and wetlands. Wildlife stirs all along the way. Because we’re on bikes, the wildlife is more active, less oblivious to our presence, than when we were driving the route in a truck. We see several white-tailed deer scamper up from a creek bottom, followed by a herd of nilgai antelope cows who stroll across a grass prairie to meet up with a herd of nilgai bulls.

We cycle 13 miles in two hours including stops at Plover Point and Renee’s Overlook along the shore of the Laguna Madre. It’s a good workout, even with electric assistance. But it is nothing like the exhilaration I feel being there, passing the morning in that part of the Rio Grande Valley where the wild things are.

There is one caveat. No ocelot sighting. I reach out to Hilary Swarts, one of the refuge’s two wildlife biologists. Swarts is an ocelot specialist who has trapped and collared the cats on the refuge; she also documented the first ocelot kitten discovered on the refuge in about two decades.

Swarts, who has worked at the refuge for nine years, has spotted ocelots in the wild twice, one in July 2020 and one this past June, both near the visitor center. “Whenever I feel pessimistic, I remind myself they’re all over this refuge,” she says. “They’ve seen me more often than I’ve seen them. They could be staring at us right now.”

That’s the spirit of Laguna Atascosa.

“It’s that wild, that alive,” Swarts says. “And you don’t have to hike or bike to appreciatethat. Just plant yourself somewhere and watch.”

Laguna
Atascosa Wildlife

Birders are as hip to Laguna Atascosa as the birds are. The late Roger Tory Peterson, a pioneer of modern American bird-watching from New York, made six trips to the refuge in the 20th century in search of uncommon sightings. More than 400 bird species have been spotted at the refuge, including South Texas specialties such as green jays, Altamira orioles, and plain chachalacas.

Popular bird-watching sites include the visitor center, which is home to blinds, feeders, and water features; Kiskadee Trail, a paved, wheelchair-accessible path; and the Mesquite Trail loop and the Prairie Island viewing area.

Osprey Overlook, a covered platform with a sweeping vista of the 3,500-acre Laguna Atascosa, is a magnet for pelicans, herons, egrets, and, during winter, 85% of the redhead ducks in North America.

Endangered Aplomado falcons were introduced on the refuge in 1993 after being eradicated in most of the Southwest. Twenty-six pairs presently reside on the refuge, most around the Bahia Grande Unit.

Near Osprey Overlook is the trailhead to Alligator Pond, where alligators wallow in their element. And while you won’t likely see them, wild cats are out there too—bobcats, cougars, and ocelots.

Hunts, which take place on designated days between November and February, are managed to cull invasive hogs and nilgai antelope.

From the January 2023 issue

Austin, Barbecue, Conservation, Land, Stewardship, Texas, Travel, Water

The President’s Ranch Trail Drive – cruisin’ with LBJ

November 25, 2022 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/travel-news/for-a-quick-road-trip-the-presidents-ranch-trail-takes-you-all-the-way-with-lbj/

from TexasHighways.com

For a Quick Road Trip, the President’s Ranch Trail Takes You All the Way With LBJ

See how the first president from Texas was influenced by the land and communities of the Hill Country

Written by:Joe Nick Patoski

Published: November 22, 2022 at 4:38 pm

The exterior of a white house with a green lawn and mature trees

Way back in 1967, local boosters in Gillespie, Blanco, and Hays counties got together and devised the President’s Ranch Trail, a 100-mile drive from Stonewall to San Marcos, tracing the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was in the last years of his term as president of the United States.

There were ceremonies and a map, but the trail never gained traction until after Johnson left office, when most of the significant sites went under the oversight of the National Park Service and Texas State Parks. Significant infrastructure to accommodate tourists has since been added. And it’s all free.

I was intrigued by Johnson, the 36th president of the United States and the first president from Texas. That lofty position assured a legacy, much of which is enshrined at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin.

But to fully appreciate the person, you need to visit the place where he came from, where the land and water and structures vividly tell the story of Johnson’s life. More than any single person, LBJ transformed his beloved Hill Country, bringing electricity and dependable water to people who had neither, then putting the region on the map as president, spending so much time at his Stonewall ranch, it became known as the Texas White House.

Studying the original map and factoring in modern road conditions and population growth, I devise an amended President’s Ranch Trail, focusing on Stonewall and Johnson City, and leaving out the 38-mile leg from Blanco to San Marcos through Wimberley. The trail can be covered in a single day or broken up into a two-day adventure.

I start in Johnson City, just west of the junction of US 281 and US 290. At the corner of East Ladybird Lane and South Avenue G is the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site Visitor Center, within eyesight of the family home Johnson lived in while growing up, and, nearby, the Johnson settlement, the root source of the LBJ saga.

At the visitor center, I watch the 15-minute introductory film LBJ The President, learn more about his legacy reading the exhibit panels, check out the Model T given to LBJ by the Henry Ford Museum, and visit with Joe Owens, the friendly host behind the counter.

“I was a social studies teacher and love history,” Owens tells me. “I get to meet people from all over the country, all over the world.”

The annual visitor count coming off pandemic closures is about 140,000, and would be higher, Owens says, if the Texas White House wasn’t closed for repairs. (After Ladybird Johnson died in 2007, the family home was given to the National Park Service and opened to visitors. Since 2018, however, structural and foundational issues plus needed improvements have forced its closure.)

When other folks drift into the visitor center, Owens pulls out three matching maps of the ranch district and the Johnson City district and goes into detail about what there is to see and do. I choose to begin at LBJ’s boyhood home—a white clapboard structure with green trim and high ceilings—the next block over.

A map of all the spots to visit on the President’s Ranch Trail.

The family moved into this house in 1913 and lived there until Lyndon left for college in San Marcos in 1927. The simple frame house on Elm Street is deceiving: The Johnsons were already well-connected, with cousin James Polk Johnson founding the town of Johnson City, and Lyndon’s father, Sam Ealy Johnson, serving five terms as a state legislator. Ten years after he left for college, Johnson stood on the home’s front porch to announce his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Across the street from the visitor center, at Elm and Avenue F, is the headquarters of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, which puts up Christmas lights that are as spectacular as those around the Blanco County courthouse four blocks north. The co-op, created through Johnson’s persistent lobbying as a congressman, brought electricity to the Hill Country.

Following Owens’ directions, I head to the Johnson settlement, two blocks by foot, or easily accessed from the Johnson Settlement Event Center parking lot, four blocks west on US 290, just across from a gas station.

A half-mile gravel loop leads to the settlement’s event center, and a collection of 19th-century cabins, a barn, and corrals with longhorns over the fence line. Lyndon’s grandfather, Sam Ealy Johnson Sr., and his great-uncle Tom Johnson based their cattle operation here from 1867 to 1872. Sending cattle to market up the Chisholm Trail, theirs was the biggest trail-driving outfit in Blanco and six adjoining counties.

From the settlement on the western edge of Johnson City, I continue west 10 miles on US 290 to the settlement in Hye, passing manicured estates of wineries, distilleries, meaderies, and cideries—the new ranches of the Hill Country. On the left, at the turnoff to Hye-Albert Road, is the storied Hye General Store and Post Office, where 4-year-old Lyndon mailed his first letter, according to the historical marker at the entrance. The storefront, built in 1904, was gussied up in a red, white, and blue motif for LBJ’s 1965 swearing-in of new U.S. postmaster general Lawrence O’Brien on the front steps. Today, the post office shares space with Farm Ale Brewing, which is opening a new tasting room soon.

Continue west 3 miles on US 290 to the visitor center for the LBJ State Park and Historical Site. Pick up a pass to drive the LBJ Ranch (no charge). The visitor center also features tchotchkes at the gift shop, a life-size Lyndon to pose next to for photos, and a theater showing films about LBJ.

Next stop is a few hundred feet east of the visitor center on Park Road 52: the living history homestead of Sauer-Beckmann Farm.

“We do everything as if it’s 1918,” says Mark Itz, a fifth-generation Fredericksburger dressed in buckskin who works at the farm as a state park ranger. He and volunteers guide visitors through the vegetable garden, canning room, blacksmith shop, and sewing room where Kathy Catlin shows off her seamstress skills. You can also watch demonstrations of how to feed the domestic stock, gather eggs, chop wood by hand, and keep the wagon wheels turning,

“We just cooked our lunch on the wood stove,” Itz says. “Ground meat, rice, onions, squash, sweet potato. We make our own blood sausage, liver sausage, and head cheese.”

Itz then answers a question about what he misses the most living in 1918. “Electricity would be the biggest thing,” he says. “We didn’t get that here until 1945.” He then explains how Congressman Johnson secured the largest loan for rural electrification ever to establish the Pedernales Electric Coop in 1942.

“And vehicles,” Itz adds to his answer, “although folks around here continued using wagons to haul stuff because the beds of early pickup trucks were so small.”

From the living history farm, it’s across the Pedernales River, the lifeline that nourishes this part of the Hill Country, to the LBJ Ranch, a 2,000-acre spread that Johnson purchased from his aunt in 1951 when he was a United States senator. LBJ’s message “All the world is welcome here” greets visitors beginning the loop around the ranch.

I glimpse inside the Junction School, the classic one-room school where little Lyndon first attended class, and where President Johnson initiated the Head Start education program for underprivileged children. This is followed by the small house marking LBJ’s birthplace (reconstructed in 1964), his grandparents’ house nearby, and the family cemetery.

Heading north, west, and south on the paved one-lane ranch loop (also popular with cyclists), you pass fallow fields, manicured grazing pastures, herds of whitetail deer, a massive irrigation pivot, the show barn with its pens and corrals where LBJ’s prized rust-colored Hereford cattle are housed (ranch hands will answer your questions), the airstrip, and other points of interest.

The drive leads to “Air Force One-Half,” as the small Lockheed jet was called by LBJ. Situated in the adjacent hangar is the National Historical Park Visitor Center for the Texas While House, the Johnson’s home away from Washington, D.C. An exhibit panel highlights the movie nights hosted at the Texas White House in this hangar, a Resistol hat and pair of Lucchese boots—signature presidential wear—a view of the storage room filled with gifts that LBJ bestowed on guests, and a Ladybird-centric room.

A brown old-timey car parked inside of a building next to a white vintage car

Historic Model T at the LBJ Ranch. Photo by Will van Overbeek.

A brown National Parks Service sign reading "Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park"

LBJ Ranch and Texas White House. Photo by Randall Maxwell

The star attraction, though, is the family home, which is currently off-limits. Lack of funds stalled repairs, but it is now on track to reopen within the next five years.

While that may have kept the visitor count down, according to Joe Owens, it’s still fun to check out the grounds where LBJ staged barbecues and walk past the small cottage identified as the United States Secret Service Command Post.

Trinity Lutheran Church across the Pedernales River from LBJ Ranch Trinity Lutheran Church, Stonewall. Photo by Will van Overbeek.

Side Trip: LBJ Museum of San Marcos

While the big LBJ Presidential Library in Austin is a destination unto itself, the little LBJ museum on the square in downtown San Marcos complements Johnson’s Hill Country. According to director Debby Butler, the small three-room museum is dedicated to Johnson’s time as a student seeking a history teacher’s certificate at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, now Texas State University, and the two years he spent teaching at the Welhausen School for Mexican children in the South Texas community of Cotulla.

The museum also functions as a small-scale version of the national and state park visitor centers’ exhibits, with the addition of text in Spanish as well as English. Listen to audio of LBJ speaking (and telling some pretty good jokes) while viewing panels that chronicle his initiatives including the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Wilderness Act, and the Space Race. You can also see Lyndon at leisure, including a photograph of the president dancing with his favorite actress, Carol Channing. Among the displays is an exhibit case featuring a colorful array of Johnson campaign buttons and a yellowed original front page of the San Marcos Record announcing Johnson’s death.

The San Marcos Museum informs visitors that Johnson wasn’t just class president, but he was also on the debate team and president of the college’s press club. A black-and-white photo series from 1957 shows him physically cajoling another senator, speaking volumes of LBJ’s persuasive powers. Upstairs is a re-creation of Ladybird’s whistle-stop campaigns by train, along with exhibit panels about her life. Three panels feature her powerful conservation speeches at the Padre Island National Seashore, Big Bend National Park, and Fort Davis National Historical Site. I appreciated reading the reprint of a homesick letter he wrote to his mother, also a school teacher, when he was teaching in Cotulla, in which he writes “Babtist” for Baptist—written like a true Texan.

After a pause by Trinity Lutheran Church (where Lyndon and Ladybird attended Sunday services when they were on the ranch), I turn onto Lower Albert Road, crossing US 290 and continuing south 3 miles down a road past real farms that once dominated the area. Albert, a quick left on FM 1623, consists of a historic dance hall and adjacent icehouse/bar, surrounded by a spacious open picnic area with the Cowboy Cantina food truck.

Just beyond the dance hall is the turnoff to a gate and a sign identifying the building on the other side as the Williams Creek School House. This is where LBJ attended school for a year when he was 4 (clearly, a watershed year for the young fellow). The school is now the Albert Community Club and open for club events only.

Less than a half-mile farther east on Farm-to-Market Road 1623, take County Road 206 (Hye-Albert Road) 5 miles back to Hye, then go 5 miles back to 290. Johnson City, your starting point, is 10 miles east. Altogether the route is about 50 miles and can be done in a full day, or two-days if you prefer a more leisurely visit. There are plenty of quaint places in the area for an overnight stay.

The land, you will discover, shaped the man. And this particular man had enough prominence and clout to preserve and honor the places and people who made it that way. Everything’s OK on the LBJ.

LBJ served by BBQ caterer Walter Jetton

Austin, Blog, Land, Texas, Travel

a brief history of the rise and rise of Texas skyscrapers

November 4, 2022 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/travel-news/a-brief-history-of-the-rise-and-rise-of-texas-skyscrapers/

From the Praetorian Building in Dallas to the forthcoming Waterline in Austin, Texans have been living the high life for more than a century

Written by:Joe Nick Patoski

Published: October 7, 2022 at 2:39 pm

Soaring to 1,022 feet, the Waterline will become the tallest tower in Texas when it opens in 2026. Photo courtesy of Atchain.

The recent announcement that construction will soon begin on Texas’ tallest skyscraper came as a surprise to many. Not necessarily for the structure itself, but where it would be built—in Austin, not Houston or Dallas. It’s a sure sign the capital city has joined the civic competition to erect the tallest building, and therefore claim the title of tallest city in the Lone Star State.

That urge to be tallest has played out among civilizations since the pyramids rose in Egypt and Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize in the Americas.

Cathedrals in Europe and the United States competed to be the tallest for several hundred years until the late 19th century, when structures like the 548-foot-tall Philadelphia City Hall, the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument, and the 984-foot-tall Eiffel Tower vied over who could be the tallest in the world.

The Praetorian Building, from a 1908 postcard.

Texas got into the skyscraper game relatively quick, in 1908, with the opening of the 15-story, 190-foot-tall Praetorian Building in Dallas (which was torn down in 2013). Houston could already brag about the eight-story First National Bank Building (completed in 1905). Designed by Sanguinet and Staats, the architectural firm responsible for many of Texas’ tall buildings in the early 20th century, the structure later became the Lomas and Nettleton Building. (Located at Main Street and Franklin Avenue, it houses residential lofts today.) By 1910, Houston also had the 10-story, 124-foot-tall 711 Main Building and the 23-story, 302-foot-high Carter Building, allowing Houston to claim the title of Texas’ Tallest City.

Two years later, the honorific returned to Dallas with the opening of the 25-story Adolphus Hotel, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month with a gala on Oct. 29. In 1925, the Adolphus gave way to the Magnolia Building, as Dallas’ (and Texas’) tallest with the Magnolia Oil Company’s neon flying horse logo atop the 399-foot, 27-floor edifice. (It was recently announced the building will undergo a major renovation, including the addition of three floors.)

Houston regained the tallest title in 1927 with the completion of the 410-foot, 31-story, Italian Renaissance-styled Niels-Esperson Building, followed two years later by the 37-story, 428-foot art deco Gulf Building. Houston managed to hold on until 1943, when the Mercantile National Bank Building, a 31-story, 523-foot-tower with a distinctive clock spire opened in Dallas.

The back-and-forth rivalry between Dallas and Houston continued for another 40 years:

Dallas – Republic National Bank (1954; 36 stories, 602 feet)
Houston – Humble Building (1963; 44 stories, 606 feet)
Dallas – First National Bank Tower (1965; 52 stories, 628 feet)
Houston – One Shell Plaza (1970; 50 stories, 714 feet)

One Shell was still a tad taller than Dallas’ new tallest, the 56-story, 710-foot-tall First International Building, built in 1974. But by the time the 74-story, 921-foot Bank of America Plaza was completed in 1985—the tallest skyscraper in Dallas—Houston had one-upped its main competitor again with the 1,002-foot, 75-floor Texas Commerce Building, now named the JP Morgan Chase Tower, which has held the Texas’ Tallest title since it was built in 1982. Whew!

That honorary is about to change, and this time neither Dallas nor Houston is in the race. Enter Austin.

The capital city came late to the tall skyscraper game. Until 1974, the Texas State Capitol (standing at 302.64 feet “from the south front ground level to the tip of the star of the Goddess of Liberty”) reigned as Austin’s tallest building, mainly because the city enacted an ordinance to keep it the predominant building in the city’s skyline. It was complemented by the 29-story, 307-foot-tall University of Texas Main Building (aka The Tower), followed in 1972 by the Dobie Center, also on the UT campus and 307 feet. By the mid ’80s, Austin had more than a dozen skyscrapers, with 600 Congress leading the pack for tallest for 20 years before the 515-foot Frost Bank Tower arrived in 2004.

Meanwhile, construction pretty much came to a halt in Dallas and Houston. Big D stopped aspiring for higher heights, settling for new towers in the 30- to 40-story range until the 42-story Museum Tower broke through in 2013. And, after reaching its zenith in the 1980s, Houston experienced fallout from the Savings and Loan economic meltdown, followed by the Federal Aviation Authority’s mandate prohibiting construction of buildings taller than 75 floors in the central business district because it is in the takeoff and landing flight patterns for Hobby Airport. Outside of downtown, no significant towers have been built since the 64-story, 901-foot Transco Tower near the Galleria opened in 1982.

Fast-forward to Austin around 2010, when residential and tech started dominating the local skyscraper boom. More than 20 steel-and-glass towers have been built, topped by the current city champ, the Independent (aka the “Jenga tower“), at 58 floors and 690 feet, and the 56-floor, 683-foot Austonion, with its distinctive crescent top.

Why the sudden high-rise boom? “I would suggest the reason why they are taller in Austin is because it is so physically small and so dense,” says Mark Lamster, the architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News who teaches architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington and is a Loeb Fellow of architecture at Harvard. “That means the land is incredibly valuable, and that makes it financially desirable to build extremely tall.”

Also, skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas tend to focus more on style than height. “There isn’t an emphasis on being the ‘tallest’ because buildings are now developed by investment groups rather than individuals or companies, for whom the ‘tallest’ moniker might be appealing,” he says.

Pennzoil Place. Photo by Agsftw, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lamster cites Pennzoil Place in Houston, still one of the state’s most revered skyscrapers, as an example of style over stature. “[Then Pennzoil CEO] Hugh Liedtke, who commissioned the building specifically, did not go for ‘tallest’ because he knew that there would always be some other building to eclipse it,” he says. “So Pennzoil Place focused on quality and distinction [rather than height]. That worked.”

So, in Austin, the rise to the top goes on. Both of the city’s tallest buildings will be eclipsed next year by a residential and office tower being built at Sixth and Guadalupe streets and listed at 66 floors and 875 feet high. The building will have a primary tenant, the tech company Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram. That’s plenty tall, but in a few years it will still not be Texas’ tallest.

That accolade will pass to the Waterline, a 73-story, 1,022-foot-tall residential-hotel-office tower at 98 Red River. Its scheduled completion date is mid-2026. I know the location well. The site was formerly occupied by a funky two-story white clapboard boarding house where I rented a cheap office for $80 a month back in the 1980s. That was Old Austin. The future occupant is New Texas all the way—shiny, bright, and rising to the skies.

Will this be the apex for Texas skyscrapers? Given its history, odds are taller towers are coming. And the short answer as to why is “money,” Lamster says. “Or, as Carol Willis, the historian and founder of the Skyscraper Museum puts it, ‘form follows finance.’”

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The Wild and Urban Brazos River

August 27, 2022 No Comments

https://texashighways.com/things-to-do/on-the-water/the-wild-and-urban-brazos-is-a-river-full-of-contradictions

The Brazos

is a river of contradictions. Flowing more than 800 miles on a diagonal course across the breadth of Texas, the Brazos starts as a Western river coming off the High Plains and ends as a Southern river lazily looping its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

An overhead view of Waco, with Baylor stadium on the right and the Brazos river separating two sides of the city

A view of the Brazos running through Waco with Interstate 35 splitting the picture

Over the course of two centuries, engineers have dammed, channeled, diverted, and fragmented the Brazos, partly to control deadly floods. But while the river has been moderated, it has not been tamed. It still runs wild every now and then, thwarting even the mightiest barriers. As recently as 2016, Brazos River flooding damaged 1,400 homes and killed six people in southeast Texas.

Understanding the Brazos is no easy feat, no matter how many miles you’ve paddled, how many hours you’ve sat on its banks, or how many times you’ve jumped into it. In search of a new perspective, I asked my friend George Farris, owner of Above and Beyond Aviation in Austin, to fly me over the river. On a clear day last fall, Farris took me along as he piloted his Cessna 172 to Haskell, north of Abilene, where we began to trace the Brazos River down to the coast.

With its watershed extending into New Mexico, draws and drainages grow into forks until the Brazos finally becomes a river where the Double Mountain and Salt forks converge in northeast Stonewall County, about 18 miles northwest of Haskell. Here the river carves a ribbon through low, lightly vegetated canyons, its rusty color mirroring the iron oxide-rich red clay soil of the surrounding Rolling Plains.

Seventy air miles east of Haskell, near Graham, the Clear Fork joins the main stem, now a river of substance with distinct bands of dark green vegetation covering its banks and occasional bankside clearings identifying sand-mining operations and crop fields. To the east, wrinkles on the horizon signal the Palo Pinto Mountains and Possum Kingdom Lake, the first major impoundment on the Brazos, dammed in 1941. Covering 17,000 acres, the lake is home to a state park and draws boaters, anglers, skiers, and vacationers.

Below Morris Sheppard Dam, the Brazos courses through tall limestone bluffs and steep cedar-covered slopes. This was Comanche territory 150 years ago, later immortalized in author John Graves’ Goodbye to a River. The book details Graves’ canoe trip with his dog in November 1957, motivated by the coming Lake Granbury impoundment.

“Most autumns, the water is low from the long dry summer, and you have to get out from time to time and wade, leading or dragging your boat through trickling shallows from one pool to the long channel-twisted pool below, hanging up occasionally on shuddering bars of quicksand, making 6 or 8 miles in a day’s lazy work,” Graves wrote, “but if you go to the river at all, you tend not to mind. You are not in a hurry there; you learned long since not to be.”

A man in a long-sleeve white shirt paddles a canoe

Canoeing the John Graves Scenic Riverway

After flying over the upper Brazos, I made plans to see it up-close with a return in late March to kayak a 19-mile section known as the John Graves Scenic Riverway. My paddling friend David Hollingsworth and I took a shuttle from Rochelle’s Canoe Rental in Graford to the put-in at the State Highway 16 bridge, where fishermen were also gearing up to hit the water, some by kayak and some in a shallow-drafting motorboat.

The land still wore its winter coat thanks to a late spring and extended drought. Amid the pools and riffles, I saw some huge carp and a teeny-tiny minnow. Perhaps it was one of two endangered shiner species that live in the Brazos—the sharpnose shiner and smalleye shiner.

A map showing major points on the Brazos river

Gene Wilde, a biologist who recently retired from Texas Tech University, compares the shiner’s reliance on free-flowing water to salmon of the Northwest. “They need 200 miles of free-flowing river to feed, grow, and spawn, completing their life cycle,” he said. “Dams on the Brazos prevent that.” The minnows were once so abundant that entrepreneurs seine-netted the river to scoop up schools of fish to sell for live bait. Now the little fish are hard to find.

Though the environment is changing, the scenery remains sublime. Long curving bends beneath cuesta slopes provide habitat for countless birds. I spotted over 100 great blue herons flapping their pterodactyl wings, white egrets and hawks by the dozens, and one juvenile golden eagle.

We camped on an island near Chick Bend, between SH 16 and Farm-to-Market Road 4. Hooting owls and howling coyotes serenaded us to sleep. At dawn, three Longhorn cattle awakened us as they lumbered across the island on their way to greener pastures.

Headwinds and low flow—water release from Sheppard Dam was a tepid 100 cubic feet per second—made it a difficult trip, one best saved for better conditions in the spring or fall. But the opportunity to see the same river embraced by Graves and Comanche chief Quanah Parker was worth the effort.

An overhead view of green fields and gravel roads

A reconstruction of Fort Velasco at the site where the Brazos met the coastline before the river was channelized

Back in Farris’ Cessna, we followed the Brazos as it wound through low hills before widening into its second major impoundment, Lake Granbury, and about 50 miles later, Lake Whitney. Below Whitney Dam, the Brazos takes on an orderly appearance with houses clustered close to its banks. On the outskirts of Waco, the Bosque River joins the Brazos at the top of the 416-acre Cameron Park, the crown jewel of Waco with its 100-foot limestone cliffs and outdoor recreational opportunities.

Waco is known for its bridges, most of all the Waco Suspension Bridge, the granddaddy of Texas bridges. Constructed with cables made by John Roebling Co., the same contractor who would later build the Brooklyn Bridge, it was the longest single-span bridge west of the Mississippi when it opened in 1870 as a toll bridge. In later decades, the cable system was replaced and the bridge reinforced with steel. The city closed the bridge to vehicles and converted it into a pedestrian bridge in 1971. The 1902 Washington Avenue Bridge, just upstream from the pedestrian bridge, connects downtown to Waco’s east side, a historically Black neighborhood.

Below Interstate 35, the Brazos serves as a scenic backdrop for Baylor University’s football stadium and baseball park, the Mayborn Museum Complex, and the boathouse for the school’s rowing team.

Waco built a new low-water dam in 2007 to mitigate flooding and stabilize Lake Brazos in the downtown area. Todd Nafe, outdoors writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald, said the river has since blossomed as a recreational destination. “The riverfront has become a significant economic resource, with restaurants, parks, food trucks, art festivals, triathlons, fishing tournaments, and fundraising events bringing folks back to the banks,” he said.

A man in a white hat and wearing a PFD holds a large paddle on the banks of the Brazos

Bruce Bodson, executive director of Lower Brazos Riverwatch

Two people stand holding fishing rods on the rocky banks of the Brazos river

Nicole Nation and John Valyan, of Bryan, fish the lower Brazos near Somerville.

A dark bluish black sky with bright stars peeks through vents in the roof of a tent

A starry night as seen from a sandbank campsite on the upper Brazos River

Below Waco, the Brazos River runs through the cotton plantation country that seeded the Republic of Texas in the 1800s. As we flew south to refuel in College Station, we watched the Brazos cut through lush woodlands and wide-open prairies. Settlers who were part of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred—the first colonists the empresario brought to Texas—developed farms in the Brazos bottomlands, some of them reliant on slave labor before the Civil War.

Robertson County towns like Hearne and Calvert remain primarily African American. Calvert was the hometown of Hall of Fame baseball player Rube Foster, who helped found and operate the National Negro League until his death in 1930. Another notable Foster, singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster—no relation to Rube—grew up in nearby Gause.

“Me and my cousins loved walking or riding in my Papa’s truck down to the river bank all summer long, with our fishing gear in tow,” recalled Foster, who now lives in Austin. “We smaller cousins always made too much noise for the older cousins to catch anything, but it was fun to just hang out, run around with our shoes off, and practice our fishing pole casting.”

To get a closer look at this section of the Brazos, I met six paddlers including Bruce Bodson, executive director of Lower Brazos Riverwatch, on a September morning for a 16-mile kayak trip starting at the SH 21 bridge, southwest of Bryan.

“I call this the free Brazos,” said Bodson, who founded the nonprofit Riverwatch in 2018 to protect the environment of the river’s 425 miles from Waco to the Gulf of Mexico. This is the least appreciated and most industrialized section of the river. “No dams exist below Waco,” he continued. “It is very much a Southern river—slow moving, looping and bending, with a gradient of less than 1%. The water quality is good, just silt-laden. There’s more variability than people realize.”

The river ran wide and muddy along our route, its sandy banks rising 10 to 20 feet high. Black willow, cottonwoods, and sycamores grew along the shorelines, where kingfishers alighted and skimmed the water. We saw three wild hogs swim across the river and a cottonmouth snake futilely chase a large frog out of the water and onto a beach. Along the way, we stopped to examine petrified wood and look for fossilized shark’s teeth and mussel shells.

Lower Brazos Riverwatch reports exposed pipelines and abandoned wells to state authorities, and their stewardship is getting results. “We’ve got legislative committees and landowners paying attention to the river as a potential asset now,” Bodson said.

We finished at the SH 60 bridge, 3 miles southwest of College Station, surrounded by rows of white cotton in every direction. “It’s wilderness down there,” Bodson said. “You get on that river, and there is nobody down there. You are absolutely alone.”

History of the Brazos

By the time 18th-century Spanish explorers gave it the name Los Brazos de Dios (The Arms of God), the Brazos River had been home to creatures and humans for tens of thousands of years. Learn more about this natural and cultural history at museums along the river’s course.

Waco Mammoth National Monument, Waco: About 15,000 years ago, the Brazos was prime habitat for the extinct Columbian mammoth. At this archeological site near the confluence of the Bosque and Brazos rivers, see the fossils of a nursery herd of Ice Age Columbian mammoths, along with fossils of a camel and juvenile saber-toothed cat. nps.gov/waco

Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History, Bryan: This museum features exhibits covering the Brazos Valley’s history back to the Ice Age, including exhibits on Native American artifacts, great Brazos floods, and cotton farming. brazosvalleymuseum.org

San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site, San Felipe: Founded in 1824 on a Brazos River bluff, San Felipe served as Empresario Stephen F. Austin’s colonial capital until it was burned in 1836 during the Runaway Scrape. The historic site includes a museum and replicas of some of the town’s original buildings. thc.texas.gov/historic-sites/san-felipe-de-austin-state-historic-site

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, Washington: Along with a living history farm and a museum covering the Texas Republic, this complex contains a replica of Independence Hall—where delegates signed the Texas Declaration of Independence—a riverside exhibit about the historic Robinson Ferry crossing, and exhibits mentioning various 19th-century efforts to navigate the Brazos in steamboats. thc.texas.gov/historic-sites/washington-brazos-state-historic-site

Brazos Bend State Park, Needville: Located 45 miles southwest of Houston, this park has 37 miles of trails to explore wetland lakes and sloughs in the Brazos River bottomlands. The park is known for its alligators and waterfowl. tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/brazos-bend

A man in a long-sleeved white shirt paddles between two rock outcroppings on a river

Canoeing through bluffs on a stretch of the upper Brazos known as the John Graves Scenic Riverway.

From my bird’s-eye view at 5,000 feet, I watched the landscape flatten as the Brazos cruised under US 290 and I-10 and through the Katy Prairie. This landscape looked similar to the Llano Estacado of the Panhandle, except everything was coated a verdant green. About 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos’ graceful curves and loops straighten into a channel as the river enters Freeport, an industrial maze thick with refineries and tanker ships.

Unlike most Texas rivers, the Brazos empties directly into the Gulf, rather than filtering through bays or estuaries. But it doesn’t meet the ocean where it originally did at Surfside. In 1929, the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the Brazos just upstream by dredging a new channel that empties into the Gulf about 5 miles down the beach.

There, the Brazos ends undramatically. I later drove along the levee road that traces the channel for almost 4 miles, where locals fished for red drum, black drum, trout, and channel cat. After passing a cluster of storage tanks and buildings, I reached a gate with a “No Trespassing” sign. The waves of the Gulf were barely visible in the distance, but I couldn’t go any further.

A mile high up in the air offered a different perspective. Every man-made object I could see—from Possum Kingdom Lake to cotton fields, sand mines, historic bridges, the Houston skyline, and tankers in the Gulf—was tied to that green-brown ribbon I’d been following. As Farris banked his airplane west, I could see the mighty Brazos was really the most Texas river of them all.

Paddle the Brazos

There’s no better way to experience the natural qualities of the Brazos River than from the seat of a kayak or canoe. Outfitters operate at numerous locations on the Brazos, a river that offers a variety of paddling experiences throughout its course.

Rochelle’s Canoe Rental, Graford: provides rentals and shuttles for trips on the upper Brazos’ John Graves Scenic Riverway. rochellescanoeandkayakrental.com

Brazos Outdoor Center, Rainbow: the nearest wild river experience to DFW, includes campsites, equipment rentals, and shuttles. brazosoutdoorcenter.com

Dick’s Canoes, Aquilla: provides rentals and shuttles for trips on the Brazos below Whitney Dam. dickscanoe.com

Pura Vida Paddle, Waco: find kayak and stand-up paddleboard rentals, as well as classes, across the Brazos from Cameron Park and on Lake Waco. puravidapaddle.com

Waco Paddle Company, Waco: canoe, kayak, and stand-up paddleboard rentals in downtown Waco on the bank of the Brazos. wacopaddlecompany.com

Hidalgo Falls, Navasota: The closest whitewater to Houston, this private paddlers park is owned by the Texas Rivers Protection Association. txrivers.org/discover-texas-rivers/brazos-river

From the July 2022 issue

1 2 3 4 Next »

Guitar Ranch

The Valley of Hidden Waters

El Paso Water

Rule of Capture

Comanche Springs

Antelope Valley Ranch

Judge Lucius Bunton

Hudspeth County Herald

State Water Plan

T. Boone Pickens

50-Year Plan

$222 Million in Water Purchases

Takeaways

Gliding Through the Skies Over Marfa

Marfa Gliders

How the Amarillo art installation became an iconic American roadside attraction

A New Book Details the Life of Terry Allen and His ‘Truckload of Art’

The biography takes readers on journey through the life of the prolific Lubbock-raised artist and musician

Explore the wilderness and wildlife of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

Creature Comforts

By Joe Nick Patoski

Beyond Laguna Madre,

Visiting Laguna Atascosa

Laguna Atascosa Wildlife

For a Quick Road Trip, the President’s Ranch Trail Takes You All the Way With LBJ

See how the first president from Texas was influenced by the land and communities of the Hill Country

Side Trip: LBJ Museum of San Marcos

From the Praetorian Building in Dallas to the forthcoming Waterline in Austin, Texans have been living the high life for more than a century

The Brazos

History of the Brazos

Paddle the Brazos

Laguna
Atascosa Wildlife