OPINION // NATIVE TEXAN
Old and Lost in Chambers County
are music to a nature-lover’s ears
Joe Holley July
27, 2018 Updated: July 27, 2018 5 a.m.
1of5Chronicle
outdoors writer Shannon Tompkins uses a clam shell as a barometer of Old Rivers health.Photo: Joe
Holley
3of5Joe Landry,
mayor of Old River-Winfree, has seen a lot of changes during his 25 years in office.Photo: Joe Holley / Joe Holley
4of5Marshlands
around Old and Lost rivers are a paradise for birds,
including this green heron.Photo: Shannon Tompkins / Shannon Tompkins
5of5The
cypress-lined Old River is actually an abandoned channel of the Trinity River.Photo: Joe Holley
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OLD RIVER-WINFREE -
Like many Southeast Texans, I’ve driven by the road signs countless times over
the years, the signs on Interstate 10 near Baytown that mark a bridge over OLD
AND LOST RIVER for east-bound traffic, LOST AND OLD RIVER for west-bound. I
know now that RIVER ought to be plural, since we’re talking about two Trinity
River tributaries instead of one; nevertheless, there’s something evocative
about the phrase, singular or plural, east-bound or west — so evocative, in
fact, that it inspired a haunting orchestral work. I could be wrong, but I know
of no other road sign that can make such a claim.
In 1986, New York
composer Tobias Picker was working as composer-in-residence with the Houston
Symphony. Preparing new music for the symphony’s celebration of the Texas
Sesquicentennial, he happened to notice the I-10 sign as he drove eastward. His
“Old and Lost Rivers” premiered in Jones Hall on May 9, 1986.
“It is obviously an
extremely poetic phrase,” Picker told the Chronicle years later. “It is just
full of meaning and implications and symbolism. It can mean many things to many
people, if you think about it.”
Earlier this week, I
decided to explore the meanings and symbolism for myself in the company of my
Chronicle friend Shannon Tompkins. The veteran columnist not only happens to be
the best and most knowledgeable outdoors writer in Texas (and beyond) but also
was born and raised in the area.
“A
college-educated swamp creature who spends most of his life outdoors” (to quote
the late Gary Cartwright of Texas Monthly), Shannon has hunted, fished, trapped
and roamed the sloughs, rivers and bayous of Chambers County his whole life. Halfway between
Houston and Beaumont, within sight and rumbling sound of I-10, this green and
marshy land is perfect for a devoted outdoorsman. It boasts more than its share
of rich historic lore, abundant wildlife and bounteous bird species.
Lost River is an old
channel of the lower Trinity, abandoned by the restless river before the area
was settled. The meandering, tree-lined Old River, also an abandoned channel,
begins in Liberty County and flows southeasterly to Old River Lake and
ultimately into Trinity Bay.
As we meandered along
country roads in Shannon’s Ford-F150 pickup (a 2004
model with 353,000 miles on it), passing through verdant coastal prairie
populated by great egrets and roseate spoonbills, white-faced ibis and green
herons and, of course, alligators, he reminded me that we were in Faulkner
country. “Once you learn the old families, it’s Old South more than anything
else,” he said.
READ MORE: Former Texas inmate’s story proves to be a page turner
As in Faulkner’s
fictional Yoknapatawpha County, many of the original
families have white and black branches. I learned
about one still-prominent family who divvied up the land between black and
white in the early 1900s, the black family members
received the swampland portion. As fate - or geology -- would have it, these
descendants of slaves turned out to be proprietors of the oil-rich portion of
the original family holdings. (“God has a sense of humor,” Chambers County
Museum administrator Marie Hughes mentioned.)
True to its Old South
traditions, the area tolerated the KKK, both during
Reconstruction and in the 1920s, when Prohibition and
anti-immigrant sentiments roiled the populace. As one local historian suggested
a few years ago, the masked avengers were merely a gallant group of guys
employing “corrective measures” to keep the peace. (The Cuban barber at Mont
Belvieu they ran out of town or the many others they bullied and mistreated no
doubt thought differently.)
Long before
transplanted Southerners moved into the area, it was Spanish country. Near
present-day Wallisville in 1756, two Franciscan
missionaries established Mission Nuestra Senora de la
Luz to minister to members of the Orcoquiza and Bidai tribes; a contingent of 30 Spanish soldiers built
Presidio San Augustin de Ahumada a mile away to guard
against French encroachment from the east. The state historical marker near the
Chambers County Museum describes the mission and fort as “two of the most
misfortune-ridden outposts of Spain in Texas.”
The elder of the two
friars died soon after arrival, and the younger complained of ravenous insects,
extremes of heat and cold and the “thick and stinking water” in the lake near
the lonely mission. The soldiers were ill-prepared, the 50 families who were to
establish a town never showed up and the natives were restless. By 1771, the
Spanish were gone.
READ MORE: ‘Junior’ was one
of many roadside attractions on the classic family car trip
The pirate Jean
Lafitte nosed about the neighborhood - two of his ships are said to be buried
in the mud of Lake Charlotte -- and hot-headed Texans in and around nearby
Anahuac plotted rebellion against Mexico. Other things have happened, as well,
as I learned at the superb, little county museum (on I-10 at the Wallisville exit).
I learned about the
Dick Disturbance, an 1880s-era
cattle-rustling scandal that began when John Dick, a former British army
officer, moved into the area with his 12 children. His boys were desperadoes
and thieves. “Everybody was afraid of them, because they always rode in a bunch
armed with .44 caliber Winchester rifles and six shooters,” early settler
Forest W. McNeir wrote in a 1956 memoir.
When Sarah Ridge Pix,
a former Cherokee princess, discovered altered brands on her cattle and other
ranchers noticed that they were losing animals, two of the Dick sons, George
and Benajah (known as Ninny), became prime suspects.
Suspicions were confirmed when the Chambers County sheriff and his posse
discovered a freshly slaughtered bull and green hides in the hull of the Dick
family’s sloop.
I also learned about
the Hog War. In December 1906, Wallisville civic
leaders sought to prevent domestic and feral hogs from making their regular
winter migration into town to feast on garbage strewn about the courthouse
lawn. The proposal requiring hog farmers to keep their animals penned was
approved by three votes, but the hog farmers managed to channel opposition to
the new law into efforts to move the courthouse to Anahuac. A referendum to
that effect passed in 1907, and Wallisville lost its
courthouse to the upstart across Turtle Bay.
“We have spits and
spats still,” said Joe Landry, mayor of Old River-Winfree for the past 25
years, but nothing like the old days. For Landry and other elected officials,
the challenge is keeping up with rampant growth. Once rural and largely
undeveloped, this coastal prairie dotted with small communities is rapidly
giving way to suburban sprawl.
Not completely,
though, as my friend showed me this week. Still lingering, at least for a
while, are snowy egrets with bright yellow feet and majestic blue herons and
ducks of every variety. Still lingering are mysterious cypress swamps and
shawls of Spanish moss and brilliant-green water plants and pinkish-white marsh mallow flowers, as well as raccoons and muskrats and
yellow-eyed gators gliding through clusters of water hyacinths. Still lingering
are coffee-colored streams, Old and Lost, where bird calls echo among the tall
pines and cypress, where a busy interstate and massive chemical plants and
subdivisions spreading amoeba-like across the prairie seem far away. At least for a little while.
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Native Texan Joe
Holley is a former editorial page editor and columnist for newspapers in San
Antonio and San Diego and a staff writer for The Washington Post. He has been a
regular contributor to Texas Monthly and Columbia Journalism Review and is the
author of two books, including a biography of football hero, Slingin' Sammy Baugh. He joined the Houston Chronicle in
2009.
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