TIVE 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 River’s 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 Bidaitribes; 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.