Watershed Texas

A glimpse of saltmarsh prairie. Imagine the hamlet of Houston is somewhere just over the horizon.

Do you ever wonder what the land where you live looked like before you arrived? Playing around with the historical photos in Google Earth* can give you an idea what one might have seen, at least from the air, as far back as about 1940.

But what about 150 or more years ago, before the tangle of highways and sea of rooftops? If you live along the Texas Gulf Coast, can you picture the millions of acres of tall grass prairie? Coastal prairie, steeped with marshland and traced with shady bayous, was the predominate landscape in our area from the Pleistocene Era to a few decades ago.

Fortunately we have the descriptive writings of a few early explorers and travelers to recreate the scene.

Frederick Law Olmsted is better known as the patron saint of landscape architecture and the designer of New York City’s Central Park, but in the late 1850’s as a journalist he and his brother made a trip by horseback across Texas to Mexico and back. Olmsted was assigned to report on the culture of slavery in the South, but foreshadowing his future career, he also turned his keen observation to the landscapes he encountered. His dispatches to what is now the New York Times were later published as A Journey Through Texas, Or a Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier.

The Olmsted brothers first encounter the vast coastal prairie on a rainy winter ride from Victoria to Port Lavaca. The road is “a mere collection of straggling wagon ruts, extending for more than a quarter mile in width[…] it being desirable, in this part of the country, rather to avoid a road than follow it.”

“Wherever the turf was not too soft to support the hoofs of the horses, we went at a round trot, splashing sheets of water over one another. The greater part of the time, our view was entirely uninterrupted, across a level, nearly treeless space around three-quarters of the horizon. Objects loomed into vagueness, as at sea.[…]As we approached the coast, the ground became still more perfectly level, and more deeply inundated. The horses were half-knee deep.[…]We passed near several herds of deer, and saw many wild geese, cranes, and prairie hens…”

On the way to Port Lavaca’s rival, the now-vanished Indianola, the pack mule Mr. Brown “subsides” in a marshy mire, with only his ears visible.

“We threw off our saddles, hobbled the horses, and prepared to wade to his help, when we saw him renewing his struggles, and, after getting his fore feet on more solid turf, he gradually came forth, and walked eagerly toward us[…]the water shooting from the wicker hampers as from some patent watering cart. We thought, bitterly, for a moment, of our pistols and sugar, our Epsom salts and gunpowder, our gingerbread, our poets, and our shirts, then broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.”

The approach to Houston took Olmsted across the Katy prairie.

“To Houston the road lay across a flat surface, having a wet, sandy or “crawfish” soil, bearing a coarse, rushy grass, diversified by occasional belts of pine and blackjack. We had reached the level prairie portion of the coast, and in fact saw henceforth not one appreciable elevation until we crossed the Mississippi.”

Olmsted’s impression of Houston in 1857 is more agreeable than the ornithologist John James Audubon’s some 20 years earlier. He also finds it an odd, violent town, but not without beauty.

“In the bayou bottoms nearby, we noticed many magnolias, now in full glory of bloom, perfuming delicately the whole atmosphere. We sketched one which stood one hundred and ten feet high, in perfect symmetry of development, and studded from top to lowest branch with hundreds of great delicious white flowers.”

The travelers were determined to continue directly from Houston to New Orleans. They found that local knowledge of the route was so scanty that just beyond city limits “the eastern shore is completely terra incognito”.  “No other road is known than the one by which cattle are driven to New Orleans, and this one so imperfectly, that we added probably fifty stray miles to our distance, by following indistinct paths and erroneous information.” At that time, the great value of coastal prairies and wetlands for flood control, wildlife habitat, and water quality was inconceivable. The prairies east of Houston were sparsely settled and traditional farming of was difficult on the marshy land, so it was concluded that the land was poor.

“Prairie land has little value; when a sale is made, it is about fifty cents an acre. The cheapness of land and the facility of access from Galveston attract many Germans here; but, it was said, that bilious diseases made havoc among them–“They don’t have no showing to live at all here.” Even the Americans acknowledged a great deal of “chills and fever,” but seemed to think the Germans were served about right for living without bacon, and eating trash, such as “fresh fish and ripe cucumbers!”

“From the Trinity [River] to the Neches [River] the face of the country was the same. It was as beautiful, perhaps, as an uncultivated flat can be, the prairies being broken by islands and large masses of wood; pine and oak predominating, but cypresses, gums, and magnolias appearing in the bayou bottoms, as the banks of the sluggish brooks are here called.”

Olmsted did make it to New Orleans by horseback, and continued to on to New York and into the annals of history.

Next, we will turn the clock back a few more centuries to Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s incredible tale of survivorship, in Time Travel on the Prairie, Part 2.

* Type your address into Google Earth, and after you enjoy the sight of your home as seen from the sky, click the historical imagery button which appears on the toolbar as a clock. A timeline appears under the toolbar, and pulling the slider along it will take you back in time through a series of aerial photos.