The Supermoon as it rises through the thick humid air of a Texas June night

Around once a year the Moon is a whisker closer to Earth than the the other lunar cycles, setting up for what some advertise as a bigger and brighter Moon. Coinciding in 2013 within a day of the Summer Solstice this astronomical event is interesting to see especially when one can find a suitable backdrop to frame a photo. In Dallas we lack a mountainscape, ocean or even much of a hill that gives enough perspective to capture a full moon. We do have a bridge and some tall buildings to work with that make for a fine backdrop for a moonrise.

The term Supermoon is not used within the astronomical community, which uses the term perigee-syzygy or perigee moon. Perigee is the point at which the Moon is closest in its orbit to the Earth, and syzygy is a full or new moon, when the Earth, the Moon and the Sun are aligned. Hence, a supermoon can be regarded as a combination of the two, although they do not perfectly coincide each time. On average, about once a year (14 months) the moon becomes full within a few hours of perigee.

Waiting for the sun to set within a day of the Summer Solstice is often like watching grass grow or waiting for paint to dry. Gives someone a chance to explore the Trinity River bottoms between the levees and see some of the sights and do some unconventional things that few check out. Killing a few birds with the same stone.



  





 







 













Surprising to see more and more people out at these things. Just a couple years ago I'm certain that I was the only one out there on the levee photographing the moon. On this particular night there were about one hundred. Some here on their own, some in pairs, some in groups.

The Dallas Marshal's Office has upgraded their vehicles to patrol the Trinity River. Seen at left is one of the new Chevy Silverado 4x4's equipped with heavy duty mud tractor style tires. This deputy marshal was up on the levee near the new Pavaho Pump Station watching for illegal motorized vehicles on the levees. Inset above is David Mimlitch who is best known for his award winning aerial photography of the DFW area and Trinity River. This evening his camera gear was on two wheels instead of two wings.

Fading light over the wildflower filled floodway looking towards Downtown Dallas near the Sylvan Avenue Bridge

Sun setting behind the Hampton-Inwood Bridge over the Trinity River

As the sun slowly descends out of the way and the skies begin to darken, the real reason most people are here on the river can begin.....

The Rise Of The Super Moon


You really don't need the Moon to be in a "super" phase to photograph the full phase down here. Advertised as 12% closer and 30% brighter the moon looks the same to me year round. The best time of year to photograph the moon in Dallas is actually in the winter when the atmosphere is clearer, the sun sets earlier and the chance for clouds out to the east is lower. Many people, in any event, use the annual Supermoon event as an occasion to dwell on Earth’s only natural satellite and chose the levees as their location.

In the summer months I have found that storms and cloud cover in East Texas some 100 to 150 miles away can often impact the sighting of the Moon as it first rises above the horizon. If the Tyler, Kilgore or even Texarkana area is experiencing early evening storms then one must wait thirty minutes or more after moonrise to see the Moon as it clears the distant high clouds.



The light bouncing off the Moon through all that thick East Texas humidity creates an orange glow at first then into a mustard yellow as it passes by Reunion Tower.  It's usually around this time that many people photographing the Moon will migrate towards a better spot for their liking. The Moon moves at a fast pace diagonally from lower left to upper right. The pace of which allows for a shot or two at most before requiring a move of a few steps if one wishes to re-rack the same shot. Below is a real time clip taken in June 2013 of the Moon as it travels from left to right across the night sky moving directly behind the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge


Gotta move fast to get the shot you want and need to be able to pick up and move with your gear when the time is right.

Full Moon directly behind the Santiago Caltrava designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge June 2013

The sweet spot for photographing the Moon down here is about 1/4 mile downstream of the Sylvan Avenue Bridge on the west levee. If you push further out towards the Hampton/Inwood Bridge the moon perspective will be much larger but the powerlines along Sylvan will be in the way. Pushing even further out toward Singleton/Eagle Ford area has been tried too with mixed results. If any clouds are low on the horizon to any extent then the trip is also a bust.

The Supermoon as it continues past the Calatrava Bridge onward and upward

We live with the Moon and see a Full Moon every 28 days. Few realize the speed that it travels across the night sky until they watch it move across the night sky. Great vantage points and worth attempting sometime if you have a camera that can be manually set. The bright white lights of the bridge make for a challenging shoot, there are tradeoffs with getting details of the Moon or details of the bridge.

The late Spring rains in 2013 have kept the small ponds that dot the floodway full of water. They serve as a great reflective backdrop when the winds are absent. In wet periods when the river floods between the levees the ponds here will fill with small fry, baitfish and crawdads that serve as a food base for wading birds. The Trinity did not see large scale flooding rains this winter and as a result the small patchwork of ponds down here lack any real forage for birds.

Small pond between the just downstream of the railroad trestle that services Downtown Dallas

A mountain bike really is the best form of transportation if you want to explore the levees between the Caltrava Bridge and the Santa Fe Trestle Trail. A bike makes quick and easy work out of the gravel access roads here and one can travel from one site to another in just minutes.

Trinity River Trail near the Santa Fe Trestle and DART rail line

The City of Dallas calls this a 16 foot wide access road. Looks more like a bike path don't you think. The final section seen above was paved about two weeks ago and now connects the Santa Fe Trestle Trail with this new section that stretches almost to I-35. I have heard it called the Trinity River Connector, Trinity River Trail. It still does not connect with anything nor does it serve as a functional piece of infrastructure. It's just sort of there.

David Mimlitch riding the new Trinity River concrete trail thing near the Corinth Street Viaduct

Mountain bikes had no trouble negotiating the soft surface road that was here before. The concrete smooths things out a little. This particular section from Corinth to I-35 was paved in about a week, the whole thing. The contractor had a machine that just laid out a smooth ribbon of concrete the whole distance. Wish they would have kept on going as many of the trail users come from the Continental Avenue and West Dallas area to recreate down here. Recent news is that the trail is stalled for planned construction of new highway interchanges. I bet it has something to do with........

That Big Gigantic Hole Near the I-35 Bridge



I bet a million people pass within rock throwing distance of this ten story deep hole everyday and don't even know it's there. It's big. It's deep. It's spooky. Larger than a missile silo and if above ground would rival an office building or two in size Downtown. This hole is part of a Dallas public works project to tunnel underneath the Trinity River. The project is supposed to link the east and west banks of the Trinity River water system, carrying via gravity waste water from the Downtown side of the river to the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant. A twin bored hole of similar size sits next to the Cadiz Pump Station not far from Old City Park. Construction of this project began in early 2012 I believe. In the past year the site for whatever reason has sat empty. The fencing, signs and equipment all disappeared with the passage of time. So, we're left with this big hole.


There is a bit of a lip to the top of it, 4 feet or so. No danger of falling in. It's also not high enough to keep floodwaters at bay. In the spring of 2012 the Trinity inundated the site.

You can read more about it below:
http://www.tawwa.org/TW11Paper/20110131%20DWU%20EB-WB%20Interceptor%20Connection.pdf

The twin access vertical tunnel at the Cadiz Pump Station

The Cadiz Pump Station sits in the shadow of Downtown Dallas and spitting distance from I-30. I believe when the new I-30 freeway project begins construction, the century old pump station will be demolished for the "Horseshoe Project".

The long forgotten limestone cliffs of the original Trinity River near Downtown

The old Cadiz Pump Station once sat on the banks of the Trinity River. Prior to channelization and realignment some half mile away, the natural river channel near Downtown was a picturesque limestome cliff lined river with large groves of mature trees. Remnants of that old Austin Chalk lined channel can still be seen like the one above. The Sportatorium wrastlin' arena once sat in the abandoned lot above. Without much imagination you can picture what the river once looked like through here.

Speaking of the river being re-channeled..................

Walking On Water At The Standing Wave

Trinity River Whitewater Park at the Lower Wave

At the far end of the levees stands the Santa Fe Trestle Trail and the Trinity River Whitewater Park. The century old Santa Fe Trestle has been converted into a pedestrian/bike bridge that spans the Trinity right at the very end of the southernmost portion of the levees. Just upstream a mere 50 feet or so sits a purpose built DART Light Rail bridge that services the Red and Blue lines to the Corinth Station from Downtown.

Below the bridge sits the Standing Wave, the Trinity River Whitewater Park.

Birdseye view of the Trinity River Standing Wave as seen from the Santa Fe Trestle

The Standing Wave feature serves as a sort of endless surfable whitewater wave. If you have the right equipment you can get into the wave and surf it, do tricks, spins and such. There are two water features here, the Upper and Lower Wave. A concrete divider on river left(north bank) separates the surfing waves from a "canoe bypass" that is more like a flume.

Trinity River Whitewater Park, the Lower Wave, watch your step

When the water is low in the summer during dry periods I have noticed that some of the larger wading birds have been able to hold their own at the top lip of the lower standing wave feature while they are fishing for a meal. Maybe it was the Full Moon pulling on my brain that made me decide to try it myself.

Making Rooster Tails as I walk out onto the Standing Wave

Footing is firm under what is an algae mat of sorts that blankets the Lower Wave. I was able to walk out there without issue and into the middle of the main channel and wander around for a few minutes. A slip would not have been a good thing as I would have been laundered through the Lower Wave which is rated Class II-III whitewater. Some video standing out on the Trinity River in mid-channel:


It's a great view from here. Looking straight up the channelized Trinity River one can see right under the Corinth Street Viaduct channel and much further beyond. A real unorthodox way of seeing the Trinity River. In the very near future, the Corps of Engineers plans to dismantle the wooden sections of bridge here on either side of the river. If you want to see the old woodwork here you should make plans for a trip here soon.

Standing on the Lower Wave of the Trinity River Standing Wave, mid-channel, looking upstream at the Santa Fe Trestle Trail

A Crested Coralroot Orchid Hexalectris spicata in the Great Trinity Forest, June 2013

The needles in the haystack. The drinking straw sized plants so obscure that many would walk right past them without notice. They are the native Hexalectris spicata, the Coralroot Orchid. The rarity of these orchids make for a difficult search in the Great Trinity Forest of Dallas, Texas. They exist only in the most untouched of places down there where the soil conditions and tree canopy must be just right.

The Piedmont Ridge Trail

The home range of Hexalectris covers some of the most inhospitable terrain in the Southwest. These orchids represent a genus of eight fully myco-heterotrophic species, which persist largely undetected due to their rarity, inconspicuous and unpredictable flowering patterns, and because they occur in harshest of habitats to man.The remote desert canyons of West Texas and Mexico, the dry tropical forests further south and in the case of the Great Trinity Forest, the dense cedar thickets of Oak Creek and lower White Rock Creek. It's tough to find these things.

A plant so specialized that it cannot be transplanted or curated in another environment. Attempts in the past to move these plants, transplant or take one for study have all failed.

Below is the Hexalectris nitida (Glass Mountain crested coralroot). So rare that it is listed as an Endangered Species in the State of New Mexico. In Texas they are a little more common but up until the 1980s they were thought only to exist much further to the south and west than Dallas. It rarely has open blooms in the Dallas population, it self pollinates according to those who have studied them.  The State of Texas doesn't formally recognize any plant species as Endangered or Threatened unless the US Fish & Wildlife Service has already done so, therefore, in Texas the federal and state lists are the same.

A lone Hexalectris nitida (Glass Mountain crested coralroot)  under a canopy of cedar and oak trees growing in the unique detrius of the Great Trinity Forest

The orchids here are not run of the mill wildflowers. They do not even require sunlight to grow. The fancy term is nonphotosynthetic orchid from a mycorrhizal fungi. Their evolutionary story centers around the very unique soils that lie in a paper thin layer covering the Austin Chalk uplands in this part of Dallas.

A thin veneer of soil noted as the Eddy Brackett sits atop the uplands here. This soil was once common in a belt that stretched through Pleasant Grove, East Dallas and Lake Highlands. Paved and developed long ago very few places still exist to find these plants.






  

A Special Partnership

The soil here harbors a special host for the orchids to survive, a special fungus known as mycorrhizal fungi. It's believed that the decaying leaf matter from the surrounding oak trees above provides the nutrients needed for the fungi to thrive. The undisturbed plant matter is a vital part of the success for the fungi and the orchids. The rhizome of the orchids tap into the fungi which provides all the nutrients that the orchid needs to thrive. As a result, the orchid requires no sunlight for growth and relies completely on the nutrients of the host fungi for food.

Hexalectris nitida (Glass Mountain crested coralroot)

The orchid extracts food and nutrients from the mycorrhizal fungus without providing any apparent benefits to the fungi. Thus, the orchid is parasitic on the fungus and because the fungus obtains its food from its host(oak trees), the orchid is an indirect parasite of the oak.

Coralroot Orchid as seen from above growing through a floor of acorns and leaves

A Super Long Lifecyle
Earlier this spring I posted about the Trout Lilies that reside in the woods here that take seven long years from seed to flowering adult. The Crested Coral Root Orchid takes an estimated ten to twenty years from seed germination to flowering adult. During the decade or two between germination and flowering there might be many individuals in an area that are simply unseen.

All species of orchids require fungi for seed germination and early development, but species vary widely in their dependence on fungi as they mature. The Coralroot needs the underlying fungi for carbs and nutrients for it to survive.

Hopefully the orchid pictured at left had a successful flowering and will seed offspring. Look for them in the year 2033.

Hexalectris spicata

The overlooks, canyons and diverse terrain in this part of Dallas are only a fifteen minutes by mountain bike from the Spillway at White Rock Lake. A short hop, skip and jump away from the Lake lands you in what looks smells and tastes like the Texas Hill Country. The blazing heat of an early summer night smells of hot cedar down here. The radiant warmth of sun baked limestone comes up through your shoes into your feet.

The waning days of the wildflower season here are drawing to a close. Most of the flowers are starting to go to seed save for the late blooming Horsemint and the ever random late yellow flowers whose names escape me.

The colorful male Painted Bunting Passerina ciris at Gateway Park Dowdy Ferry. Dallas, Texas

The New World French Explorers called this bird the PasserinNonpareil which loosely translated into English means "without equal". The Painted Bunting. The swamps and wetlands those French once claimed for their King Louis XIV in what is now Louisiana centuries ago are filled with the summer song of the bunting. A bird whose loud call is only second to that of their vibrant color. According to Native American legend, when the great spirit was giving all the birds their colors, he ran short of dye so he gave the very last one, the Painted Bunting, a coat of many colors made from dabs of whatever was left.

Painted Bunting in flight

Europeans were so awe struck by the colors of these birds that during the 18th and 19th Century the Painted Bunting was caught in the wild and sent to Europe as caged pets. That practice still continues in Central and South America today.

Painted Buntings live in semi-open habitats with scattered shrubs or trees. Birds from the south-central U.S. breeding population use abandoned farms, strips of woodland between overgrown fields, brushy roadsides or streamsides, and patches of grasses, weeds, and wildflowers. Individuals of the coastal Southeast population breed in scrub communities, wooded back dunes, palmetto thickets, edges of estuaries, hedges, yards, fallow fields, and old orange groves.

There are two distinct breeding populations in the United States. A population in Florida through the Coastal Carolinas and another in Texas and Louisiana. The two groups were once one, habitat loss has separated this species much like that of the Endangered Wood Stork.

Dawn breaking over the trees of a marsh meadow in the Great Trinity Forest July 2013

The east coast populations winter in shrubby or grassy habitats in Florida and the northern Caribbean. Birds from the south-central United States winter in similar habitats in southern Mexico and Central America. I imagine there is an old plantation in the Yucatan that looks similar to all this Trinity River Bottom that the birds hang their hat in during the winter months.

White Ibis feeding in a Great Trinity Forest swamp July 2013

The small caliper trees in this area down near Dowdy Ferry and I-20 serve as ideal habitat for the birds whose numbers are quite large this year. A walk north up the dirt road from the Dowdy Ferry park towards McCommas Bluff Preserve will yield many sightings and songs of these birds.

The rarity of seeing a Painted Bunting is not the population being so few. It's the hunt for the habitat that they relish. Find their favorite environment and they are thick like flies. In Dallas we simply lack the habitat for such birds. Mostly that has to do with our annual rainfall in North Texas and to a lesser extent the amount of development inside the floodplain and transitional areas these birds enjoy so much.

Mating Dance of the Painted Bunting


Male Painted Buntings engage in a visual display including fluttering around like a butterfly or in an upright display, body-fluff display, bow display and wing-quiver display. These displays are used in conflicts with other males or in breeding displays for females, with females rarely engaging in displays. Occasionally, males may physical clash with each other and may even kill each other in such conflicts.



Below is a textbook display of a male Painted Bunting from start to finish, in the full ritual of a courtship dance.

Male Painted Bunting diving off of a tree perch to a gravel road below, beginning the mating ritual

The ritual begins with a dive out of a nearby tree onto a wide open patch of gravel road. I have never seen anything like it before. A calculated swaying back and forth with wings extended at different times, fluffing, mock flight and plumage display. Really something to see.


















The land down here has very few clearings and openings. Covered with acre upon acre of Giant Ragweed during the summer, not many places fit the bill for a display of such type. Thus, a gravel road that parallels the Trinity River serves that purpose.

Satisfied, the male Painted Bunting finishes his dance and flies back to a nearby perch

Indigo Bunting

The more common bunting seen in this part of the Trinity River is the Indigo Bunting Passerina cyanea.

Indigo Buntings are actually black; the diffraction of light through their feathers makes them look blue. This explains why males can appear many shades from turquoise to black.

They are more common now than when the Spanish first explored Texas. This is due to an increase in their favorite habitat of woodland edges, such as power line clearings and along roads. The Trinity River Wetland Cells, the Trinity Trail around Simpson Stuart and the powerline right of way near Big Spring are all excellent places to see the Indigo Bunting in abundance.

An interesting fact is that they migrate at night, using the pattern of stars nearest the North Star to guide them.

Male Indigo Bunting

The Mouth of Five Mile Creek

Channelized Trinity River and the channelized mouth of Five Mile Creek as viewed from the Dowdy Ferry Horse Trail

Dowdy Ferry Trail Map

The Dowdy Ferry Southern Gateway Park and Trail

Address for the Southern Gateway Park/ Dowdy Ferry @ I-20:
2067 Dowdy Ferry Road Dallas, Texas

Park is open sunrise to sunset and features an old gravel pit turned fishing lake, complete with a fishing pier, picnic gazebos and restrooms.

A separate parking area near the dirt trail head has trailer parking, hitching posts and water troughs available for livestock.

No motorized vehicles allowed, no hunting, no guns.

Built with horses in mind, I'd like to call it the "Horse Park For The Rest Of Us". A place where anyone can visit, ride your horse, a mountain bike or take a walk. Wooded and shaded nearly the entire distance, this is a nice trail to wander on in dry weather.
Much of the trail here is a scraped bulldozed path through the woods cut in the spring of 2013. Six to eight feet wide in most spots it's about a mile and a half long. No formal signs exist and it loosely follows the Trinity River. From the parking lot the trail travels near due west till it reaches a high bank with a view of the mouth of Five Mile Creek.

Overlook of the Dowdy Ferry Trail at the Trinity River

The opposing bank to the river here on the west side is punctuated with thousands upon thousands of dumped vehicle tires that create an enormous artificial sand bar of rubber just downstream of the Five Mile Creek mouth.


I have visited this area a number of times in the past several years. It is prone to holding water for extended periods of time and can remain very muddy even through dry periods. I would use caution on this trail after rains as the trail surface will be permanently impaired by trail users who do use it in muddy conditions.

Time will tell if the rough cut trail will weather the test of time and periodic flooding of the river. Maybe the oddest thing regarding the trail here is an area with recently purpose planted Dogwood trees. Way out in the middle of nowhere and caged in with chicken wire. Odd choice but what do I know?


Dog Friendly

People always ask me where they can take their dogs out hiking in the Great Trinity Forest. This would be high on the list of places to walk with a dog.

Just be mindful of horses out on the trail and yield to those on horseback.

The guys pictured at left were seen near the Lockkeeper's House at McCommas Bluff Lock and Dam #1. They had ridden up from Hutchins and were headed up the river first to Joppa(pronounced "Joppie") and then up to Cadillac Heights.

They were looking for places off the pavement to ride that were easy on their horses and away from any road traffic. 

Guys like this really form the soul of the river. The Trinity has one, you know. People who have grown up here, lived their whole lives on the river and know it better than I ever could. They learned the river from the generations before them. It's always fun to learn who they are kin to and where they live.

The unfinished and sloppily constructed McCommas Bluff gabion that forever ruined the view of McCommas Bluff

Up A Creek

This section of Trinity River was channelized in the early 1970s to straighten the river in anticipation of ocean going barge traffic for the planned Trinity River Project.

The canal project was a total bust. The river never saw barge traffic in North Texas, the turning basin planned for the Trinity River eventually became the McCommas Bluff Landfill.

Five Mile Creek at one time had a natural channel that once emptied into the Trinity River miles to the north, near Loop 12 and what is now Little Lemmon Lake. Over the last century, the course of the creek was drastically changed to a more southerly course with every revision.

Five Mile Creek's current mouth is an ugly cuss of a place, more of a drainage ditch than a creek revered by so many upstream. Although the creek is now neutered and channelized it still adds a vast amount to the biodiversity of the Great Trinity Forest. The high water floods of Five Mile when coupled with the Trinity River deposit vast amounts of silt onto the Dowdy Ferry Park area making it fertile soil for tree growth. The east bank of the river here has many large Bur Oaks that thrive in bottoms such as this.

Near the headwaters of Five Mile Creek in southwest Dallas.

You would never know, following Five Mile upstream, that the muddy slow creek down on the river is a roaring limestone spring fed tributary sourced in a place the pioneers of Dallas County dubbed Cedar Mountain. Even in the 100 degree temperatures the creek runs shockingly cold.

Biologist David McNeely

Invited by Biologist David McNeely, we surveyed the aquatic life of Five Mile Creek using a large and humane net to study the various fish that call the creek home. All the fish were returned unharmed back to the creek.

Historian MC Toyer surveying an upper reach of Five Mile Creek

Shallow in many areas the limestone bottom here often gives way to deep holes many 10 feet deep or more. The larger fish congregate in these holes, bass and catfish in what is most likely great numbers.

The water here has near perfect clarity and has only the thinnest of algae films on the bottom.


With the water so clear, the aquatic life expend an enormous amount of energy in attracting a mate with the coloring of their body. The wild color combinations and patterns rival that of the Painted Buntings further down the creek at the mouth with the Trinity River. The fish colors here are far more brilliant than any fish on White Rock Creek in North Dallas and might only be eclipsed by small populations of isolated fish in Hill Country chalk creeks.

longear sunfish (Lepomis megalotis)

One of the most colorful of native Texas fish the Longear Sunfish is so named for an ear flap that is elongated, especially on breeding males, and has a light margin. The back and sides are usually olive to brown, becoming yellowish orange on the venter. Breeding males have numerous metallic blue spots on the back and sides and wavy blue longitudinal lines on the head. The venter becomes brassy orange, as do the interradial membranes on all vertical fins

In the warmer months of spawning season longear sunfish are generally found in shallower, warmer waters near the sources of streams which have pools with a flowing current. They prefer streams with a hard bottom of clay or gravel with clear waters and they usually stay in or near aquatic plants. Although more abundant near the sources of streams, they can be found in streams and rivers of all sizes and are also found in lakes. Compared to other members of the sunfish family, longear sunfish are better at getting food in moving waters than still waters. This may explain why longear sunfish are more abundant in streams than lakes compared to other members of the family. They cannot tolerate cloudy water. Throughout the 20th century their populations have been reduced in areas where their native streams have suffered increased cloudiness.

Red Shiner, Stoneroller and Mosquitofish

The Red Shiner (Cyprinella lutrensis). Cyprinella is Greek for "small carp" and lutrensis is derived from the Latin lutra which means "otter", a reference to Otter Creek, Arkansas, where the species was first captured. Coloration is similar to the blacktail shiner, olive green above and silver on the sides. Spawning males become bluish on the sides and the fins redden. The native fish

Red Shiner Cyprinella lutrensis

Red Shiners are often considered an invasive species in other parts of the country. They are a native and hearty species here in Texas, often living in water that other fish cannot tolerate. The color patterns of these fish on Five Mile Creek are exceptionally brilliant and not seen in fish commonly used for fishing bait. The fish above were put in a small aquarium supplied by biologist David McNeely.

Green Sunfish Lepomis cyanellus

The Green Sunfish is a thick-bodied sunfish with a large mouth, the upper jaw extending to about the middle of the eye. Back and sides are bluish-green, grading to pale yellow or white on the belly. Black vertical bars are sometimes evident on the sides. Blue stripes and streaks are present on the side of the head. Pelvic fins in breeding males are white or pink; and the tail and anal and dorsal fins are tipped with white or salmon-pink. They are highly tolerant of low oxygen water, warm water and slow moving streams. Prolific and tough they are some of the best fighting fish found in North Texas streams.

Below is a different perspective on Five Mile Creek, an unattended underwater camera left for some time in one of the pools of the creek.  In the clip, the Longears, Green Sunfish and minnows all are going about their business.

Segment of the Five Mile Creek Trail that will eventually connect to the Great Trinity Forest

At some point in the future a planned paved path will run the length of Five Mile Creek from Oak Cliff to Joppa Preserve on Simpson Stuart Road. Only bits and pieces of this facility are built, construction is not evident on other portions slated for completion.

This is a land grant born from the heavy cost of a revolutionary war to gain independence from a tyrannical despotic regime. A great American from the State of Tennessee paid the ultimate price to have his name attached to the land here. His sacrifice forever consecrated this acreage of land with his family name. A Congressman, frontiersman and volunteer in the Army of The Republic of Texas who gave his life for a cause greater than his own on the morning of March 6, 1836 inside the walls of The Alamo. His name is known to every Native Texan ever to step foot in a Texas public school. Crockett. David "Davy" Crockett.

The 400 acre parcel of Great Trinity Forest that sits just west of the Trinity River Audubon Center was granted to Crockett by the Texas Government and Nacogdoches County for enlistment in the Army of the Republic of Texas. His wife, by then made a widow by the Battle of the Alamo, was given deed to the land. It still carries her name today, Elizabeth Crockett.

Sam Street's 1900 Map of Dallas showing the Crockett Headright on the Trinity River in what is now called the Great Trinity Forest, Dallas, Texas.

On January 14, 1836, Crockett and 65 other men signed an oath before Judge John Forbes to the Provisional Government of Texas for six months: "I have taken the oath of government and have enrolled my name as a volunteer and will set out for the Rio Grande in a few days with the volunteers from the United States." Davy Crockett's military service entitled him to a "Labor and a League" of land here in Texas. A labor roughly equals a couple hundred acres of prime riparian land and a league is a little over 4400 acres that was out and away from a river.

Red-Tailed Hawk at the Audubon Center

To qualify for a first class headright, the applicant was required to take the following oath: "I do solemnly swear, that I was a resident citizen of Texas at the date of the Declaration of Independence, that I did not leave the country during the campaigns of the Spring of 1836, to avoid a participation in the struggle, that I did not refuse to participate In the war, and that I did not aid or assist the enemy, that I have not previously received a title to any quantum of land, and that I conceive myself justly entitled, under the Constitution and Laws to the quantity of land for which I now apply."

That Crockett land for the most part looks the same today as when the people of the Republic granted the land to Crockett's widow. Deep old growth woods of majestic hardwoods, dense thickets of vines and underbrush that are the incubator for wildlife. Crockett's widow ultimately decided to live on another piece of her husband's granted lands near Acton but the name CROCKETT will forever stare back at whoever holds deed to the land.

To those unfamiliar with the Great Trinity Forest, a romantic tale like that is how they picture one of the largest urban parklands in the United States. Big, open and green. I wish all of the land down there was like that. It's not. It has been dumped on and destroyed upon for decades. Some of the worst damage has been inflicted just within the last five years.

A sea of wildflowers on the Pemberton Back Forty near White Rock Creek

The millions of dollars in remediation involved in fixing the problems here threaten to damage the fragile life that still exists. New construction threatens places of epic importance to all Texans, the Audubon Center, a natural spring called Big Spring, Native American sites and a unique riparian watershed that is home to thousands of animals.

The problems here, the unresolved issues, the sheer magnitude of what is at stake for the future of the Great Trinity Forest needs a larger audience. I cannot do it myself.

My eyes get glazed over reading all this stuff. I hate talking about it. Takes all the fun out of coming down to the Trinity River to be honest. My introduction to this part of the Great Trinity Forest began with the Texas Horse Park. The first executive director of the Texas Horse Park invited me for breakfast at Kuby's early one morning and hashed out introductions with many of whom so many of you have learned about through this blog. So many good things have come from that.

What started some years ago with me blindly wandering around on a mountain bike by myself now has now turned into a large and well respected group of people dedicated to preserving and protecting the unique nature and sites down on the Trinity. There is no name, no organization, no leader. Just a large and ever expanding group of like minded folks from very diverse professional backgrounds. Biologists, foresters, chemists, engineers, attorneys, doctors, educators, I think even a yankee and two Oklahomans snuck in to boot. Decades upon decades of experience they each bring to this issue. Measured and methodical in their approach. Far smarter than I, it's a pleasure to spend time with them on these salons in the wild.

The most well respected names in Texas environmental causes have visited this spring and early summer. It has been an honor to meet so many of them. They have taken away a deeper understanding of the place, documented it with careful field notes and have each brought an important pair of new eyes to watch what happens next. They are accomplished authors, public speakers, journalists and lecturers. Well versed in making their voice heard if needed.

Often on these visits to the woods, standing shoulder to shoulder will be the grandson descendants of the Beeman and Pemberton families, representing 172 years of continuous family land ownership in the Great Trinity Forest. They know what's right for the future here in these woods. The city needs to embrace them and their family legacy. A century from now it will be looked upon as preserving the richest family story in Dallas County. Historian and Beeman, MC Toyer and Billy Ray Pemberton are the family Patriarchs of the Trinity. They hold the torch. A big bright torch with a flame so high you cannot see the top. If the city wants to continue the rich history down here and carry the torch themselves, they need to wrap their arms around the brotherhood of these men. They both want to help but cannot find the right people to engage with inside city hall.  It's the city that needs the guiding light and the help.

A Condensed Primer On What's Going On --

Turtle in Big Spring

It has taken a bunch of folks months to get all the facts to assemble a somewhat complete picture. Still foggy on where all the development is headed and who is really behind the push to build all this. Is it an Olympic Bid? Real estate developers wanting a new Las Colinas? Who? Don't ask me.

The two links below distill the raw data into two condensed executive summaries. Click on them to download the pdfs. The underlying questions are ones for which I do not have an answer. The links explain much of how it happened and what will happen in regards to cleanup:

Dang, the Horse Park land is messed up, how are they gonna fix that, who the hell screwed that place up?
If you are a resident of the Pemberton Hill neighborhood and on well water the above link is a must read.

How they are gonna fix the future golf course is it gonna screw over the Audubon Center?

Read on below for a further explanation or even better go straight to the source:
http://savepembertonsbigspring.wordpress.com/
Compiled by Hal and Ted Barker, the website has links to raw data that can take days to read. Much of the information was aggregated by Open Record Request some of which required a Texas Attorney General opinion to obtain.

It's time for the City of Dallas to get on the ball with all this.



The Old Ghosts of a Time Long Since Passed

John Beeman's Republic of Texas medallion on White Rock Creek

Some oldtime ghosts hide out down here. They manifest themselves in the slightest of ways. An old fencepost that contained a herd of dairy cows. An old foundation for a barn burned half a century ago. An old plow worn to nothing by the ravages of a hard scrabble sod it once busted one hundred years prior. Discarded and left to rot away in whatever half-life timeframe it takes water, sun or rust to vanish it from view.  The time when those tools were sharp, well-oiled and carefully fitted represented a golden age of sorts for the Trinity River Bottom in Dallas County.

Emily Beeman; Frontier Mother, Frontier Defender

Beeman Cemetery

Warren Ferris; Surveyor, Indian Fighter, Explorer

The only permanent markers that stand to the men and women who first settled here lie in long forgotten areas of town. In a graveyard or two, their headstones recall a time where the people were undemanding and far between. Like the first true family to permanently settle Dallas, the Beemans. The women of the family, like Emily Beeman, posed with child in one arm and a rifle in the other.  The stories of mountain man surveyor and author Warren Ferris. A man who mapped the unmapped on the heels of the Lewis and Clark Expedition across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Explorer of Yellowstone and the man who penned Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado. He was the true to life Robert Redford's Jeremiah Johnson. Kevin Costner's John Dunbar. The real McCoy.  In the 1830s Ferris moved to the infant Republic of Texas where he became the official surveyor for Nacogdoches County. In 1839 Ferris surveyed at the Three Forks of the Trinity River deciding the lines and direction of streets for today's Dallas County. Ferris entered and surveyed this land prior to John Neely Bryan, the widely accepted founder of Dallas. Ferris exploits with the Indians who roamed what is now Dallas rival that of his encounters with the Rocky Mountain tribes. A rich legacy left to fade away. Some hope that whatever history happened down here one hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years ago is forgotten just long enough to physically erase whatever still remains. Vanished for good. There is money to be made, you see. Rezoned for 200 foot tall hotels, restaurants and bars the city has renamed the Great Trinity Forest Z123-195. A potential playground for those with the money and connections. A warning sign.

Pre-Historic Sites

Forrest Kirkland

December 29, 1940 was a cold bright day in Dallas. One where the late fall frosts had worked their magic on the last summer's batch of weeds and undergrowth making for a perfect day to explore the Trinity River. Out that day was Forrest Kirkland, founder of the Dallas Archeological Society and foremost expert on Texas Native American rock art.


On the same day when the Luftwaffe was unleashing upon London one of the heaviest firebombing raids of the Battle Of Britain, Forrest Kirkland was sketching and documenting a large Native American Site just South of the Pemberton Farm and Big Spring. Given the designation DL73, he documented a large and expansive Native American occupation area some 600 yards in length running north to south across what some day might become the Texas Horse Park. His field notes discuss the large amount of bird points, arrowheads and even grind stones found at the location in the vicinity of a small unnamed tributary to the Trinity River. 

Forrest Kirkland's report of DL73; photo credit Dr Tim Dalbey

Forrest Kirkland established himself as one of the leading researchers on Texas Native American Rock Art. During the work week he was an illustrator and designer of print media catalogs and advertisements. His design company was well respected and the industry leader of it's day. Living in Dallas, his weekends were often filled with exploration and fieldwork in the Dallas metropolitan area. In the 1930s and early 1940s much of Dallas County was still rural in nature, affording him great expanses of open terrain in which to work.

His prolific study of White Rock Creek yielded numerous archeological sites from the source tributaries in Collin County all the way to the mouth of White Rock where it enters the Trinity River.

Protecting Big Spring and Native American Sites

On the surface, little has changed in the way much of the land looked in 1940 when Forrest Kirkland was taking his field notes, searching the unnamed tributaries and briar laden undergrowth for a long lost Indian civilization. That site was largely spared the ravages in the decades to come. It's still there but for how long.

Citizen science has always played  a vital role in the discovery, conservation and preservation of unique historical sites in Texas. Without the scientific observations of private citizens much of the invaluable history of Dallas would be lost or never found to begin with.

Native American hammerstones, raw unfinished rocks and unique hematite worked pieces found over the decades at Big Spring

Rich Grayson(left) and Dr Tim Dalbey(right)

The work that Forrest Kirkland began with survey forms and sketches continues to this day. It's thankless work that requires careful observation, scientific know-how and a grit to get a job done that no one else will.

There are some unsung heroes who have been at work doing this kind of thing for years down in the woods. Guys like Rich Grayson and Tim Dalbey, seen at left doing the monthly TCEQ and EPA certified water test on Big Spring in late June 2013.

Rich is the DFW Coordinator for the Texas Stream Team, a cooperative partnership between Texas State University, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). His test criteria meets and exceeds federal, state and local standards. Carrying the identifier #80939, Big Spring is an official monitored site. In addition to coordinating water tests in the DFW area, Rich serves a webmaster for Friends of the Brazos.

Geoarcheologist Tim Dalbey has been instrumental in keeping everyone honest(so far, fingers crossed) about DL72, the Big Spring archeology site that extends into the platted area of the Texas Horse Park at 811 Pemberton Hill Road. The 13th century pottery and beautiful ceremonial style arrowheads found here in early 2013 by the city contracted archeology company suggest something very special lies beneath the Horse Park. What it might be remains to be seen.

Sunset over the Trinity River Valley, Dallas, Texas June 2013 in the Pemberton Wildflower Meadow that serves as an important bio-buffer for Big Spring seen in the trees beyond. Pictured at left Rich Grayson, right Billy Ray Pemberton

The real concern is that Big Spring is so special, so unique that if the site were ever compromised, ever built upon, ever fenced off that the damage could never be undone. The water is pure and cold. A solid 25 gallons a minute even in the heart of a Texas summer.
 
No politician or city official can take credit for any conservation effort here at Big Spring. The pristine pasture is a result of regular citizens rolling up their sleeves and taking a vested interest in the place. Lending a helping hand. The result is a slice of Old Texas. The Republic. The Lone Star. Smells like the country. Sounds of the city melt away. You know what that's about.

The ancient Bur Oak of Big Spring dwarfing Billy Ray Pemberton at left and Rich Grayson right, June 2013

Billy Ray Pemberton and his 133 year family legacy on the land here

Billy Ray Pemberton; Modern Day White Rock Farmer

The real star is the man responsible for watching over this land like an eagle. Billy Ray Pemberton. For decades he has been the silent watchman of this place, tending to the fields, the downed limbs and the occasional tire that floats by when the Trinity River floods. He alone is why this place is so special.

He and his wife Zada have fought harder for the land here than anyone who came before them. Deeply devoted to the teachings of The Bible and the land, they have developed a harmony here where their moral high ground values and solid work ethic inspire so many others to join their cause.

Big Spring at the Pemberton Farm

A walk of this land as a whole, to view the entirety of such a place will only make you appreciate Big Spring more. It is literally the only place of it's kind.

Native Americans used the Spring on an extensive basis.Their tools and tool making pieces litter the ground here. Centuries worth. President Sam Houston slept here at Big Spring nearly 170 years ago with his entourage Treaty Party that made peace with the Indians of North Texas in 1843.

Mr Pemberton learned much about the land and farming, how to run a ranch by a man named Wallace Jenkins.

 Wallace Jenkins 1930s-early 1960s

Wallace Jenkins; 1950s Farmer, Rancher on his farm at 811 Pemberton Hill Road among his waist high oat crop

Wallace Jenkins was a big man in Dallas County. A businessman from the oil fields and commercial farmer, he owned what is now called 811 Pemberton Hill Road and lands further to the south. He purchased what was then the Kirby Farm, an old farmstead that was in the Kirby Family. He bought it on the cheap, in the darkest days of the Great Depression when Texas farming and ranching were on the wane.

Pond B on the north end of DL73 built during the time Wallace Jenkins owned 811 Pemberton Hill

With hundreds of acres under plow and hundreds of cattle grazing pastures his farm was one of the largest at the time in Dallas County. He served as a Dallas County Commissioner during the 1950s and as a close friend of Sam Rayburn, was instrumental in the building of reservoirs and flood control lakes in North Texas. During the 1950s, Dallas was in a decade's long drought, his efforts brought us the reliable water supply we now have today.

Wallace Jenkins service bay garages

The Jenkins Farm must have been a sight to behold. Mr Pemberton worked there as a young boy in the 1940s tending to small chores around the ranch headquarters. Jenkins kept two Lincoln Zephyr automobiles on the ranch according to Mr Pemberton, that Jenkins would use to drive his property. Many of the Jenkins structures stood until 2012 when they were bulldozed.

The end of the Wallace Jenkins Farm era represents the end of anything good that ever happened here. All downhill from 1965 through 2013.

The Simpkins Tract -- Metropolitan Sand and Gravel --The Teamsters --The Syndicate

The Loop 12 Landfill about where the PGA Clubhouse will be built

It was in July of 1965 that Jimmy Hoffa's attorney Morris Shenker acting on behalf of the Teamsters made a $1.4 million dollar loan from the Teamster pension fund to a St Louis based sand and gravel operation known as Metropolitan Sand and Gravel. A Missouri oilman named Joe Simpkins along with Morris Shenker fronted the deal and threw in $300,000 of their own money purchasing a total of 2800 acres of prime Trinity River frontage in Southern Dallas. Morris A Shenker, Farrell Kahn, Morris A Shenker jr, and Joe Simpkin were the principals. Thus the Simpkins Tract was born. So were a half century of problems that we live with to this day.

You might remember Morris. He's famous. Made famous(er) in the mid 1990s by Martin Scorsese's movie Casino. Morris is portrayed in the movie by actor Richard Riehle as a "back east" attorney who receives a tongue lashed speech from Joe Pesci's character Nicky.

Shenker first came to national attention during the Kefauver Hearings in the early 1950s, in which he represented a number of underworld figures. From 1962 onward Shenker represented Jimmy Hoffa, and in 1966 became Hoffa's chief counsel.  In 1970 a year-long Life Magazine investigative report accused him, as head of the St. Louis Commission on Crime and Law Enforcement, along with the city's mayor Alfonso J. Cervantes, of both having "personal ties to the underworld". The magazine alleged that Shenker controlled the massive $700 million Teamsters Union Pension Fund and its investments, most notably in Las Vegas but also in San Diego (through developer Louis Lesser), New York, Kansas City, and elsewhere. In the late 1960s, Morris Shenker bought an interest in the Dunes and became its Chairman of the Board. Because of his Teamsters connection, Shenker, who operated the Dunes Hotel and Casino in the 1970s, ran afoul of the Nevada Gaming Commission.

View of Downtown Dallas from Trinity River Golf site

The Teamsters saw all the land down here as a future inland port and intermodal facility that would serve as a massive transportation hub for the ever growing and expanding sunbelt states of the Mid-West. They bought into the notion that the Trinity would become a navigable waterway from Fort Worth to the Gulf of Mexico and that levees would be extended as far south as present day Ferris to reclaim flood prone lands.

The Teamsters and their backers were always at odds with the city. When the Trinity River canal plans began to fizzle the investment group started facing political heat from the city wanting the land repurposed for a landfill. The group of investors looked at other uses for the land including a large mobile home trailer park, apartments and a new housing subdivision.

Metropolitan Sand and Gravel ran a gravel pit operation south of Elam Road from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. During this time they also ran a private landfill operation on a moderate scale.

In 1975, the City of Dallas under permit began a large landfill operation south of Elam Road and northwest of the present day Trinity River Audubon Center. They became known as the Elam and South Loop Landfills. As an interesting sidenote, originally one partner in the investment group defaulted on his loan regarding the land here. He used a 20 acre parcel of land as collateral near Downtown Dallas. The Teamsters took possession of the land with the default of the loan. That land was later sold to Ray Hunt who developed it into Reunion Arena and Reunion Tower.

The Landfill And How The City Got the Land

Feral pig damage that unearthed a section of the buried Elam landfill

The official landfills down here were in operation from 1975-1983. In the late 50s and early 60s there were some unofficial landfill activities of unknown origin west of the Elam Landfill and south of Elam road. These unofficial landfill locations have shown in the official sampling documentation to be a major point of concern.

The Burrescia land at 5950 Elam Road just east of the old Elam Landfill

With the landfill closures in 1983, the capping and monitoring of the landfills began. A layer of dirt and limestone based crushed rock was placed over the top providing a thin veneer "cap" of the landfill. Over the next two decades periodic testing was completed on the landfill with installation of further monitoring wells, investigations into toxic materials dumped inside the landfills, methane etc.

5950 Elam Road, former home of Let's Cowboy Up a Non-Profit grass roots community horsemanship group

In 2008 the City of Dallas acquired the land in an unorthodox method. Hard to explain but it involved a complex set of lawsuits and land unrelated to the Great Trinity Forest. The Dallas Business Journal has a great article about it from 2008 and can be found on their website Dallas Makes Trinity Forest Grab by Bill Hethcock. That story continues to this day Dallas appeals court vacates city's $750k jury award.

When the city bought the landfill, they inherited not only a landfill with underlying problems but a tenant running a slaughterhouse operation at 811 Pemberton Hill Road. The cleanup and long term legacy of fixing issues that stem from that are ones that will be shouldered on the backs of taxpayers for years to come. The TCEQ found the City of Dallas landfill in violation back in 2008 and thus set in motion a mandatory/voluntary cleanup.

Animal Carcass Pit at 811 Pemberton Hill Road

The slaughterhouse cleanup, well, that's a different story. Sitting on the footprint of the planned Texas Horse Park, every shovel full of dirt has a surprise. Surprise means expensive. Shame on somebody. It still baffles me how this was allowed to happen.

White Indian Paintbrush a rare sight

Cleaning It Up

Tire Dump Southwest of Pond B

Terracon Map

Earlier in the post I linked to a pair of executive summaries that serve as a good overview of the task ahead
Dang, the Horse Park land is messed up, how are they gonna fix that, who the hell screwed that place up?

How they are gonna fix the future golf course is it gonna screw over the Audubon Center?

The testing done to determine the pollution and toxicity of the soil, groundwater and surface conditions is very detailed. Broken down by location and chemical it serves as an excellent guide to where the problem areas are.
  

Terracon drilling equipment in Big Spring Pasture winter 2013

The links below will take you to the Barker Brothers Save Pemberton's Big Spring website and are in pdf form:

Site Plan Map
Proposed VCP Area Map
Site Plan and Sampling Locations
Prior Investigations
Soil Analytical Results A
Soil Analytical Results B
Groundwater Analytical Results
Surface Water and Analytical Results

In order to make heads and tails of most of it I have amended a few maps to show locations of importance to many reading this in three sections. The north section that focuses on Big Spring and the future Texas Horse Park. A central section that has focuses on contaminated ponds and seeps that flow directly into the Trinity River. The last but not least is the south section with the vital bird ponds that are so important to the Trinity River Audubon Center.

North Section -- Horse Park

In red are areas of interest that are hard to spot on the Terracon Maps or are unlabeled. Of note is the Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH PCLE Contamination Zone), see below. Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons are cancer causing substances that can be a root host of environmental damage and illnesses in humans.

PAH PCLE zone and mapped areas of nitrate contamination at the platted Horse Park site at 811 Pemberton Hill Road

The cleanup in this area will require 2000-3000 cubic yards of contaminated soil to be removed.  Huge cleanup effort and one that was unexpected. Where the money will come from to clean that up is a question that has yet to manifest itself with an answer.

Damaged area where weeds will not even grow

Most PAHs in the environment are from incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials like oil, wood, garbage or coal. Many useful products such as mothballs, blacktop, and creosote wood preservatives contain PAHs.

The carcinogenicity of certain PAHs is well established in laboratory animals. Researchers have reported increased incidences of skin, lung, bladder, liver, and stomach cancers, as well as injection-site sarcomas, in animals. PAHs can also be directly genotoxic, meaning that the chemicals themselves or their breakdown products can directly interact with genes and cause damage to DNA. 2000-3000 cubic yards. All the dirt needs to be removed down to the bedrock.

April 2013 aerial view of contamination area, foreground right(looking south from the Big Spring Pasture)

Texas Horse Park overlay showing building footprint over a portion of the contamination zone (looking south from the Big Spring Pasture)

This damage could have an immense detrimental impact to DL72, a Native American site that sits directly to the east of the PAH PCLE zone. For sure the Native American site here is one of the single most important archeological sites in Dallas County. Frowns abound when those inside city hall discount the evidence of such.

DL72 Native American artifacts credit: Tim Dalbey

The archeology site here extends north to south across the remnants of an old outcropped terrace that the Native Americans here used as a stone age hardware store for finding suitable rocks for weapons and tools. Throw in the native bois 'd arc and honey locust trees that grow here and you have the makings of a bow and arrow factory. Whether or not the city will preserve the site or ultimately destroy it is an unanswered question. Wish I knew.

Fire up Google Earth and enter the KMZ file located here Texas Horse Park Overlay to get a better look. Use Google Earth's fantastic History Tool to see historical imagery of the site. One will quickly see that this dumping unfortunately occurred rather recently.

Aerial overlay showing yellow boxed PAH PCLE zone credit: MC Toyer

Contamination and monitoring overlay at 811 Pemberton Hill

Horse Park Overlay

Pond B

According to construction documents and the contractors RFP, drainage for the Texas Horse Park and the many of the barns, arenas and stalls will drain into this "Pond B" area. Traditionally called Jenkins Pond this picturesque pond is partially fed by what is most likely an underground aquifer spring that sits at the same elevation as Big Spring further to the north. Beyond to the west is an environmentally sensitive area of beaver ponds, river otter and mink habitat.

The expansive former Animal Farm/Slaughter facility at 811 Pemberton Hill Road

Contamination in this area is limited to an area that once housed a City of Dallas tenant running a slaughterhouse operation. Hard to figure out where so much of the debris and chemical contamination came from including large amounts of dumped animal fat in the woods. Lots of burned areas and burned pit material that suggests open pit trash fires. Broken glass, tile, asbestos and materials of unknown origin cover the site.

The worry to so many is that the carcinogens and other materials will enter the perched aquifer that runs the length of the escarpment. It would prove impossible to undo damage to the aquifer, a vital water supply that many neighbors still rely on for a water supply. This is a problem that needs be daylighted in the community as it could effect the well being of humans, pets and their livestock.


Central Section -- AT&T Trail and pollution entering directly into the Trinity River

I have highlighted some areas of note in the Central Section. The barren area north of Loop 12 will be the 9 hole Golf Course and First Tee organization's HQ.

If you refer to the Terracon Maps linked earlier in the post, Pond J and the Seeps are of particular notes of contamination. High levels of thallium, lead, barium and other chemicals that are hazardous to man and beast alike.  The area saw some pre-sanitary landfill dumping in the 1950s and early 1960s. The refuse leaches chemicals into the water there and directly enters the Trinity River unabated.

Limestone Seeps as seen from mid-stream in the Trinity River. Notice the concrete pipe in the far background. That pipe leads up to the Pond J area of concern, February 2013

Limestone seeps upstream of Loop 12, a popular fishing area for South Dallas residents, from February 2013

Rare Box Turtle on the Simpkins Tract

This area is where the 80-100 million year old limestone of a long ago sea bed meets the 100,000 year old pleistocene gravels of the Trinity Sands. Filtering down through all that old gravel and squeezing horizontally along the upper surface of that limestone is the groundwater aquifer that provides so many vital water in this part of Dallas. Where the outcrop meets the Trinity, the water seeps out of the cracks and crevices. The last 1/4 mile of it's trip, the water picks up a host of contaminants detailed in the Terracon maps. It's a shame because so many families now fish on the opposing bank here and down at the Loop 12 Boat Ramp downstream. It's concentrated pollution here. Thallium is known to cause birth defects and the seeps give the Trinity a toxic cocktail of it here at this spot.

Pave The Trinity Trail Plan source: City of Dallas

The proposed AT&T Trail might one day run right through this contamination area. The city contractor notes that extensive remediation will need to be done so that human recreation can happen here. Just the idea of the AT&T Trail is a poorly thought through premise. This area will only complicate matters for an proposed trail that is not welcomed by so many users down here.


South Section--The Golf Course and the special ponds

According to the contractor documents, the southern portion of the landfill cap here is failing. The remediation plan is one of heavy construction in this area, one that will most likely have a direct impact on some very important ponds. Pond M, Pond Q and Pond T.

Pond T and the unnamed small pond directly to the west of the Audubon Center serve as the lifeblood of fin and feather for the facility. It's a series of ponds where the shallow water allows for wading birds, otters and other wildlife a secluded retreat where they can feed, breed and raise young. One of the single most important ponds in Dallas County.

There is contamination around it that will need to be addressed. Whether or not the dynamics of the pond are detrimentally harmed by this construction is unknown.

Send an email to the Golf Course designers
If you are a patron and fan of the Audubon Center(awesome place) take the time to email the design firm for the Trinity Forest Golf Course, Coore and Crenshaw http://www.coorecrenshaw.com/. They are still designing the course and the elements to incorporate it into the environment down on the river. Let them know what you like about the Audubon Center and let them know how concerned you are about the Golf Course moving in next door. The golf course can be built in a manner that is wildlife friendly and let them know that you'd like to see it built that way.


The city is essentially privatizing a huge chunk of what the still refer to as the Great Trinity Forest. A giant donut hole in what the city always advertised as the largest urban park in the United States. No more.With a slight of hand change in zoning, the parkland and woods we all know as a urban refuge will soon become a private enclave for the wealthy.

The zoning in certain areas, namely the Solano Soccer Club allow for a large building, maybe even a hotel the size of those seen in Las Colinas. The history and the sites which I have detailed here will most certainly be impacted and many will be lost forever. The Native American sites, the wildlife and great Trinity River itself will vanish as we know it.

Some of us are arriving a little late to the awareness to the swindling the land got down here. It will be hard to finger blame on someone for it as a result. After all, our city hall forefathers spent the better part of the last century trying the best they could to kill off the natural world down here and they damn near accomplished it.

Seems that going through the documents about all the damage that surely occurred after the City of Dallas 2008 purchase that we as citizens of Dallas seem to have been occupying ourselves with finishing the job those so long ago started. Shame on us. We should have been watching....we are now.

Native Texas Woolly Rose Mallow Hibiscus (Hibiscus lasiocarpus) in the Great Trinity Forest, Dallas, Texas

Sixty years ago, low income families were drawn to the land down here if you can believe it. Inexpensive land and inexpensive homes built on a mole hill of an elevation rise dividing Oak and White Rock Creeks from the Trinity River. Many of the residents were African Americans originally from East Texas who had moved to Dallas in the post-war boom years to work in the service industry jobs of an ever expanding metropolis. The cosmopolitan tones of that city fade away to a deeply Southern accent faster than the pavement disappears. From concrete freeway, to blacktop road, to dirt road, to pig path all in the course of a half mile.

Deep in the swamp with a fast building early evening thunderstorm in the distance, Dallas, Texas July 2013

Those homes were bought out by the federal government and razed to the ground decades ago. The names of the platted abandoned streets stare back like ghosts on Google Earth. That brief experiment into building things in the bottoms faded away into the dust bin of local history. The undrainable labyrinths of swamps, the floating shaky islands of matted vegetation now stand as a a surprising Dallas County example of nature defeating man.




The Low Down On Getting Down, Here

The towering pecans and oaks along lowest White Rock Creek in Rochester Park

Rain swollen White Rock Creek crossing July 2013

This is one of the more remote and inaccessible places to reach in the Great Trinity Forest.

Best parking is at the Buckeye Trailhead at 6900 Bexar Dallas Texas. Walk east by southeast and around the shore of Simpson Lake. Then just keep on trucking. Head for the willows and don't look back.

The walk-in from any direction will take a minimum of a half hour, one-way. That's an hour eaten up round trip. In the heat of the summer the conditions here border on the oppressive, the cool winds don't reach at ground level in the woods here.

A canopy of native willows arching over a portion of the Great Trinity Forest

No trails exist here. A few right-of-way utility corridors exist but are choked this time of year with ten foot stands of Giant Ragweed. It's easier to just navigate cross country under the tree canopy where the walking is fairly unrestricted.


The trees away from the creeks are under 60 years old in most cases, very little deadfall and minimal underbrush. Makes for an easy walk....till you hit the water.

The more picturesque places on the Trinity do not give up their secrets readily. One must really push to get out into the special spots that make the river a remarkable visit.

The goal is a really far flung place that I'm sure very few people will ever visit. The push to reach the stands of hibiscus involves a journey through high stands of cattails. Cattails are one of the most common and easily identified of our water-loving plants in Texas. Most people are familiar with the long green leaves and hot-dog shaped brown flower spikes of our common native cattail, Typha latifolia. It is found growing in dense stands in areas with shallow water or seasonal flooding, or as a narrow band along the margins of deeper water. It is a widespread plant, found throughout most of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Cattails and flowering Texas native hibiscus, Great Trinity Forest July 2013

In spring the rootstocks and rhizomes of cattails were an important food source for native peoples when other food was scarce. These roots are quite nutritious, containing more starch than potatoes and more protein than rice. The young shoots are reported to be tasty as cooked vegetables, and the pollen can be used in baked goods. In addition to food, cattails have also provided people with building materials. The dried leaves were often woven into furniture and mats, and their pulp and fibers can be made into paper and string. Even the fluff from the seed heads has been used for padding, bedding and insulation. Cattails also have medicinal value. Many cultures have used the roots to treat intestinal maladies and burns.



The Native Hibiscus of the Great Trinity Forest

Depending where you find these plants they can go by a variety of common names -- Delta Hibiscus, Hairy-fruited Hibiscus, Hairy-fruited Rose Mallow, Hairy Rose Mallow, Downy Rose Mallow, River Mallow, Woolly Rose Mallow. Scientifically called the Hibiscus lasiocarpos (sometimes also spelled Hibiscus lasiocarpus), this plant has a wide distribution ranging from California and parts of northern Mexico, to much of the southeastern U.S. In the wild, Hibiscus lasiocarpos occurs along stream banks and freshwater marshes.

Seasonal wetland created by semi-annual flooding of lower White Rock Creek near the mouth with the Trinity River

Traversing this kind of environment requires a very slow and methodical approach. Just like the inching movements of the water, anyone paying a place like this a visit needs to move at a pace of a snail. It's a mental process down here, a geometry problem moving across water of unknown depth and unknown hazards below. I would imagine carrying a large hiking stick would probably be helpful in testing out the sediment depths. I did not use one, knowing where the deeper depths were and how to avoid them.

Woolly Rose Mallow growing in the wetland marsh near Big Spring in the Great Trinity Forest Dallas, Texas

The hibiscus here thrive in water. One would think that they would surely suffocate being inundated by so much water, they really enjoy it. Above is a Woolly Rose Mallow Hibiscus on Bryan's Slough not far from Historic Big Spring. Bryan's Slough also goes by the name Oak Creek, which meanders through the Grover Keeton Golf Course a mile or two to the north.

Grasshopper and bumblebee feasting on the flowering hibiscus

During most of the summer, they stand out from other plants due to their six inch wide flowers that have five petals ranging in color from white to pink. All are cup-shaped with a wine-colored center. Buds open in early morning, and the flowers fall off that evening. The Bryan's Slough hibiscus seem to have a darker pinkish hue to them that the hibiscus a little further to the west on the elbowed margins of White Rock Creek


Grasshoppers become somewhat of a problem this time of year in the Great Trinity Forest. They devour large amounts of native grasses and plants. Kept in check to some extent by Cattle Egrets and other birds, the grasshopped infestations in previous years can reach alarming size.









The pollen grains of the hibiscus here are so large that it can hamper the ability of even the larger species of bumblebees from flying. Seems that after 3 visits to flowers that the average bumblebee is completely covered with this sugar grained sized material and must stop to reorganize the pollen covering it's entire body.






Another insect that feeds on the hibiscus down here are Hibiscus Flea Beetles. There are many species of flea beetles which attack numerous plants, but vegetable and flower crops are most susceptible to these pests. Flea beetles are so named because of their ability to jump like fleas when bothered.
The beetles are small and shiny, with large rear legs. Eggs are laid at the base of plant stems in early summer after a feeding period, and larvae feed at the roots. Adult beetles, about 1/16 inch long, feed on foliage, producing “shotholes” in the leaves.

Halberd-leaved rose mallow

These plants also go by the name halberd-leaved rose mallow due to their distinctive shaped leaves that resemble a medieval battle axe sword called a halberd.

Many hundreds of hibiscus flowers in a dense Trinity River Bottom Wetland

Unlike domesticated hibiscus in home gardens, the native North Texas hibiscus grow in dense colonies forming a jumble of plants concentrated in the space of a few acres. Very hard to access these as the water holding the plants is 2-3 feet deep in most cases.

Bryan's Slough also known as Oak Creek, just upstream from Big Spring, Dallas, Texas

Hard working beavers are responsible for much of how the water impounds the woods here. Numerous sets of beaver dams, lodges and embankments hold the water back to create a water back filled mass of trees and vegetation. Above is Bryan's Slough as seen looking north while standing on a large beaver dam.

Summer Birds Of The Swamp

Wood Ducks among the beaver trimmed willows

This type of environment creates a great riparian habitat for ducks and wading birds. Wood Ducks, seen above in their molting colors after mating season are moving through an island of trimmed willow trees that have seen years of pruning by beavers in this small backwater area.

The Great Egret (Ardea alba)

It makes for prime fishing territory for all sorts of birds. Wading birds prefer this shallow water where their prey can easily be hunted in the still waters.

Here, a Great Egret catches a Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) which are very common in the water here. Known for living in shallow water and breeding very quickly, they are one of the most widespread of fishes in Texas. Hardy and able to withstand very warm water temperatures, these fish are top on the list of wading birds.

Only a solitary Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) on this visit. All the wading birds prefer knee deep water it seems. The water was a little too deep for this bird to get a good fishing motion going in the water. Their flat, spatulate beak requires that water be present for feeding. Unlike their cousins, the ibises, spoonbills cannot feed on land or in mud flats where their long beaks can probe the mud or soil.

Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) on Bryan's Slough

Spoonbills are primarily tactile feeders. They open their beaks slightly and begin to swing their heads back-and-forth in the water. This action creates small whirlpools of water that stirs the mud beneath the surface. Vibrations produced by escaping prey are detected by sensitive touch receptors located inside the horny bill and the beak snaps shut. Because the bird depends more on touch than sight, the spoonbill can feed in very cloudy water.

Common prey includes small fish, crustaceans (shrimp and crayfish), insects, and other aquatic animals. The intense red color of the spoonbill is derived from red algae ingested along with the crustaceans. As a result the red color is fleeting in the absence of those crustaceans.

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in the Great Trinity Forest's wetlands

The Great Blue Heron is the largest heron in North America. It stands three to four feet tall and has a wingspan of almost six feet. It has blue-gray feathers on most of its body and a plume of feathers on its chest and back. It has a long, pointed yellow bill and long legs. Adults have white on the top of their heads and long black plumes above their eyes. 

Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga)

Anhingas belong to Order Pelecaniformes, as do a number of other primarily aquatic birds (pelicans, cormorants, boobies, and frigate birds). The family Anhingidae includes several similar species referred to as “darters” which, as a group are distributed worldwide in tropical to warm-temperate climates. Anhingas are relatively large birds, attaining lengths of 32 to 36 inches and wingspans of up to 48 inches. Adult anhingas usually weigh around three pounds and have long necks most often carried in an “s-shaped” posture. Their heads are small with long pointed beaks. Anhingas’ tails are long and loosely jointed with feathers which can be spread wide like a fan.

Unlike most birds, especially aquatic species, anhingas do not produce oil to waterproof their feathers. As a result, their feathers quickly become saturated upon contact with water. This characteristic is believed to facilitate their deep diving feeding habits. On the other hand, this feature causes the anhinga to have little buoyancy. They often swim with only their heads above the water surface. Further, having feathers readily soaked to skin results in more rapid loss of body heat and hinders flight until the feathers dry. Anhingas are routinely seen with wings spread wide, allowing them to dry in the sun while their bodies warm. All of the anhingas’ flight feathers are molted as a group rendering the bird flightless for a period of time while the new feathers grow in.

The northernmost distribution of Anhinga anhinga is in the United States from North Carolina to Texas. Its range also includes Mexico, Central America, Panama, and Cuba. The individuals found in the more northern areas of the U.S. migrate there in March and April and stay until October, then return to Mexico and more southern parts of the U.S. Anhinga anhinga anhinga is found in South America from Colombia to Ecuador, east of the Andes to Argentina, and in Trinidad and Tobago. The range is limited by cool temperatures and low amounts of sunshine

Indigo Bunting along Bryan's Slough

The Indigo Bunting, a member of the finch family, is a familiar summer visitor to Eastern portions of Texas. This loud little songster prefers brushy pastures and edge habitat where brushy fields meet the forest. Its winter range extends through Central America and the West Indies. Males vigorously defend their territory by singing and displaying from the open top branches of trees or other visible perch.

Indigo Buntings perform a valuable service as they consume grasshoppers, beetles, flies, mosquitoes, cicadas and aphids. Diet also consists of seeds of grasses, thistle, dandelions and other weed seeds. It is well worth the effort to provide suitable brushy habitat and shrubby forest edges to assure a healthy population of these attractive birds.

Painted Bunting in Rochester Park

It takes two years for a male Painted Bunting to become a brilliantly colored songbird without equal in North America. In contrast, the younger males and all females are difficult to see in their cryptic green plumage. Many people are unaware that this small colorful finch is a native songbird that migrates in late April from southern Florida, the Caribbean Islands, and Mexico to its nesting areas in the U.S. Painted Buntings nest along the large rivers in Southern states.

Male Painted Bunting in flight, Rochester Park, July 2013

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron landing at a pond near the base of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Dallas, Texas

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

Thunderstorms in the heat of a Texas summer are well known for turning a shadeless hundred degree evening into a dark wind blown affair.  As the quick growing towers of such storms rise into the stratosphere they provide a dramatic backdrop for the flat Texas plains. Accompanying the cool weather is an ever changing palette of color in the sky that turns the mundane hazy blue sky into unique color hard to replicate anywhere else.

The quickly darkening conditions can often trick the nocturnal animals that are often active after sunset. Some of the more common birds are night herons. The two species of night herons in Texas are the Black Crowned Night Heron and Yellow Crowned Night Heron. Both species are small wading birds that are relatively unknown to most due to their reclusive nature and trait of nocturnal activity. They forage in shallow water at dusk and under the cover of night feeding on a collection of aquatic prey including fish, crayfish, frogs, tadpoles and insects.They are the dagger billed birds that are widespread along the river bottoms but so few people see them working the ponds and shallows in the dark.

Buckeye Butterfly near the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

The Weather Turns Angry
A slight bit of caution needs to be taken when out in the open during approaching storms. The levees are a vast and open place with very little shelter beyond the bridges. No real threat of flash flooding exists here as 90% of floodwater must first be collected and then pumped over the levees. Lightning is the real threat as cover is sparse.

A fast changing skyscape from sunny to imminent rain in the span of a half hour

The water feature here so often photographed as a backdrop reflection to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge is a set of shallow depressions from long ago borrow pits used to build the levees. Old maps and aerial photos dating from the 1920s and 1930s show a small creek or water feature running through this area that might have existed prior to the levees being constructed. During levee construction, this area was excavated and the dirt used in the levees.

The water body starts up near Sylvan Avenue and winds down to the Continental Street Viaduct.



Black Crowned Night HeronNycticorax nycticorax

Black Crowned Night Heron Dallas, Texas

One of the most widespread birds on the planet, the Black-Crowned Night Heron can be found on every continent but Antarctica. Often called the Night Hawk or Night Heron, this bird of both the Old and New Worlds is steeped in old legends as a harbinger of ghostly contact with the underworld.

The Black-Crowned Night Heron is a small, wading bird that reaches lengths of 22-26 inches with a wingspan of up to 45 inches. They have black plumage on top of the head and back with grayish-blue wings. The underside of the neck and belly usually a brilliant white. It also has a thick black bill and short yellow legs. The night herons have a shorter neck than other herons assisting them in their stocky appearance when compared to other wading birds. Two long white slender plumes extend from the back of the head while in breeding plumage. There unique vocalization, “quock”, is often heard at or around dusk as they fly to their feeding grounds

Black-Crowned Night Herons are most active at dawn and dusk, but they also forage in the dead of night (hence "Night-Heron") and occasionally during the day, although much of the daytime hours are usually spent sleeping in nearby tree roosts. As a bird of the night one of the most remarkable features are the large red eyes they exhibit. One of the biggest and colorful eyes of any bird in Texas.

The bird uses a variety of shallow wetlands for foraging and employs various techniques to capture a diversity of prey including insects, fish, frogs, mice, and the young of other native waterbirds.

Black Crowned Night Heron killing a Cattle Egret chick

One of the more amazing aspects of the Black Crowned Night Heron is the ability of the bird to eat other birds of near similar size, whole. Above and left, a Black-Crowned Night Heron kills and eats whole a Cattle Egret chick. This occurred right off the Trinity River in a nearby rookery used by many species of wading birds. During spring and early summer the adults fish the wading pools of the nearby Trinity and commute back to the nest site to feed their young.

The nests in this rookery vary greatly in size, stability, and construction. Many of them are crude, loose-built platforms, made of coarse sticks, and scantily lined with twigs and feathers. Some are so small and so insecurely placed that the eggs or young are shaken out of them by heavy winds and the nests are blown out of the trees.




 Rather remarkable to see this bird take on such a prey of that size. Black-Crowned Night Herons have the ability to handle the bones of other birds such as this. One of the few birds in Texas that consume other birds, whole.

Juvenile Black Crowned Night Herons are mostly brown overall with a darker head. The second year brings plumage more like the adult plumage; it will be browner with a dark cap and back and brown wings and neck.


Yellow-Crowned Night HeronNyctanassa violacea

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron in the reflecting pond of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron is a migratory bird that resides here along the Trinity River in Texas during the summer months. During the winter, it can be found as far south as South America, but can be found almost anywhere along the Gulf and Atlantic Coast year round.  Unlike other night heron species, the yellow-crowned forages both late in the day and night. It forages much like other herons by wading through water waiting for its prey to come within striking distance. Also, unlike the great heron which many have seen standing motionless like a statue in many Texas waters, the yellow-crowned will stir up its quarry by wading briskly at the waters edge. With a quick dancing motion, the dagger like bill stabs its prey.  The prey of a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron normally consists of fish, frogs, grasshoppers, and occasionally snakes, but its primary diet is crustaceans (crayfish).

With a quick dancing motion, the dagger like bill stabs its prey.  The prey of a yellow-crowned night heron normally consists of fish, frogs, grasshoppers, and occasionally snakes, but its primary diet is crustaceans (crayfish).

This pictured Yellow Crowned Night Heron caught the crayfish in the reflecting pond of the Calatrava Bridge in Dallas as the storms approached.



It is also not uncommon to see a Yellow Crowned Night Heron prey upon small turtles since it has a unique stomach acid to help digest the shell, much like the Black Crowned will take on small birds.
The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron is slightly different from the Black Crowned. The yellow crown or "yellow mohawk" on the top of it's head is easy to spot from a modest distance. Like it's cousin, the Yellow Crown is a short stocky bird about 24 inches in length with a wingspan of a little under four feet. It has long yellow to orange legs, red eyes, a black bill and a short neck. The adults are a soft blue-gray, blackish on wings and tail, with a creamy white crown accented by a black face and white cheek patch. During breeding season, adults have a yellow plume of feathers on their head.

Yellow Crowned Night Herons with the eery reflective backlight of the Calatrava Bridge casting light on the water

Yellow Crowned Night Herons are a far rarer find in North Texas. Traditionally birds of the coast and of wetlands, they are not widely distributed here in the Dallas County area. The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron has a misleading name. The crown of this bird is actually white for most of the year. It is not until breeding season arrives that the crown turns yellow.

Yellow Crowned Night Heron Nestling

During breeding season, the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron will build a nest of sticks and twigs measuring two or three feet across. This nest is generally a substantial platform that can be found on the ground, or low in a tree, by a body of water. The female will lay three to five eggs that are a pale bluish green in color. Both the male and female will take turns incubating the eggs.

Yellow Crowned Night Herons traditionally do not nest with other species, preferring to nest independently in smaller groups of four or five nests. That makes finding their nesting sites much more difficult as one cannot use the tell-tale rookeries of large white feathered birds like egrets as a guide.

Juvenile Yellow Crowned Night Heron near the Continental Street Viaduct Dallas, Texas

Juvenile Yellow Crowned Night Heron

Young Yellow-crowned Night Herons do not look like the adults. They have the same bulky black bill, but their feathers are brown with white markings. The young have orange eyes and greenish legs. They are almost identical to the young Black-crowned Night Heron, but the young Yellow-crowned has longer legs and it stands with a more upright posture



The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron is a common wetland bird in Texas, but is listed as threatened in many of the states within its northeastern range. Loss of wetland habitat has had the greatest impact on this species. With continued conservation of our wetland areas and development of new areas we can help preserve the viewing of this species for many generations to come.

Post-sunset glow over Dallas, August 9, 2013

Union Pacific Big Boy 4018 along the railroad tracks near Rochester Park that serve as the western boundary of the Great Trinity Forest

For almost fifty years the one million pound plus Big Boy 4018 locomotive stood as a silent and immovable monument in Fair Park. Fifty years of Texas-OU Weekends, Cotton Bowls and concerts it stood in stoic silence. That changed August 17, 2013 as it began a 50+ mile journey from Fair Park in Dallas, Texas to a new home in Frisco, Texas.

The first five miles of the journey took it down the western edge of the Great Trinity Forest through Dixon Circle Park, Rochester Park and within view of the Buckeye Trail. For a few hours on a bright Sunday afternoon, Big Boy sat among the trees, a view not seen for decades.
As a non-revenue producing trip for the railroads, the revenue producing freight trains and even Amtrak passenger trains were given priority over the 4018 move. That caused a series of delays in what turned out to be a rather photogenic if hidden spot among the trees and White Rock Creek. Thousands of people lined the route from Scyene through Rochester Park, BonTon, Lamar and Corinth crossings.

With such a large and heavy locomotive, turns and Y junctions are nearly impossible. The only way to accomplish the trip was to raise the rear axle of 4018 until it had passed some distance towards Downtown Dallas where the rails did not have abrupt turns and Y junctions.


The Big Boy locomotives are some of the largest locomotives ever built. Often called the last of the big freight locomotives, Union Pacific built 25 of the Big Boys in the early 1940s. Alco, the American Locomotive Company developed the colossus with a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, a service weight over 500 tons and a length of almost 132 feet . This giant was known respectfully as "Big Boy" and the name stuck, becoming the symbol of the world's largest steam locomotive. Without the tender, the Big Boy had the longest engine body of any reciprocating steam powered locomotive.

The locomotives were designed to haul coal mostly over the mountains in Wyoming and Utah. They remained in service in Utah and Wyoming for two decades and each one nearly racked up over one million miles in their lifetime.

#4018

Only 8 of the 25 Big Boy locomotives remain. 4018, the locomotive seen here was built in December 1941 and saw service for decades in Wyoming and the Green River Valley. It burned the same low grade coal it hauled making fueling the massive locomotive an easy task.

4018 was decommissioned in 1962 and donated to Fair Park in 1964. The route it took to Dallas was through Wyoming, Missouri and then into Dallas via the Santa Fe Railroad. That final section is now the Santa Fe Trail in East Dallas between White Rock Lake and Fair Park.

Coyotes hunting rabbits under the Continental Street Viaduct near Downtown Dallas, August 21, 2013

It's a scene out of rural Texas. A coyote jump-hunting cottontail rabbits on a sun-soaked evening as the sun begins to set. A predator versus prey game that plays out countless times in a day across the state.

The work done here by the coyotes is one of pride and pleasure. You can see the smile on their faces as they jump from one clump of grass to another rousting a hiding rabbit from one hiding spot to the next.

The pancake flat grassland here is not one of a far flung rural farm, it sits in the heart of Dallas within view of the Old Red Dallas County Courthouse and almost underneath the Margaret Hunt Hill and Continental Street Bridges.

Coyote bounding through high grass in the foreground, the old silver and red silos near Trinity Groves loom in the background

Coyotes are highly adaptable and can survive in urban areas as long as food and shelter requirements are met.  In urban areas coyotes will feed on almost anything including garbage, pet food, small cats and dogs, and other wild animals such as rodents, skunks, raccoons and birds.  Coyotes typically hunt alone, however they may hunt in groups when food is abundant. 

These particular coyotes have been here a number of years. I can recall the night shift watchmen during the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge construction comment on the coyotes who casually made their rounds in the evenings. The coyotes have learned that the day shift of construction workers would toss their lunch scraps around the job sites under the bridges. The coyotes here patrol the sites in the early evenings, going from one work site to the next.

A coyote trotting along a newly cut dirt road and proposed new hike and bike trail alignment between the Sylvan Avenue and Continental Street Viaduct

Coyotes sightings this close to Downtown Dallas are rare only because so few visit the area.  In areas where they are hunted and trapped, coyotes are extremely wary of humans.  However, in urban areas where they are less likely to be harmed and more likely to dis-associate people with danger, they simply give humans a wide berth.

Busy bee with the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge arch in the background

Coyote attacks are extremely rare.  In recorded history only 30 coyote attacks on humans have been recorded.  Three million children are bitten by dogs each year. A child is millions of times more likely to get attacked by the family pet than a coyote.  The vast majority of coyote attacks in the United States are the result of a coyote attacking a small dog or cat and the pet’s owner trying to stop the attack by getting between the animals.  When the pet’s owner gets between the animals, the coyote will bite the pet’s owner.

You are more likely to get attacked by a swarm of killer bees than bitten by a coyote.








2013's Renewed Promise of a Trinity River Trail in Downtown

Coyote yipping for her mate in a sea of grass

Coyote meandering towards the new Sylvan Avenue Bridge Project

The look of open fields and a sea of grass might look different in the near future. Just this past week there was news from City Hall of a renewed promise for building trails inside the levees near Downtown Dallas. More can be read about the details in an article by Robert Wilonsky in the Dallas Morning News here: http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/dallas-has-a-new-alignment-for-long-planned-trail-along-the-trinity-river-and-now-it-actually-runs-along-the-river.html/

The coyote, seen at right is standing on the proposed route, it is standing near the lip of the Pavaho Pump Station outlet canal and where the proposed route according to the Dallas Morning News Map would run.




Currently a dirt road already exists, cut late this spring that serves some unknown utilitarian purpose. Most likely in bridge construction or pipeline maintenance of some sort.

Quite a few people ride the new dirt roads down here. They are 90 degree, perpendicular off-shoots to the older levee roads and give a unique perspective to the river.

New gravel culvert and road west of the Continental Viaduct

One of the gripes of the levee road access is that it never gets you to the river. Separated hundreds of yards from the trees and river bank, the river itself always seems like a distant mirage.

View from the Continental Street Viaduct looking west with the proposed trail alignment as seen currently as a dirt road

Potential view from the proposed alignment of the new trail

The 2011 TrailIdea
This is not the first try at a trail between the levees. Many may recall a plan headed up this time of year in 2011 by city councilpeople Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs. Their simple idea was to build soft surface trails near Downtown Dallas inside the floodway.

Known as the Trinity Trail Project, it actually became a reality for a short time. The details of that are here http://teambetterblock.com/blog/2011/08/26/trinity-trail-project/. I actually rode the miles of trails cut inside the levees. That was a well thought out and unfortunately temporary path. I think those involved in that effort can see the fingerprints of their hard work in the new project. The local mountain bike group DORBA purchased a tow behind mower for that project, one that was never used. It is headed to two new projects on the Trinity River at Goat Island Preserve and Riverbend Preserve in Southern Dallas County. Those new trails, will use that mower than never saw use between the levees.

 The 2012 TrailIdea

Where the sidewalk ends. The west end of the concrete trail/road poured in the fall of 2012 that stretches from I-35 to the Trinity River Standing Wave and Trestle Trail

 In late October of 2012 a concrete bike trail, technically a road, was built from near the Corinth DART Station at the Santa Fe Trestle Trail due west along the base of the levee stopping just east of the I-35 Bridge. Taking only a week to build, this ribbon of concrete replaced a dirt access road.

As seen in the Fall of 2012, the recently paved section of the concrete trail-maintenance road with the Corinth Street Viaduct in the background

 Lots Of Construction -- Lots Of Bridge Work

Drilling piers for the new Margaret McDermott Bridge August 21, 2013

I guess the trick is how all these new trails can be built with years of upcoming bridge work and construction. Currently, in the summer of 2013, the bridge work for the I-30 replacement bridge, the Margaret McDermott Bridge.

Rendering of the Margaret McDermott Bridge

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, August 2013

When the first Santiago Calatrava Bridge was under construction, access anywhere nearby was quite difficult due to the large construction footprint. I imagine that the new Calatrava bridge might even be larger in scope due to the width of the I-30 replacement.


Given the number of construction vehicles, concrete trucks and semis trying to make the grade in and out of the levees, it was a real trick to navigate it on a bike.

With so many bridges currently under construction, closed for repairs or having trolley tracks installed, riding from the north side of the Trinity to the south on a bike is a real pickle at the moment. 

Houston Street Viaduct being retrofitted for a trolley line serving Oak Cliff

Piles of brand new trolley rails stacked along the Houston Street-Zang Blvd connection in Oak Cliff

The Houston Street Viaduct, Continental Street Viaduct and Sylvan Avenue Bridges have long been the most well traveled routes for cyclists and runners between Downtown Dallas and Oak Cliff. Presently all are closed. That requires using a makeshift lane on the Jefferson Street Viaduct to cross the river. Access from that bridge is somewhat limited to the river levee trails itself, requiring a double back on a closed road at the moment. Hopefully that improves soon with the winter 2014 opening of the Sylvan Avenue Bridge.

Full moon crowning the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge as seen from the levee, August 21, 2013

Firework shells exploding over the Trinity River September 1, 2013

I suspect many a Dallas resident was bumped out of bed in the wee hours of September 1st 2013 by the rumbling concussion of six inch firework shells. The loud sounds of course were slightly unadvertised and I imagine caught many unaware. The fireworks were associated with the conclusion of Megafest, a conference attended by some 50,000 people from 40 nations organized in large part by TD Jakes pastor of the Potter's House, Joel Osteen and Oprah Winfrey.

Fireworks fired inside the levees with a backdrop of Downtown Dallas are somewhat rare. I imagine it might be another couple years before another one, maybe a dedication event for the yet to be constructed Margaret McDermott Bridge replacement for I-30

Video of Fireworks Show in conjunction with the Megafest Conference in Dallas Texas, midnight hour September 1, 2013, in the Trinity River Bottoms



The venue for the fireworks was Trammell Crow Park on the Trinity River. Located on the north bank of the Trinity River between the Sylvan Avenue and Continental Ave Bridges in Dallas. Currently, both bridges are closed for construction making the once popular Trammell Crow Park an isolated and hard to reach place. You cannot drive there. It's either a very long walk or mountain bike ride in. Travel by bicycle really is the best way to get around down here. Without worry of where to park, one can easily travel along the levees and floodway without fanfare.

A Black Crowned Night Heron hunting in the reflection of Reunion Tower's lit ball

Filling the void of an empty park are the native wildlife who seem to always take advantage of less peopled areas on the Trinity River. The ponds, shallow pools and occasional flood waters of the Trinity River in this area afford wading birds a great place to feed. Seen in the photos here are birds of the night, the Black Crowned Night Herons. With large eyes and a low profile, they agitate the mud drawing prey to the surface.

The mile distant Reunion Tower provides an ever changing color reflection on the water here, making for an interesting backdrop.

Great Egret and Mallard Duck in the night light reflection of Trammell Crow Park, Dallas Texas

 The Megafest Firework Show In Dallas Labor Day Weekend

Large exploding shells rattle the early morning

The fireworks were billed as a finale to an 8pm-10pm concert at the American Airlines Center. The pyrotechnics were planned to start at 10-10:30pm. Given the circumstances, dependent on the conclusion of a concert the fireworks did not start till after 12:30am.



 The brief show lasted under ten minutes. It had a variety of shells and a parachute shell of some variety that slowing drifted north with the slight southerly breeze.

Wood Storks in Dallas, Texas, photo taken by James Cartwright, August 1936

Some seventy seven years ago, a man named James "Jim" Cartwright took a small camera out fishing with him to an old bow on the Trinity River turned fishing club named Lemmon Lake. Out there one afternoon he took a photo of some strange looking birds that had flown in and were milling about on the grassy shore. Wood Storks. Late last year one of his descended relatives contacted me and I was given some of his old fishing photos from the lake. My interest gravitated to one photo in particular an old scratchy Wood Stork photo dated "August '36 Rod and Gun". That particular bird species in the next few decades would see its very population dwindle to almost nothing and faced the very real threat of extinction.

Wood Storks at Little Lemmon Lake, Joppa Preserve, Great Trinity Forest, Dallas, Texas August 2013

The 97th Meridian slices through North Texas as an imaginary line that exists only on drawn maps. In this locale, that line serves as a freeze/frost line in the winter separating brutal cold from the mild. In the fall the line is marked by great fall foliage to the east and barren brown to the west. In the spring, the great powerful fronts and dry lines rip off the plains to form thunderstorms.

During the summer, the 97th serves as an avian boundary of sorts for many wading birds that are common to the east and rarely if ever seen to the west. This is the time of year when the faint glow of a setting sun is oft punctuated behind the crests of ever rising thunderheads in the distance. In late summer 2013 as the seabreeze laden winds of the Gulf meet the hot winds off West Texas plains, the birds of the tropics find themselves at home in the Great Trinity Forest. The photos shown here were taken in late summer in a couple evenings when the weather quickly turned from sun to clouds to heavy storms and back to clear skies again.

I suppose it comes as a surprise to many that a bird of as rare a feather like the Wood Stork plans a summer vacation stay inside the city limits of Dallas. The record books of sightings of the species in our fair city draw a blank as to the migration of the bird. Not for lack of birds but for lack of perhaps sets of human eyes on the watch for them.

The Great Trinity Forest with its patchwork of wetlands and shallow ponds provides ideal habitat for wading birds. Just perfect. One such place known to attract such birds over the past few years is Joppa Preserve located south of Loop 12 and along the west bank of the Trinity River.

The wildlife laden areas of Joppa Preserve by modern standards is still difficult and remote to reach. The standard first time approach to the place is to clumsily step off the pavement into a mass of greenbriar thicket and poison ivy wondering if you will ever return. With the reward of remoteness to such a place comes the understanding that self-reliance is cornerstone of the visitor experience.

It's the gift of knowledge that surrounds this place. The deep hidden history of a spot. It seems that Dallas only offers parks with less adventure, no aura and no exploration, a quality of it's presence diminished is the product as a result. Joppa Preserve is not a cookie cutter park. It stands alone as one of the last great wild areas of North Texas.

The Wood Storks seen here in Joppa Preserve hail from the Mexican state of Campeche, western Guatemala and points south from there into the Amazon. They fly to Dallas as part of "dispersal" which occurs after their young have finished nesting. They leave the coast and head inland in search of habitat and food.


Wood Stork (Mycteria americana)


Wood storks (Mycteria americana) are large water birds that stand 2-4 feet tall and are the only stork in North America. They have wingspans as wide as 5 1/2 feet. They are mostly white, but have a black tail and many black feathers under their wings. Storks are related to ibises, herons and flamingos. They have no feathers on their head and neck, so the black skin underneath shows. This makes wood storks the only tall water birds with black, bald heads. Since they have no muscles attached to their voice box, they are very quiet birds.

Wood storks use the massive beak as their source of food gathering.  The feed in water no deeper than their beak and catch a variety of things in their bill which they then toss their head back and swallow.  This technique is known as “grope feeding”.  This because the stork does not use vision in food collection, but instead does everything by touch.  The reflex of the bill after it touches food is thought to be the fast of any reflex in the vertebrate world. When it feels a fish, the stork can snap its bill shut in as little as 20 milliseconds—an incredibly quick reaction time.

Below is a video clip shot in August 2013 of a Wood Stork flock working the middle of Little Lemmon Lake for prey

Their diet has been known to consist of fish, crayfish, salamanders, tadpoles, shrimp, frogs, insects and an occasional snake. Storks also use their feet to stir the bottom when collecting prey.  This technique startles the food from the vegetation into the beak. Some think that the water turbulence caused by this action simulates the water movement of a feeding frenzy, and can attract fish to become prey. 



Wood Storks were once hunted for their feathers and have also lost much of their habitat to swamp draining in Florida. In Texas, the Wood Storks migrate north in the early summer from Mexico to take advantage of drying lake beds and the abundance of fish found in them. There have been only a handful of sightings in the DFW area of Wood Storks. Joppa Preserve is special in that so many can be seen at one time. Wood Stork sightings are more numerous further to the south in the Houston and Corpus Christi areas where the habitat lends itself to Wood Stork feeding tactics. 

 A Threatened Species
In late 2012 Endangered Species Status for Wood Storks was downgraded to Threatened in the United States. The birds are given a statewide "Threatened" status in Texas. The Endangered listing applied to Wood Storks who live and breed east of the Mississippi in the Deep South and Florida. Wood Storks are still afforded the protections of Federal Threatened Status here in Texas but since they do not breed here they are given a lesser designation.


Passed in 1973 and reauthorized in 1988, the Endangered Species Act regulates a wide range of activities affecting plants and animals designated as endangered or threatened. By definition, endangered species is an animal or plant listed by regulation as being in danger of extinction. A threatened species is any animal or plant that is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future. A species must be listed in the Federal Register as endangered or threatened for the provisions of the act to apply.  The Act prohibits the following activities involving endangered species:      

-Importing into or exporting from the United States.
-Taking (includes harassing, harming, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, trapping, killing, capturing, or collecting) within the United States and its territorial seas.     
-Taking on the high seas.    
- Possessing, selling, delivering, carrying, transporting, or shipping any such species unlawfully taken within the United States or on the high seas.     
-Delivering, receiving, carrying, transporting, or shipping in interstate or foreign commerce in the course of a commercial activity.     
-Selling or offering for sale in interstate or foreign commerce
The United States breeding population of the Wood Stork declined from 20,000 pairs in the 1930's to about 10,000 pairs by 1965, and to a low of approximately 5,000 pairs in the mid 1970s.  Nesting primarily occurred in the Florida Everglades. The accepted explanation for the decline of the Wood Stork is the reduction of small fish necessary to support breeding colonies.  This population reduction is attributed to loss of wetland habitat as well as to changes in water hydrology from draining wetlands and changing water flow by constructing canals, levees and gates to alter water routing in southern portions of the United States.

Juvenile Wood Storks seen with tan-yellowish bills

Wood storks have a unique feeding technique and require higher fish concentrations than other wading birds.  Optimal water conditions for the Wood Stork involve periods of flooding, during which prey (fish) populations increase, alternating with drier periods, during which receding water levels concentrate fish at higher densities coinciding with the stork's nesting season.

This year it was rather interesting to see young Wood Storks in large numbers at Little Lemmon Lake. The young birds can be easily spotted by their yellowish-tan light colored beaks.


The Wood Stork , Bald Eagle and many other species of migratory birds owe their current existence in the United States to the determined, last-ditch efforts carried out under this legislative milestone. But attempting to pull species back from the brink of extinction can be an expensive and contentious proposition.  Even today, despite considerable conservation gains in the past few years, many challenges still threaten to drive species away from healthy populations, and onto the endangered species list.

The past half century has borne witness to dramatic changes in the quality and quantity of wildlife habitat. Throughout the United States, Mexico and South America, wetlands continue to be drained and filled, forests cut and fragmented, and grasslands developed for home construction. Many of these changes are not what they appear. While forest and woodland cover in some areas has actually increased, the quality of those habitats compared to the original woodlands may not be similar at all because of changes in vegetation composition and artificially abundant predator populations.  Other less intrusive land use practices have upset the natural balance as well.
As any ornthological minded person knows, some species are exceptionally rare, some are fairly common, and some can be found on almost any visit to the field. The differences one sees in species abundance occur naturally.  Natural events, like weather, predators, disease, and food and habitat availability, have shaped these patterns of species abundance for many centuries. In recent years, however, human activities have disrupted many of those natural events, resulting in a change in the shape of the environment. No place has seen more of that than the Trinity River.

The Trinity River As A Wildlife Highway

Wildlife, both fleet footed and on the fly, use the Trinity River as a main artery of travel from the parched uplands northwest of Fort Worth, clear to Trinity Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. It has likely been that way for hundreds of thousands of years, a route implanted upon the DNA of the species who frequent the river. Wood Storks are most likely no exception to that process.

Wood Storks at Little Lemmon Lake during a heavy thunderstorm

For continued survival of the United States population of wood storks, currently occupied habitat, roosting, and foraging environments must be protected from further loss or degradation.  A prerequisite for complete recovery of the population is the restoration and enhancement of suitable habitat throughout the variety of environments used by this species.

The very survival of the Wood Stork runs through places like Joppa Preserve and the Great Trinity Forest. An unlikely point of concern as so few people alive even know it exists. It has not been much of a going concern since the old Trinity Rod and Gun Club days when Jim Cartwright drowned worms here in the 1930s. Times change though and so do plans for development.
Little Lemmon Lake and Lemmon Lake are but just two of the dozen small ponds and marsh wetland areas in the Great Trinity Forest that give these wading birds forage area for food and habitat. There is grave concern at the moment that the dozen or so water bodies across the Trinity River to the east near the Trinity River Audubon Center will be impacted by a new planned golf course called the Trinity Forest Golf Course.

The AT&T Trail Construction, Habitat Loss For The Wood Stork?


The AT&T Trail construction starts very soon, a concrete trail that will traverse one of the only undeveloped parcels of virgin hardwood bottomland left inside the city limits. It will also cut along the southern bank of "Pond T", what the friendly folks at the Audubon Center call the "Secret Pond". This pond serves as a virtual refuge for dozens of species of not just birds but river otters, beavers and deer. The impact of a new trail will degrade this special spot and have a negative impact on foraging Wood Storks.

Pond T, aka the "Secret Pond" which is one of many pocket ponds and lakes in the Great Trinity Forest

It seems odd that a place like Dallas would be such a touchstone for the survival of the Wood Stork. These old ponds are just the ideal habitat for them and every year more and more make their way up from the south. How can a trail be built in this area or a golf course developed without impacting the Wood Stork is an answer no one seems to have.

If we use Little Lemmon Lake as an example, the hydrology of such a water body is really unique inside the city limits. The lake sits just low enough so that the annual flooding events of the nearby Trinity River "overbank" into Little Lemmon. The fish, fry and aquatic life from the river regenerate the dry lakebed and transform it from a playa into a small lake teeming with life. As the weather dries and the punishing Texas sun works on evaporating the lake, wading birds flock in by the hundreds.

These are not the birds one might see at White Rock Lake. Sure intermixed are some Great Egrets, a few Herons but the other species are eye popping in diversity. Not seen anywhere else inside the city limits.

Most would stand jaw agape at seeing a Wood Stork ski in to visit with a flock of White Ibis. Just seeing the White Ibis for many would be a treat, watching a Wood Stork interact with them makes it so much more special.

Maybe the problem with the place is no one can take credit for what is going on here. No one can stand on a soapbox and say they are responsible for the habitat here or have somehow enhanced it to attract such wild birds. A freak of a natural place that the hand of man never had anything to do with. Imagine that.
Here the shorebirds, Sandpipers, work the mudflats along the shore with Black-Necked Stilts and Ibis beyond.

Two juvenile White Ibis center, two adult White Ibis on the margins at Little Lemmon Lake

Sandpipers in flight at Little Lemmon Lake

Take for instance the adult Black-Necked Stilt, Himantopus (mexicanus) mexicanus. Males and females are nearly indistinguishable, although the plumage on the backs of some females can be more brown than black in color. Stilts are remarkable because their legs are longer in proportion to their bodies than those of any other bird species except the flamingo.  The North American black-necked stilt is distinguished from the European black-winged stilt by the white spot above its eye. 

Don't see too many of these in Dallas, they often stick to flocks of other species, attracted to the very shallow water so many of them prefer.

Many of the birds here are fresh off the saltwater flats and coasts to the south. On occasion in the right light, the White Ibis can take on a pinkish shade of white, a hue, from the high amounts of saltwater crustaceans they consumed in the weeks before.

Wood Storks, Neotropic Cormorants and a Snowy Egret at Little Lemmon Lake

Hanging on by a fragile thread, the rare places left inside the city limits of Dallas that attract such wildlife seem to be in real peril from planned development. These smallish ponds and drying beds are the real endangered species of note. Oh so rare and important to so many species of birds, the world over, who seek out the water here for habitat. It would be a tremendous loss to the city as a whole, we would all be poorer for it, if the planned development here impacted the wildlife in any way.

Little Lemmon Lake as the storms clear after an evening thunderstorm

Roseate Spoonbills and Egrets at Little Lemmon Lake, Dallas Texas, September 2013

The coda of brief sketches on the Trinity usually involves a note about sustainability or conservation for the future. More often than not pernicious future plans by some well meaning folk accidentally threaten to bump whatever is already inhabiting the woods down here out of the picture.

It's so very hard to express the rarity of wildlife movement through the Great Trinity Forest in Dallas or tell in words or pictures what is really there. What makes it a special place like no other in North Texas is hard to show. So many birds down there look alike, so many other animals are of a secretive nature where one only sees faint footprints rather than the creature itself. Every once in awhile, an animal moves through, that strikes pause in everyone who sees it. The Roseate Spoonbill is one such bird that fits all the criteria.

There are only two large pink hued birds in the United States, the Pink Flamingo and the Roseate Spoonbill. Natives of the sub-tropics, tropics and coastal areas, seeing either of the two species in the United States makes for a real treat.

Double rainbow over the Great Trinity Forest, Summer 2013, Trinity River Wetland Cell G

As the crow flies, the Gulf of Mexico sits three hundred miles from Dallas. The buffered distance keeps all but a very few saltwater loving birds from ever reaching North Texas. It's during the waning days of August and September that the birds of the Gulf and of points further south move into North Texas.

Often during this period the seabreeze fronts that march north during the day from the Gulf will reach the southern fringes of Dallas County creating strong tropical downpours not common to the area the majority of the year. The area known as the Great Trinity Forest, in the Trinity River bottoms south of Downtown saw a number of the storms over the summer. The aggregate rain gave the area an extra 5-6 inches of measured rain over the course of the summer, keeping small bodies of water like Little Lemmon Lake at near normal levels.

Tlāuhquechōl -- The Divine Spoonbill

Montezuma's head dress adorned with red Roseate Spoonbill feathers

The Aztecs of what is now Central Mexico placed a high religious status on the mythical powers of the Roseate Spoonbill's colorful feathers. Tlāuhquechōl is the Nahuatl language word for Divine Spoonbill i.e. Roseate Spoonbill. The traditions of the Aztec tightly wove the lore of many birds into their codec books and ceremonial wear.

Above is a depiction of Tezcatlipoca one of the Aztec deities most known as ruler of the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes and the earth. The color of the night, dark and storm of the depictions are offset by the color of the Roseate Spoonbill head, body and feathers.

Aztec emperor Montezuma wore Roseate Spoonbill plumage in his royal head dress. Seen above left, his ornate feathered headpiece is adorned throughout by the feathers of the Roseate Spoonbill.


Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja) , which share the same pink plumage and long twiggy legs as flamingos, are actually members of the ibis family. Generally smaller than flamingos, Roseate Spoonbills grow to a height of 32 inches with a wingspan of 50 inches, have shorter necks, and longer, spoon-shaped bills.

Juvenile Roseate Spoonbills left and right, adult Roseate Spoonbill center. White Ibis in foreground

Adult Roseate Spoonbill left, Juvenile Roseate Spoonbill right

Breeding populations are found along the south Florida coast from the Florida Keys north to St Joseph Bay, with some populations in northeastern Florida and along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. The worldwide population is only 175,000 with 30,000 living in North America. Whittling down that number further, many of those 30,000 live in Florida, the Caribbean or along the Gulf Coast. It is estimated that there are 5,500 breeding pairs in the USA.

Juvenile Spoonbill in flight over the Great Trinity Forest, Joppa Preserve, September 2013, note the white feathered head

Here in the Great Trinity Forest it is interesting to see juvenile Roseate Spoonbills mixed in with adults. You have to look closely to see them. The juveniles have white feathered heads where the adults have a bald green toned head. If you look closely at the photos here you should be able to pick them out of the crowd.


Spoonbills consume a varied diet of small fish, amphibians, aquatic invertebrates, and some plant material. They feed in the early morning and evening hours by wading through shallow water with their bills partially submerged. As a Roseate Spoonbill walks it swings its head back and forth in a sideways motion. When the bird feels a prey item it snaps its bill closed, pulls the prey out of the water, and swallows it

 A rare sight in North Texas, Roseate Spoonbills can be seen infrequently in the shallow drying ponds and swamps in the Great Trinity Forest. Spoonbills are traditionally coastal birds and are a regular site along the Texas Gulf Coast. Rare to see them hundreds of miles inland in not only a prairie but also a densely populated urban environment.

The Roseate Spoonbill is typically a far southern bird of the Americas, breeding in Southern Mexico and Central America. In the United States it is found only along the far southern Gulf Coast to any degree. During late summer and early fall the birds move inland searching for food and habitat along marshes and shallow ponds.

The average lifespan of a Roseate Spoonbill in the wild is estimated at 28 years. During the course of its life a Spoonbill might have twenty solid breeding seasons and successfully raise young many of those years. It's rather remarkable to let your mind wander that these birds come back year after year. I have been seeing them every year like clockwork since 2007 here. Despite the small numbered flock of Spoonbills that visit, I cannot pick out individuals from one year to the next. I know they must surely be the same birds over the years. How many hundreds or most likely since they travel with Wood Storks, thousands of miles makes for an exceptional migration.

Protecting Roseate Spoonbills
During the early 1900s, Roseate Spoonbill populations from Texas through Florida were nearly extincted due to hunters and trappers who killed the birds and collected their feathers for the ladies hat industry.  By the 1940s it was reported that the breeding population of spoonbills along the Gulf Coast may have numbered as few as 30 nesting pairs. Protection efforts after that time aided the birds in reestablishing nesting colonies, and by the late 1970s, the US population was estimated to be approximately 1,400 breeding pairs.

Roseate Spoonbills skimming the surface of Little Lemmon Lake during a heavy thunderstorm

The shallow feeding areas of the Roseate Spoonbill is paramount to the species survival. Little Lemmon Lake and other pocket ponds and abandoned gravel quarries that dot this part of town serve as critical habitat for these wading birds.


As mentioned earlier, the Roseate Spoonbill is typically a far southern bird of the Americas, breeding in Southern Mexico and Central America. In the United States it is found only along the far southern Gulf Coast to any degree. During late summer and early fall the birds move inland searching for food and habitat along marshes and shallow ponds. Called "dispersal" the adults with young in tow forage in ever broadening ranges late in the summer searching for food.

The Great Trinity Forest serves as a refuge for the Spoonbill, Wood Stork and other wading birds of the tropics during summer. So lost and so forgotten is the natural course of the Trinity River through South Dallas that I would imagine no human rightly knows what is down there as a whole. The birds do.

Wood Storks and Roseate Spoonbills take flight at Little Lemmon Lake, August 2013

The alarm in saving such places comes with hurried awareness that while other species of birds are on population rebound, the Roseate Spoonbill's population is on a shocking decline. Audubon Magazine ran a story in the last month about the decline of the Roseate Spoonbill and points to habitat loss as a major factor. Worth a read:
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/birds/roseate-spoonbills-send-warning-signs-about-florida-everglades

Today, habitat loss and degradation of forging and nesting habitats are the primary conservation concerns for roseate spoonbills in the United States. In addition, creating new habitat is an expensive and time consuming process. Preserving what is already here, giving the Roseate Spoonbill and Wood Storks some elbow room is cheap. It's free. Do nothing and reap the rewards. The birds are already here and love the place.

The Future Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think

City of Dallas Assistant Park and Recreation Director Michael Hellmann discussing his plan for the Audubon to Arboretum Trail

I believe that the photo above might well have been taken as far from any paved road as one can get inside Loop 12. There among the 8' Giant Ragweed of the Great Trinity Forest near the mouth of White Rock Creek a lot of discussion took place, good constructive talk, about what the future has in store for this rare remaining wildscape inside the city limits. Stay tuned for how that pans out. Better yet, get involved yourself.

Research ecologist Dr Gary Dick, research scientist Lynde Dodd and City of Dallas Trinity River Watershed Assistant Director Sarah Standifer standing high on the steep banks at "Pond B", Jenkins Lake, Great Trinity Forest

White Ibis adults and juvenile White Ibis at Pond B

I think it's rather remarkable that the City of Dallas has taken an ear and a close look at many of the concerns down here and that is commendable. Rare that one of the largest cities in the United States took vast chunks of time out of their schedule to look into the topics of preservation and conservation in a place so few know about. That includes heads and managers from many different city departments.

Sean Fitzgerald listening to discussion between the Corps of Engineers scientists and Sarah Standifer with the City of Dallas

So much of this is still very much Square One. How do you take something so wild and natural, preserve, protect and conserve it. Part of the answer might come from Dr Gary Dick and Lynde Dodd both of the US Army Corps of Engineers Lewisville Aquatic Ecosystem Research Facility, LAERF.

They have been managing the Trinity River Wetland Cells since they were created out of the old Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Couple of articles about the two scientists:

http://www.army.mil/article/90668/
http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsStories/tabid/9219/Article/17787/erdc-scientists-help-create-man-made-ecosystem-with-wild-results.aspx

Dr Gary Dick looking down the steep 30' drop to Sean Fitzgerald standing far below at Jenkins Lake

Eating pears off of a tree in Wallace Jenkins old pear orchard, future Horse Park

Many of these places are wild, purely because no human ever goes there. Over many years, wildlife fills the void. For instance, Pond B known for years as Jenkins Lake, sits directly across the Trinity River from Wetland Cell G. A two minute flight for any bird. For a human, it's 20 minute drive down three roads and across Loop 12 and back again.

Interesting to listen to the Corps folks walk and talk about possible ideas for how to manage invasive species, wildlife and plants down here in the future.

Texas Stream Team Coordinator Richard Grayson in straw hat, at Big Spring, along side L-R Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan, City of Dallas Senior Program Manager Louise Elam, City of Dallas Senior Program Manager Sue Alvarez and Reporter Roy Appleton Dallas Morning News

Sweat equity by the gallon is getting expended to make this something everyone can be proud of. I think that slowly but surely stars are aligning and middle ground found in this process that will preserve the special areas down here in the future. The word "perpetuity" was said at city hall more than once.

L-R Geo-archeologist Dr Tim Dalbey, Conservation Director for the Connemara Conservancy RJ Taylor, Historian MC Toyer pouring over maps at Big Spring

Much of what lies ahead has never been done before in Dallas. What road it travels to get there will be an interesting one.

One of the few natural springs left in Texas and one of just a handful on public property, Big Spring is quickly becoming a focal point of intense study in the Great Trinity Forest. So much is yet to be learned about this natural spring that for every question and answer, another ten questions are spawned. The random guessing and hypothetical discussion of such a place has lately turned into a search for hard facts, scientific discovery and a determined goal for perpetual preservation.

Looking down into Big Spring

The unknowns of the place still vastly outweigh the knowns. How old is the spring, how old is the water, who lived here, who visited here, what's under the ground, how was the spring formed. Slowly some of those questions are being answered. It will likely take years to fully understand the place.

The search for answers is a fun project. With an average flow of 23 gallons per minute year round and water pure enough to drink, the Spring is a great outdoor classroom for not just children but adults too. Classified as a Magnitude Five natural spring, delivering over 8 million gallons of clean water annually to the Trinity River watershed it might be one of the cleanest if not the cleanest source of water on the whole of the 710 miles of Trinity River. For certain the cleanest water in the watershed in Dallas County. Bar none. If there is cleaner water, I cannot find it.

Radiocarbon Dating Big Spring's Water To the 14th Century
In addition to monthly water monitoring, one of the most unique tests conducted recently was a radiocarbon dating test of the water at Big Spring. The $600 cost for the test was paid for by fourteen citizens interested in the preservation cause. Conducted in late August 2013, the water test was sent to Beta Analytic in Florida for analysis.

Small pipe placed deep into one of the spring's outlets for the test

The results took the balance of a month to get back and show the water being dated to 1360 AD. When dealing with variables like water, many things factor into the age of the sample taken. The soils and rock it flows through, surface water permeating into the aquifer, testing methods. All have an effect on the water's age. At the bare minimum the results show that the water and aquifer that supply Big Spring are not modern. They are very old and could very well be much older than 1360. So many things factor into how to age the spring that it would take many more tests at different parts of the aquifer to gain a comprehensive insight into the age and size of the aquifer that feeds the spring.

Richard Grayson(left) and Tim Dalbey(right) working to prepare a test site and water sample for the radiocarbon dating test

The water test was led by archeologist Tim Dalbey. He had floated the idea of the test for over a year and with enough backing and monetary support was able to get the water sample required. Tim does all kinds of interesting things around town. One of the more recent was a mid 19th century cistern discovered by work crews doing renovations of Dealey Plaza in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. The cistern sits mere feet from the School Book Depository in Downtown Dallas. Byron Harris from Channel 8's report is below, featuring Tim, the cistern and the assassination:





Current Water Testing Efforts
Tim also ponied up for a water test at Big Spring over a year ago which included a chemical analysis of the water. Those results can be found here June 2012 Water Quality Test At Big Spring

The importance of  tests and monitoring is designed to establish a baseline for the future. Starting recently from square one with much of the data collection the avalanche of data regarding the spring and surrounding area now exceeds 5,000 pages of documents and is growing all the time.

The Texas Stream Team, formerly Texas Watch, is based at Texas State University and is affiliated with the university's River Systems Institute. The team is a partnership of agencies and trained volunteers working together to monitor water quality and educate residents about the natural resources in the state. Established in 1991, the team is administered through a cooperative partnership with Texas State, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The more than 2,000 volunteers are trained to collect water samples according to a water quality plan approved by TCEQ and EPA. The monitors make field observations and analyze the samples for dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance, Secchi depth transparency, temperature, and E. coli to assess the quality of aquatic life and contact recreation conditions of the water.

Big Spring has not one but now two data testing sites in conjunction with the Texas Stream Team. Led by Richard Grayson, the DFW coordinator, the two sites labeled:

Meadows Center For Water And The Environment

#80939 Big Spring Source
#80965 Big Spring Pond
Water samples are collected monthly with on site testing for PH, dissolved oxygen. E.coli testing is done offsite at the offices of For The Love Of The Lake.

The City of Dallas has also provided test results of their own at both Big Spring and the Texas Horse Park. Those results can be found at the City of Dallas Stormwater Management website here:
City of Dallas PDF file for water quality at Big Spring and 811 Pemberton Hill Road


Plenty of data exists online to review much of what is going on with Big Spring, the future Texas Horse Park and a future PGA Golf Course. The raw data and documents can most easily be found through a website administered by Hal and Ted Barker here: http://savepembertonsbigspring.wordpress.com/
Hal and Ted were recently featured in a Dallas Observer story about their preservation efforts in Dallas http://www.dallasobserver.com/2013-08-29/news/the-barker-brothers-fight-city-hall-and-win/

Laray Polk crossing Bryan's Slough at Big Spring hike with city officials

One recent guest on a hike to Big Spring was author Laray Polk. She has recently written about some of the underlying methane gas issues at the planned PGA Golf Course just a stone's throw away from Big Spring http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/north-south-dallas-project/viewpoints/20130811-dallas-world-class-golf-course-must-account-for-methane-threat.ece





The Geology At Work

Big Spring sits in southeast Dallas 32°43'49.06"N 96°43'15.49"W ,  the neighborhood of Pleasant Grove and the subsection of an area called Pemberton Hill. At roughly 405 feet above sea level, the spring sits in what geologists call the Trinity Terrace.

The Trinity Terrace is a series of orangeish and brown-yellow Pleistocene gravel deposits from a long ago time.  The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2.5 million to 11,000 years ago, spanning the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. During that time, a vast ice age here in North America, ice sheets and glaciers extended as far south as Kansas. Coupled with much wetter weather than today, the Trinity River was vastly larger, carrying large loads of sediment across a valley that extended from Fair Park clear across to the Dallas Zoo. Big and mighty river, large flood events to boot.

Gravel matrix cemented together by calcium carbonate solution flowing through the rock strata, sample taken from the head source of Big Spring

The large flood events deposited gravels over the underlying Austin Chalk. The Austin Chalk was deposited roughly 80-90 million years ago during the cretaceous when Dallas was covered in a large sea. In a rare few places you can still see the Trinity Terrace gravel overlying the Austin Chalk.

McCommas Bluff Preserve on the Trinity River

One such place is historic McCommas Bluff, just downstream from the Trinity River Audubon Center. Here one can easily pick out in the northern section of the bluffs, the Trinity Terrace deposits stacked atop the older Austin Chalk.

Good view of Austin Chalk(white limestone) sitting below the much younger Trinity Terrace gravels(red-brown-yellow gravel matrix)

Much of the gravel and sand here is loose, one can pick some up barehanded with no effort. In some areas where water has infiltrated over time, the matrix has cemented together. The calcium carbonate solution in the water binds the gravel and sand together forming a hard rock structure.

Porous water bearing Trinity Terrace gravels cemented together with calcium carbonate and seeping water through the voids, Austin Chalk seen as white rock underneath

If one looks carefully at the photo above you can see the voids created over time by water slowly moving through the rock at McCommas Bluff.

A natural void or crack in the Austin Chalk that the water has exploited forming a natural seep

At one particular place along McCommas Bluff a natural seep exists where water exploits a void/flaw/crack/crevice in the limestone. Here the groundwater has created a deep void with crystalline calcium carbonate inside of it. Above is the water bearing Trinity Terrace gravel.

2009 view of McCommas Bluff Preserve atop the bluffs(bluffs are to the left and out of the photo)

2013 view of McCommas Bluff Preserve, same spot as 2009 photo, barren and devoid of vegetation due to 18 wheeler traffic

The seeps at McCommas Bluff are fragile. Easily impacted by surface activity in the recharge zone beyond.  Some seeps have stopped flowing here, others a mere trickle compared to a few years ago. The cause of the degradation was a construction project by Dallas Water Utilities that compacted and ruined much of the land here. Despite assurances that the area was going to be reseeded with new native grass and wildflowers, it never came to pass.


 Getting Back To Big Spring

Head source of Big Spring, notice the same gravel matrix visible inside the spring

Tim Dalbey standing in Big Spring. Visible behind him, to the right is one of the spring's sources, to the left is a large limestone rock outcrop which serves as an impermeable layer.

The same geologic structures seen at McCommas Bluff can be seen with a discriminating eye at Big Spring. Looking closely through the vegetation and soil, one can pick out the gravel and limestone boundary inside the spring. Above, Dr Tim Dalbey stands at one source of Big Spring to the right of the photo. To the left and in the background one can pick out the clearly defined limestone vertical face.

More study is required to find out what makes the spring work so well. With such a volume of water one can only wonder what kind of geology focuses so much H2O in one spot.

Loss Of Nearly All Natural Historic Springs

There was a time when Dallas was dotted with springs. Well known in name only, Cedar Springs and Kidd Springs are both great examples of what were once large, functional and important springs in Dallas. There are many more like Keller Springs, Balch Springs and Grapevine Springs that either no longer flow or have been so heavily altered over time that they no longer serve as a touch stone to the past.

There is one place though, one natural spring of importance still out there, that has sat in relative isolation and free from the hands of man. That place is called Big Spring, in the Great Trinity Forest, Dallas, Texas.

 Cedar Springs
Across the street from the Whole Foods grocery store in Highland Park stands a modest inscribed stone laid in 1936 to mark the site of Cedar Springs. People know the name. Hundreds of thousands of people drive the road every day bearing the same name. Few have ever seen the actual Cedar Springs or what remains of them not encased in concrete.

Cedar Springs townsite in Dallas Texas, south of Lemmon Avenue and east of the Dallas North Tollroad

If you could thumb back through that history book and find a year that exemplified a time when the land was fresh in Dallas it would be 1843. Dallas in that year was a vast unpeopled wilderness of plains, known for lush riparian bottoms and a bounty of wild game. The city as we know it today was no more than a dugout scrape of a hovel occupied by one man, John Neely Bryan. Dotting the distant landscape of what was then Nacogdoches County in the Republic of Texas were a scant few homesteads of pioneer families who decided to call what is now Dallas, home. Dallas was not even a going concern at the time. It was Cedar Springs.

Before there was even a Dallas, Cedar Springs served as a small military bivouac for the Republic of Texas. Here Texan military units were reported to camp, exploring and surveying an untamed land that later became DFW. Preston Road was laid out from here. A connection from Holland Coffee's Trading Post on the Red River at Preston's Bend with points south towards Austin. Here is where it all happened.

For a time, a serious effort was underway to determine what town should hold the county seat, Dallas or Cedar Springs. The springs were superior to what was offered in Dallas near what is now the Old Red Courthouse. Better land, better water, better living conditions all around. Cedar Springs in it's heyday boasted a distillery, grist mill, sawmill and a variety of businesses that used the spring for light manufacturing before the Civil War. Those times are long gone, after an election that made Dallas the county seat.

Cedar Springs as it exists today

At the back end of a city park sits the remains of Cedar Springs. Barely a trickle from it's source, most likely ruined long ago by a construction project. Bisected by a chain link fence and full of trash, it's water begins a slow trip under the Dallas North Tollroad.

Under the tollroad in some mix of concrete culverts the water from Cedar Springs mixes with drainages from western portions of Highland Park to form Cedar Springs Branch. Here the flow is a little stronger, just 100 yards distant from the head of Cedar Springs itself.

The west side of the tollroad is where the bulk of the residents lived in what was once Cedar Springs. The waterway is channelized now in a culvert as it passes through a series of gated condo communities and apartment complexes.

Behind one such set of high gates and fences sits a Texas Historical Marker for Cedar Springs. Hard to read from the street(click on the photo to read the inscription). Nothing remains to take stock of today. Long ago gone. Only a street name remains to note the place ever existed.

Kidd Springs

Kidd Springs Park in Oak Cliff

When Kidd Springs was a going concern, the spring fed lake here was one of the finest swimming holes in the United States. Originally the spring was used by Oak Cliff pioneers in the 1840s-1850s as a water source. When the namesake for the spring Colonel James Kidd purchased the 200 acres of property around the site, he improved upon it. The improvements included turning a natural ravine into a lake via a dam on the northeast and drilling down some distance to improve the flow. The result was a manmade artisanal source up near present day Fouraker Street just north of Davis that ran down to the lake via pipe and then bubbled up into the lake.

A mechanically powered pump simulates the old Kidd Springs outflow using water from the lake

Kidd Springs rock work that some attribute wrongly as the source

Yellow Crowned Night Heron among the trash at Kidd Springs

Kidd Springs at the turn of the last century is where the elite in Dallas spent their summer weekends. A cross between a waterpark and amusement park, Kidd Springs was the place to be seen and put Oak Cliff on the map. Oak Cliff as a community always boasted their clean water as compared to Dallas across the river, Kidd Springs was evidence of that.

Like Cedar Springs, the wheels came off Kidd Springs long ago. Maybe it was the polio scare or the 50's drought that did the place in. Over time the place just became little more than a memory in the heads of the old timers, people who recalled the elite country club atmosphere of a place long since gone.

Improvements to Kidd Springs Park where the lake now sits incrementally crept away from the lake itself and the park now is as cookie cutter as any other in the city. Concrete sidewalks that replaced the old asian motif decor, the rock work replaced by more functional but bland access for ADA compliance.



Big Spring 
Seventeen decades, a whole 170 years of documented Texas history lie here. In a chronological history book of Dallas history, the intertwined lore of this spot would be written on page one.

The evening sun setting behind Big Spring

Around the time Cedar Springs was founded, a year or two after John Neely Bryan started calling his dugout hole near what as now the Old Red Courthouse, a family called the Beemans settled in North Texas on lower White Rock Creek.

Veterans of the Republic of Texas Army and Indian campaigns, the Beemans by the early 1840s had already made their mark on the infant Republic's history. They settled on White Rock Creek on land claims given to them by the Republic of Texas for military service and land purchased via Toby Script. One parcel of land was known as the "Big Spring Survey", claimed in 1842 by John Beeman in what was then the Peter's Colony Survey. John Beeman and his family lived on the west bank of White Rock Creek just down the hill from the present day Beeman Family Cemetery.

Big Spring as it looked on the evening of August 13, 2013, 170 years to the date that President Sam Houston camped here

John Beeman called this piece of land "Big Spring" after the cold and clear water that flows straight off the bedrock via a natural spring. Used for countless centuries by Native Americans, this site had been a magnet for humans seeking water and refuge. Even present day the water still flows at a near consistent 60 degrees. Who knows what kind of people once drank from the water here. What language they spoke. What they ate for dinner.


Sam Houston and his Treaty Party visit Dallas and a high probability that they camped one night at Big Spring

Sam Houston

Sam Houston had lived with the Cherokee people for years as a young man, had a fondness for the tribes and wanted them treated fairly as their lands were taken over by civilization despite their depredations against the settlers in Texas. For months Houston sent messages to his Indian friends proclaiming he would hold a Grand Council of the Tribes at Fort Bird(presently in the North Arlington area) during the full moon of August 1843. Similar to what we might consider a general assembly meeting of the United Nations.  Houston sent Indian Commissioner Joseph C. Eldridge out months in advance of the date to bring the Comanches and others to the treaty council.

It was in August 1843 when Sam Houston and an expedition of about 30 men departed Crockett in East Texas, and began their trek to the Three Forks of the Trinity(now known as Dallas and Tarrant County) to negotiate with the chiefs of the Indian tribes.  Their route was well documented traveling roughly on the same route into Dallas that US Highway 175 takes today. This route was an ancient Pre-Columbian trail used by Indians for many centuries as an important trade route between the Piney Woods of East Texas, the Plains and Indians living north of the Red River. Scyene and Preston Roads share similar distinctions in Dallas as ancient Indian trails that later became major roads.

Big Spring Sunset among the native walnut and pecan trees

One of the men in his group was an Englishman by the name of Edward Parkinson. He kept a detailed account of the trip in his diary. It's believed he came along just for the adventure of seeing real live Indians on the plains. At the time the Beeman family was living in a blockhouse near present day Dolphin Road and Military Parkway. The account below mentions that they did not see the Beeman family until the next morning, August 14th 1843. His diary entries from August 13th and 14th or there abouts follow.....

"We encamped that night at White Rock Springs, so called from the calcareous nature of the rocks abundant here about one mile from the White Rock Fork of the Trinity. In the morning some settlers from the infant colony opened about the Forks of the Trinity River visited us, accompanied by some travelers examining the country, they brought us no news of the expected Indians and were on foot, stating that some little time previous the wild Indians had stolen all the horses but one or two belonging to the settlement.  We then saddled up and proceeded to the fork at White Rock Creek which we found very difficult from the rain which had fallen making the bank on the other side one slide of about thirty feet, from top to bottom. We were obliged to dismount and drive the animals over, some of them describing curious mathematical figures, from their inexperience in the science of sliding. However, all got over safe,  and on reaching the prairie on the other side arrived at one of the colonist’s cabins{that of John Beeman} where we were regaled with an acceptable and plentiful supply of buttermilk. My horse(a mustang) having become almost knocked up, I determined upon resting here, and was hospitably entertained until the following day, the company in the meantime moving on to Cedar Springs, where they rested a day or two previous to marching on to Bird’s Fort on the West Fork of the Trinity the appointed Treaty Ground, great anxiety prevailing respecting the Indians but no news of them."--Edward Parkinson 1843

Sam Houston

When Houston arrived at Ft. Bird, several tribes had shown up but did not want to go near the garrisoned fort fearing a trap. Houston moved the negotiations and camps six miles north to Grapevine Springs.  He felt the Springs offered better water, more shade in the summer heat and less mosquitoes.  However the group camped there for more than a month while awaiting the Comanches, and was described by Parkinson as:  "there were some fine though rather monotonous days, only relieved by finding a bee tree or killing our beeves." Finally Houston realized the Comanches weren't coming and decided to have a council with those in attendance.  Known as a flamboyant dresser, Houston's attire for the occasion was noteworthy.  "Donned in a purple velvet suit, with a huge Bowie knife thrust in his belt, and a folded Indian blanket draped over one shoulder to proclaim his brotherhood with the red men, Houston eloquently promised the chiefs that a favorable treaty line would be drawn beyond which the Indians could live unmolested by white men." At this time, along with the negotiations with the Indians, Houston was still President of the Republic and having to deal with the Mexican situation and annexation of Texas.  Before the actual treaty was signed, he had to go back to Washington on the Brazos to deal with these issues personally.  To deal with the Comanches when, and if, they arrived he assigned Gen. Edward H. Tarrant and Gen. George Whitfield Terrell.

Treaty of Bird's Fort

The treaty was signed in the last three days of September 1843.   The Treaty at Birds Fort was a rare instrument: it was actually ratified by the Republic of Texas Senate. Throughout both his administrations, Sam Houston worked to negotiate with the Texas tribes, not only because of his natural inclination but also because the new Republic simply could not afford to be at war both with the Indians and the Mexicans. His policy had already been put into practice when he and John Forbes negotiated a treaty with the Cherokee on February 3, 1836.    President Mirabeau B. Lamar, on the other hand, was convinced that the tribes were conspiring with the Mexicans, and he also believed that the tribes constituted a foreign nation in competition with the Republic. He actively supported a policy of extermination and expulsion, a policy which removed the Cherokee altogether and which helped plunge the new nation into considerable debt.



Native Americans

Springs in Texas have been a magnet for human activity for many dozens of centuries. Find an undisturbed spring site almost anywhere in the Lone Star State and one will readily find evidence of human occupation that goes back thousands of years. The old watering holes of the first Americans later became well worn routes of travel that were used by the first European expeditions to Texas. Those old game trails and hunting routes eventually morphed into wagon roads, some became modern day highways we know today.

Native American artifacts excavated from 41DL72 as part of a Geo-Marine project in 2013. Photo Credit: Tim Dalbey

A wide swath of an archeological site once covered the terrace upon which Big Spring sits. Over the last hundred years, through utility right of ways, easements and some gravel mining, the site, officially called 41DL72 slowly diminished in size. Remnants of the site still exist undisturbed. The effort to save the remaining undisturbed area for the future is a tough sell. 

One oddball layered map that literally looks like a footprint from Geo-Marine

Measuring DL72 in the electric ROW

For an area that looks so quiet, so untouched, the complexity of issues facing the place can best be described in the map above. What are 6 maps laid over one another show all the competing projects and eyes on design for the place. Some ideas, like the fencing of the spring are now just a distant memory. Others are still a concern as bulldozers begin work on the Texas Horse Park.






The work to map some of the areas has consumed many an early Saturday morning this summer. Measuring, driving stakes, measuring again, taking copious field notes and photos. All to preserve a place that links some ancient people to us. I don't even know who they are. No one does. If the bulldozers don't wreck it maybe one day we will find out.

Mapping out a DL72 protection area

Left to Right RJ Taylor, Conservation Director for the Connemara Conservancy Foundation; Wayne Kirk, Texas Horse Park; Dr Tim Dalbey, archeologist; Photographer Sean Fitzgerald; Roy Appleton, Dallas Morning News; Ted Barker, Save Winfrey Point and Save Pemberton Big Spring

Runaway horses bathing in Big Spring 2012

Protecting the spring and the surrounding area is vitally important to the health and long term sustainability of Big Spring and the Native American site around it. "Protecting" and "protection" of a place can mean many things to many people. How one comes to consensus on what is best to protect one of the last natural springs in Texas, how we all figure that out is a tough one. Lots of big, gigantic promises being made. Hope it's not all talk.

The large field above Big Spring which serves as a bio-buffer for the spring

Another view of the field, standing NE corner, looking SW, Texas Horse Park will sit beyond the transmission lines

The idea that never was

According to the City of Dallas, hired consultants for a time floated the idea of equipment buildings, two 1,000 gallon fuel tanks and a compost heap that would have commanded most of the land in the field here. See inset left. Those plans according to the City of Dallas were only ideas and never a serious consideration.

Talks with the city thus far in reaching preservation and conservation status have been productive and are seeing much progress. A large buffer is the right solution to the perpetual preservation of the Big Spring site, the preservation of the Native American site and leaving the woods surrounding the Spring free of anything but foot traffic. It should be a place that is open and enjoyed by all who want to visit. With discussion for a detailed and comprehensive management plan, conservation and preservation it's thought that the sights and sounds seen today will look the same 500 years from now. There is an abundant and rich reward for leaving places like this alone.

Floating the rain swollen Trinity River under the towering cottonwoods and pecans of the Great Trinity Forest just downstream of White Rock Creek in Dallas, Texas September 21, 2013

Hurricane Ingrid Track from NOAA

Earlier in the week and some thousand miles to the south, Hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel slammed the Central Mexican coasts along both the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific. As the storms moved into the interior that tropical moisture funneled north via the annual monsoonal flow across the Southwestern United States and Texas.

Coupled with the approach of the first strong Canadian cold front, the tropical moisture created a much welcomed and widespread heavy rain event in the Upper Trinity River Basin of North Texas.

Hitting the river at the height of the flood

The Dallas Fort Worth area saw 3 to 6 inches of rain causing minor flash flooding and the Trinity River to rise some 15+ feet above normal. The average flow through Downtown Dallas is some 500-600 cubic feet per second, after the heavy rains the flow was ten times that, over 5,000 cubic feet per second.
Downstream, White Rock Creek, a tributary to the Trinity River, saw flows over 1,200 cubic feet per second below the White Rock Lake Dam. This translates into a faster speed of flow too, some two-to-three miles per hour.

With the river high and running fast, what better time to get out on the water. Even better, use specially designed lightweight whitewater-purposed packrafts and mountain bikes to make for an entire car-free adventure through the Great Trinity Forest and points beyond. Nearly all the photos here were taken inside the inner highway ring loop of Dallas, Texas known as Loop 12. The exception being a scant few photos taken while visiting Joppa Preserve and the Trinity River Audubon Center which sit a mere city block from Loop 12.

Paddling on the Trinity River in southeast Dallas under the massive twin I-45 bridges originally designed to accomodate barge traffic between North Texas and the Gulf Coast

A Float On The Last Day Of Summer
The trip down here hits a number of exceptional places to visit on the Trinity River in one of the largest urban parks in the country known as the Great Trinity Forest. Highlights included not just the grand spectacle of running the river. Anyone can do that. It's being able to fold in a connection to the people on the Trinity using them as a way to connect dots and relevance to a place that has no signs or guideposts. It's still amazing to know that a six mile river float, a twenty mile bike ride, a visit to a world class Audubon Center, a pre-Columbian Native American site, a drink out of an ancient spring and crossing through the State Fair of Texas can all be done inside the city limits of Dallas.

Floating the Trinity River with the famous Texas Buckeye Grove commanding the view in the background

Off The Map Route
The ease of access afforded by not just floating the river but also traversing the woods by mountain bike allowed us to condense what would be a twelve hour canoe and hike into one that was a mere five hours. The luxury of not being tied down by a vehicle on the river means no shuttling, no backtracking, no waiting around and means you can go "the back way" at every turn. The road less travelled or no road at all. 26 miles altogether, much of it where no street address exists.

Paddling Portion
Paddling Route data can be found here:
Map route data Trinity River Paddling Trail Santa Fe Trestle to Loop 12

Six mile float route from the Santa Fe Trestle Trail down to Loop 12 and the Boat Ramp take-out

The route used for this trip follows the Main Stem of the Trinity River from the Santa Fe Trestle Trail at Moore Park, down to the Loop 12 Boat Ramp located at the Trinity River and Loop 12. It's a straightforward route that includes a number of historic sites, rarely seen bridges and wildlife.

Since the water was high, we were able to use the pack rafts to negotiate up the mouth of White Rock Creek to an area behind Big Spring at Mile 5, where Bryan's Slough/ Oak Creek joins White Rock. A rare treat to briefly paddle into the heart of the Great Trinity Forest.

Cycling Portion
Route data can be found here:
Map route data Trinity Forest Bike Trail Loop 12 to Trinity River Audubon Center

Four mile bike route from Loop 12 to the Trinity River Audubon Center

Packrafts make the trip possible

Getting ready to launch boats at the Standing Wave

It's packrafting, not canoeing. It's packrafting, not cycling. These are high performance boats and not pool toys, either. Hard to explain to us Texans as the lionshare of packraft users are high adventurers in the mountains of far flung continents, in desolate hard to reach places no one has ever thought to venture before. To some extent, the Trinity River fits into that. A true classic wilderness float with rarely another human seen the entire trip.

The first use of modern inflatable boats began in the mid 19th century, but the history of inflatable boats goes back much further. In fact, indigenous tribes around the world have, in past centuries, sought to use animal skins and inflated bladders to keep them afloat in the water. These rafts proved in a practical manner that you can fill a water resistant material with air and float the surface of the water.

The first use of inflatable boats was in 880 BC, when the king of Assyria used greased animal skins inflated with air to move his troops across a river. Other records of history show that during the Ming Dynasty in China, inflated skins were used for river crossings.

Peter Hackett's boat design used in the Canadian Arctic

In the 1840s, the army and several naval officers, including British Lieutenant Peter Hackett, developed inflatable boats specially designed for use in an Arctic exploration. In 1848, U.S. General George Cullum introduced an inflatable rubberized fabric that is used to some extent in the civil war. In 1866, three men crossed the Atlantic on a raft of three tube, the first transoceanic voyage in the history of the inflatable boat. It was shown that many of these inflatable boats were sturdy, reliable and worthy of further development.  Vulcanized rubber changed the history of rubber boats  In 1900, the manufacture of vulcanized rubber inflatable boat took to the next designs to the next level.

Modern day pack rafting via mountain bike in Dallas

The background of inflatable boats in the 20th century saw their use across a broad spectrum from saving many lives on the Titanic, to downed aviators during wars, to specially designed boats used in clandestine military operations.

The refined and contemporary design of modern boats used today allow for a lightweight and strong boat that can carry many hundreds of pounds of gear and equipment with the boat itself weighing around 6 pounds.




Alpacka Boats and Big City Bike Rafts

The boats used are Alpacka brand boats from Alpacka Raft Mancos, Colorado. They are the Rolls-Royce of adventure boats and are the worldwide standard for expedition travel where water crossings and remote water travel is required. With the Rolls-Royce quality, comes a Rolls-Royce pricetag to buy one. The boat, lifejacket and paddle can run $1000 and priced about the same as a traditional well made kayak or canoe. Well worth every penny.

Will Saunders

Those not wanting to fork over that kind of money for a boat can rent one from Will and Evan at http://www.bigcitybikerafts.com/. Dallas based near White Rock Lake, they'll rent you a boat and gear pretty cheap if you have something that you have been interested in trying.

I had been on a previous bike rafting trip down the river with Will, it started and finished from the Katy Trail Icehouse along the Katy Trail in Dallas. The writeup from that trip in February can be found here:  Bikerafting the Trinity River from the Katy Trail. He has some cool outside the box ideas on where to take these rafts around Dallas and could show you the in's and out's of how they work in just a few minutes. He is good people and has some real creative solutions to getting more people interested in the outdoors in Dallas.

If you want to read more about what these boats are capable of, source a book written by Jonathan Waterman and published by National Geographic called Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River. Jonathan Waterman used an Alpacka on his 1450 mile journey from the source of the Colorado River on the snowpack in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park all the way through Arizona's Grand Canyon and down to Mexico's Baja

Assembling The Boats

Putting the boats together and disassembling the bikes for the float downriver takes only a few minutes. Even without much practice, the assembly and inflation of a boat takes a blink of an eye. The boats don't use pumps for inflation, they use a pillow bellow system. Much like a pillowcase, you grab some thin air and simply squeeze the air into your boat. Simple by design and allows for rapid inflation.


















Taking the bike wheels off and securing to the bow of the boat takes another few minutes. A 25 pound mountain bike weighs very little in a relative sense. The boats are capable of carrying a field dressed elk, moose or bear out of a boundary wilderness area, a bike cargo is nothing compared to that. The trick with a bike is to make sure all the sharp points of the pedals and cranks do not contact the boat.

This could easily be done with a road bike or any other bike that allows for wheels to be taken off. We were all using the larger 29" wheeled mountain bikes and everything fit aboard with room to spare.

The oars break down into 4 parts and the stuff sack for the boat serves as a dry bag when on the water.





With quick assembly and a recheck of gear, safety chat and route plans, it was time to hit the water.

Our group of four was rounded out by Brendan and John. Brendan has prior experience on the Trinity River upstream the previous year and in heavy thunderstorm conditions.
 





A note on safety and self-rescue:
I would recommend first time river runners on the Trinity to use a guide or organized group outing with experienced friends who know the ins-and-outs of the river. Makes for a much more enjoyable float. Launching on the fast running and swift rain swollen Trinity is an exciting trip but one I would suggest only for more advanced paddlers in excellent physical condition.

Looks can be deceiving with obstacles just under the surface. With an extra 10-15 feet of water in the river and 10 times the volume of flow, many of the snags and obstructions, actually all of them, were unseen. Made for a beautiful float as not a car tire or piece of trash was seen on the bank. Also makes for very difficult conditions if problems crop up.

Putting AfloatOn The Dallas Trinity River Paddling Trail
The Dallas Trinity Paddling Trail is one of 57 Texas Paddling Trails that dot Texas. Half a dozen of which are in the Trinity River basin. More information can be found on the TPWD Paddling Trail Website

Putting in at the Standing Wave 32°45'9.26"N, 96°47'26.43"W is a breeze using the ingress and egress ramps used for portaging around the river obstruction there. A concrete ramp leads from the sidewalk right into the water. Before you know it, you are away.

Just downstream from launching at the Trinity River Standing Wave, Will and Brendan pass the mouth of Cedar Creek

Just downstream from the Standing Wave is the mouth of Cedar Creek 32°45'5.08"N,  96°47'17.34"W. Most know it as the creek that flows through the Dallas Zoo. Where this creek meets the Trinity River(river right) a small fort once stood, built by the Army of The Republic of Texas during the expedition to scout a Military Road from Austin to the Red River. I-35 now follows that route.

Under the MKT Bridge downstream

The old Katy railroad bridge 32°45'0.06"N ,  96°46'38.94"W dates supposedly to 1905 and is one of the oldest railroad bridges still in operation over the Trinity River, if not the oldest. Few ever see this bridge. Tucked away behind a few bends in the river it stands virtually hidden to the river beyond. From this point on, save for a few freeway overpasses, the city that surrounds the river is silent. The river and the 4000 acres of trees that surround it soak up noise like a sponge

P&G Plant Pumphouse, lower intake of structure is submerged in the photo

Photo from 2012 showing the low water view

The Proctor and Gamble Pumphouse 32°44'55.95"N, 96°46'33.35"Wsits some 500 yards south of the Proctor and Gamble Plant on Lamar in South Dallas. Built in 1919, the plant was constructed at the vital crossroads of two major railway lines and in close proximity to the Trinity River. The two story structure here served the purpose of providing cooling water to coal fired boilers behind the plant and also non-potable water use not involved in the production process. By the time this pump was operational, new standards for sanitary disposal of wastewater were law. Pumphouses such as this can only lift water in feet height equal to the atmospheric pressure in water, 34 inches, which translates to 34 feet. Roughly the same height as this structure. This plant was modeled after a sister factory in Cincinnati on the Ohio River.

One of the many quiet sections of the Trinity River just south of Downtown Dallas where large tree canopies dapple the sunlight as the strong current gives us an effortless journey downstream

As one approaches I-45, the river picks up a little speed. Here the river drops a little more in elevation than other sections, thus speeding things up a little. During high water the extra speed is unnoticed, it's easier to see in normal conditions.

Approaching the twin I-45 spans over the Trinity River

The I-45 Bridge, built in 1971, was constructed with the belief that one day high profile barge traffic from the Gulf of Mexico might one day turn Dallas into an inland port. The Jefferson Street Viaduct near Downtown Dallas has the same elevated look to it. Beyond I-45 is Miller's Bend where the river nearly doublebacks on itself within a 1/3rd of a mile. Steeped in history and one of the more interesting places on the Trinity River.

Entering Miller's Bend

The namesake of the Miller's Bend is William B. Miller an early Dallas pioneer who made a lasting mark on much of Dallas as a whole. An enterprising businessman on the south bank of the Trinity, he needed a ferry crossing to reach Dallas. In turn, Dallas needed a reliable ferry crossing to reach Hutchins, Corsicana and points south. He owned and operated a ferry here for a number of decades beginning in the 1850s. Freedman Henry Critz Hines later ran the ferry through the 1870s. Miller's Ferry road still exists today in southern Dallas County and served as the piggybacked route for the first railroad, first highway and first interstate into Dallas. More can be read about the background of Miller's Ferry, the Native Americans and the bridge history here Miller's Ferry.


Conversation With The Jet Ski Guy On The Trinity River at Miller's Ferry


I would imagine that it has been awhile since riverine traffic has passed each other on the Trinity River in Dallas. One might need to go back a dozen decades to find the last time traffic passed each other here. What better place to have that happen than at Miller's Ferry.

In the distance, we hear the low hum of a boat, rounding the bend, just at the exact spot of historic Miller's Ferry is none other than the jet ski guy.

Like us, the man on the Sea-Doo was riding the crest of the recent rains. He told us that he lives near Ennis and was riding up the Trinity River all the way to Fort Worth! Pretty far.  He stopped to talk with us, inquiring about the height of the river at the Santa Fe Trestle and whether or not the "Dallas Wave" aka Standing Wave was inundated. He needed the water to be high so he could pass safely through. Answering in the affirmative, we chatted further.

Part Chuck Norris, part Kenny Powers, talking about Trinity River alligators at Miller's Ferry with the jet ski guy

I had previously seen the jet ski guy during high water back in 2012 at McCommas Bluff. There high above the swollen river, I saw two jet skiiers navigate over Lock and Dam #1 and head upstream. Robert Wilonsky at the Dallas Morning News wrote a brief about it here:
Raising Awesome Bar To New Level

The 2012 video is here:


 Fun to talk with someone like that as their experience on the Trinity is very parallel to mine yet seen from a different perspective. He spent a moment talking about an alligator recently not far from Downtown Dallas. His gestures suggested an alligator in the three foot range and in an area upstream of Lamar and south of Downtown. The alligator slid off the bank and into the water as he drove past.

The jet skier was headed for Fort Worth that day, we bid our goodbyes, he started his engine, we put paddle to water and just like that we were all gone from Miller's Ferry.

Floating under the old Central Exwy Bridge

Buckeye Trail vicinity on Trinity River

Beyond Miller's Ferry one floats through Rochester Park aka William Blair Park and some real wildscape areas known for the towering trees and native Texas Buckeyes. River right is the Wetland Cells, a Corps of Engineers partnership and part of the Trinity River Corridor Project. River left is the Buckeye Trail and network of trails that meander through the woods there towards the mouth of White Rock Creek.







White Rock Creek and Boating to Historic Big Spring

Will Saunders at the mouth of White Rock Creek, Trinity River in far background

With some nice high water we ventured off the Trinity River and headed up White Rock Creek aways. With great ease and a little paddling we reached the flooded mouth of Bryan's Slough also known as Oak Creek.

Up White Rock Creek from the Trinity River

The water is usually 2-3 feet deep, on this day it was 20 feet deep and we were paddling through the tree canopy.

White Rock Creek left, mouth of Bryan's Slough at right

A little further up the creek we reached Bryan's Slough. Banks were steeper here to the left with the mouth of the creek to the right. As proof of concept, we could have in theory paddled almost the whole way to Big Spring on Pemberton Hill.

Heading back down to the Trinity, on White Rock Creek

Bryan's Slough was the turnaround and we let the current drift us back down into the Trinity.

Scenic section of the Trinity downstream of the White Rock Creek mouth

Not much was said south of White Rock Creek. We just drifted along at a good clip, enjoying the shade of the trees and soaked it all in. Many canoeists face this straightaway as a curse. During normal slack flows and a strong south wind this section gives many a tough go of it. Not this day. It was cruise control.

Take out at Loop 12

At the Loop 12 Boat Ramp

Taking out at Loop 12 is fairly straightforward. A standard one lane boat ramp exists there with an interlocking paver design. The Loop 12 bridge does funnel the water to some extent making for some needed elbow grease to get into the ramp. Very easy. Taking apart the boats, re-assembling the bikes took only minutes. It was time once again to saddle up on bikes and head towards our next stop the Audubon Center.

The Great Trinity Forest Trail


A four mile paved trail was built in two phases, 2009 and 2012 between Loop 12 and the Trinity River Audubon Center. The bike path skirts Little Lemmon Lake, Lemmon Lake and a couple of unnamed ponds on the south side of the Trinity River. The concrete trail was built upon an old gravel road which once served private fish camps along the lakes when it was a private hunting and fishing club known as the Trinity River Rod and Gun Club.

The tall trees of Joppa Preserve near Lemmon Lake

We were able to see numerous birds at Little Lemmon Lake including shore birds and a rare White-Faced Ibis listed as a Threatened Species. Interesting to see.

Trinity River Trail Bridge Crossing

The bike path crosses the river south of the Trinity River Audubon Center and about 200 yards upstream of the mouth of Elam Creek.

Trinity River Trail Phase II near the Audubon Center

Trinity River Audubon Center
North of the bridge, the trail is shade-free as it crosses through the old Deepwoods landfill east of the Audubon Center.

Trinity River Audubon Center

The Audubon Center sits in what one could call the middle of the Great Trinity Forest and it serves as a great educational primer to the woods and Trinity River Project. Lots of maps, lots of scale models and many hands-on exhibits to introduce children and adults alike to the Trinity River.

Will talking with Jenna Hanson Director of Education at the Trinity River Audubon Center

Jenna from the Audubon Center came out to speak with Will about the bike rafts and doing something with the Audubon in the future. Bike rafts might be a good fit for exploring the Trinity down here in the near future as more people visit by bike.

Brendan at the TRAC

The actual trailhead for the Trinity Trail is about half way down the Audubon drive, it has a dedicated parking lot, water fountain and trail kiosk. The Audubon Center is a separate facility and has it's own parking lot, operating hours and such. More information including exciting new programs including the Audubon's new river expeditions and birding by bike excursions can be found on their website: http://trinityriver.audubon.org/. They also offer Trinity River Bird Count field trips, which are probably the best way to venture into the Trinity with a group. The bird counts are free to attend and are safe as you are with a group.





Visiting Big Spring and Shooting The Breeze With Billy Ray Pemberton

Historic Big Spring in the Great Trinity Forest

Billy Ray Pemberton

We did not bother with filling water bottles at the Audubon Center. I knew a place just a five minute ride up the road where we could fill up, where the water was clean and cold. Big Spring.

We'd already had a great time meeting the jet ski guy, had the red carpet rolled out for us at the Audubon Center, how to top that?

Only one place to go, that's a visit to the Pembertons. We found Mr Pemberton on this stunning bluebird sky of a summer afternoon relaxing at the base of the ancient Bur Oak next to the spring. I imagine if anyone reading this had some magic place like this behind their home, you'd likely do the same. The sounds of the city disappear down here. It's often quiet enough to hear a bird's wings flap in passing or the sound of wind moving through a field of grass. It's an oh so rare refuge inside Loop 12.

Mr Pemberton welcoming the guys to Big Spring

Volumes could be written about the place. The water, the land, the trees and the deep history that reside here. Mr Pemberton's family has been on the land here since the 1880s. Before that the Beeman family and the founder of Dallas, John Neely Bryan lived here. Before that it was used by Native Americans for many many centuries as a water source. Their stone tools and artifacts can still be seen today.

An hour or two earlier we were not far from this spot, having paddled up White Rock Creek to where Bryan's Slough terminates. As Mr Pemberton explained the big floods over the years we mentioned how far up the creek we had come that day on the height of the water. I think we could have easily paddled here that day rather than ride, had the mood struck.

Billy Ray Pemberton telling the story about the Big Flood of 1908 and the walnut tree here that marks the high water mark

So much history sits here that it would take ten trips to soak up. Billy Ray gave us a short cliff notes on the place as we filled our water bottles, drank the water, then refilled again. Few Dallasites have seen what Dallas once looked like, before there was a Dallas. Few realize that some residents like Billy Ray still work the land, grow their own crops and eat the bounty that God provides. He lives it.

I have yet to find someone who does not come away with a deep and profound appreciation for Big Spring or the treasure of a man named Bill Pemberton. Put a smile on our faces the whole ride home.

Ride Up White Rock Creek to the M-Streets

Riding Samuell near Lawnview

The ride back was a breeze. We followed the hilly White Rock Escarpment up the east side of White Rock Creek along an area skirted by Jim Miller Road, Scyene and the Parkdale neighborhoods. Lots of good scenic rough hills in here, commanding views of Downtown Dallas and the streets are fairly low in traffic.

The Lower White Rock Creek Trails are better walked that ridden, rough entrances and trailheads are difficult to find and traverse Devon Anderson, Grover Keeton and Gateway Parks in this area. Out of the floodplain the trail is on solid limestone outcrops and features cedar trees for the most part.

I think the city is moving away from the idea of trails here, preferring to use a floodplain route they call the Arboretum-to-Audubon Trail. That would run closer to the creek and be more prone to extensive flooding.

Past the putting green of Tenison Golf Course

The last rise in the route was over the hills of Tenison Golf Course and the grind up La Vista through Lakewood Country Club.

From outward appearances we look like a group coming back from a casual concrete grind around White Rock Lake. The truth was we had come full circle with the ride here as we merged onto Skillman, reaching a point where we had been just five hours before.

Riding through Lakewood Village

Thanks again to Will Saunders of Big City Bike Rafts, Jenna of Trinity River Audubon and Mr and Mrs Bill Pemberton for their gracious hospitality. Great float, great ride, great people. I think that it's the people who make so much of these visits worthwhile and rewarding.

Monarch butterflies feeding and preparing for a night roost in Dallas Texas on the evening of October 8, 2013

It's a sure sign of autumn and a rare sight for Dallas, a massing of over a hundred migrating Monarch butterflies in a single tree. Something one would usually travel a thousand miles away and into the mountains of Mexico to catch a glimpse of up close. These butterflies are actively feeding on nectar and preparing a colonial overnight roost in a tree.

Monarch Butterflies feeding on the flowers of a Roosevelt Willow Baccharis neglecta

In all the world, no butterflies migrate like the Monarch butterflies of North America. They travel much farther than all other tropical butterflies, up to four thousand miles. They are the only butterfly species to make such a long, two way migration every year. Amazingly, they fly in masses to the same winter roosts, often to the exact same trees. Their migration is more the type we expect from birds or whales. However, unlike birds and whales, individuals only make the round-trip once. It is their children's grandchildren that return south the following fall. The Monarchs are the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do regularly, but no individual makes the entire round trip, because the migration period spans the life of three to four generations of the butterfly.


The Monarch butterfly (scientific name: Danaus plexippus) is perhaps the best known of all North American butterflies. It is easily recognizable by its bright orange-red wings, with black veins and white spots along the edges. The Monarch butterfly is famous for its southward migration from Canada to Mexico and the northward return back through the Great Plains to Canada in summer. Every fall, millions of these butterflies fly west to their wintering grounds in California and Mexico, covering the trees there with their bright shimmering wings.

 As fall approaches non-reproductive monarchs are born. These are the butterflies that will migrate south. They will not reproduce until the following spring. These late summer monarchs will travel hundreds and even thousands of miles to their winter grounds in Mexico and California.  They store fat in their abdomens that will help them make the long trip south and will help them survive the winter. During their five months in Mexico from November to May, monarchs remain mostly inactive. They will remain perfectly still hour-after-hour and day-after-day. They live off of the stored fat they gained during their fall migration.

The plant they are feeding from in the photos is known as Roosevelt Willow or Roosevelt Weed Baccharis neglecta . It's a tall shrub with many willow-like branches covered with very dark green, linear leaves. After warm rains in late summer it produces a profusion of creamy white flower clusters which are followed by silvery plumed seeds that cover the plant with a white cloud. It grows from North Carolina to Arizona, and throughout Texas. Roosevelt Willow/Weed is one of the first plants to invade abandoned fields, roadsides and disturbed habitats. It is extremely drought tolerant, accepting wet or dry sites, and can grow in soils high in salt. The historical references of its common names purportedly come from the fact that after the great Dust Bowl, it was planted as a fast and easy way to revegetate the severely damaged soil.


Monarch Migration South Through Texas

The Monarch migration usually starts around October each year, but can start earlier if the weather turns cold sooner. They travel between 1,500 and 3,800 miles or more from Canada to central Mexican forests where the climate is warm. If the monarch lives in the Eastern states, usually east of the Rocky Mountains, it will migrate to Mexico and hibernate in Oyamel fir trees. If the monarch butterfly lives west of the Rocky Mountains, it will hibernate in and around Pacific Grove, California in eucalyptus trees.

Monarch butterflies use the very same trees each and every year when they migrate, which seems odd because they aren’t the same butterflies that were there last year.  How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research. Some believe the flight pattern is inherited. Other researches indicate the butterflies navigate using a combination of the position of the sun in the sky and the earth's magnetic field for orientation.

The Monarch butterflies migrating through Texas all seem to focus and funnel into a 50 mile gap between Del Rio and Eagle Pass along the US-Mexico Border. Here they have a clear route through mountain passes to the Mexican Interior and highlands.

When they first arrive at their winter locations in November monarchs gather into clusters in the trees. These butterflies congregate into colonies, clustering onto pine and evergreen trees. In many cases, they are so thick that the trees turn orange in color and branches sag from the weight. It’s a remarkable sight that attracts scores of tourists. 

By December and January, when the weather is at its coldest, the monarchs will be tightly packed into dense clusters of hundreds or even thousands of butterflies. By mid-February these clusters of butterflies begin to break up and the monarchs will begin to gather nectar. In the spring they will reproduce and their offspring will make the return trip to the north.



 For many years, people puzzled where the millions of Monarchs that spend the summers in Canada disappear to in winter. Then in 1937, a Canadian zoologist named F. A. Urquhart started tracking the trails of the butterflies by tagging the wings of thousands of individual Monarchs. Nearly 40 years later, and with the help of thousands of volunteers across the country, Urquhart located the first known wintering refuge on a mountaintop in Michoacán, Mexico, more than 4,000 miles from the starting point of their migration. The area is now a World Heritage Site known as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. There are dozen such sites in Mexico and they are protected as ecological preserves by the Mexican government.

Night Roosting

 Monarchs only travel during the day and need to find a roost at night. Monarchs gather close together during the cool autumn evenings. Roost sites are important to the monarch migration. Many of these locations are used year after year. Often pine, fir and cedar trees are chosen for roosting. These trees have thick canopies that moderate the temperature and humidity at the roost site. In the mornings, monarchs bask in the sunlight to warm themselves.

The Monarchs seen here are consuming nectar from a blooming shrub. It is believed that the Monarchs might be following what biologists call a "nectar corridor" for food.

Nectar corridors are a series of habitat patches containing plants that flower at the appropriate times during the spring and fall migrations. These patches provide stopping-off points for the migrating butterflies to refuel and continue their journey. Having these islands of nectar sources is particularly important within large areas of urban and agricultural development. The discontinuous patches of nectar sources are “corridors” that monarchs will follow, like stepping-stones across a stream to complete their migration.


Monarchs and Milkweed

Many butterflies have a single plant required as a food source for their larval form called a host plant. Milkweed is the host plant for the monarch butterfly. Without milkweed, the larva would not be able to develop into a butterfly.

The larvae and the butterflies retain poisonous glycosides from their larval host plant, the milkweed, so they become distasteful to potential predators. These milkweed butterflies (Monarch, Queen, Soldier) eat only milkweeds as larvae. This highly effective defense strategy shields them against almost all predators that soon learn to avoid these species after attempting to eat them.

Milkweed contains a a variety of chemical compounds that make monarch caterpillars poisonous to potential predators. Milkweeds contain a cardiac poison that is poisonous to most vertebrates but does not damage the monarch caterpillar. Some milkweed species have higher levels of these toxins than others.

North Texans can attract Monarchs to their backyards by planting milkweed as a host for Monarch eggs and larvae. Easy to grow here in Dallas.



Some other species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) travel long distances, but they generally go in one direction only, often following food. This one-way movement is properly called emigration. In tropical lands, butterflies do migrate back and forth as the seasons change. As it stands other butterfly flies further, attracts more attention or more curious onlookers than that of the Monarch.

Dispersal of monarchs into a nearby tree after sunset

As the sun sets in the cooling autumn air, the Monarchs head towards a nearby large tree to roost for the night. This is mostly for protection from predators like bats who might not see the bright orange and black coloration, the tell tale of the bad-tasting and poisonous Monarch. From the trees beyond the night crew of animals start up their evening calls. Ready to hunt under a rising crescent moon.

Male Great Horned Owl in a Texas Red Oak, Dallas, Texas, October 2013

Riding the Trinity River with the best brush cowboys in North Texas, Fall 2013

The most obscure but rooted sense of place, by my reckoning in Dallas, must be here. Those who get the notion of the woods down in these parts, the pure authenticity of what remains of a real Texas among ever growing ribbons of concrete, relish this spot. When the heat of the Texas summer loses out to the first couple autumn cold fronts and their brief dust settling rains, well, there are few finer places to be in the world than right here.

Somewhere between the emerald grass and shining pocket ponds are thirty centuries of mankind at your feet if you know where to look. Texas in the raw you might say of a vanished people leaving behind chalky relics and scattered bones as evidence they were ever here. What the Indians left behind are easy to find, looking for the icon of Texas, a real cowboy, is another story altogether.

If one were to seek out a real authentic horse riding cowboy in Texas it might take awhile.  Many contemporary cowboys have traded in their horses for pickup trucks, helicopters and ATVs for managing their herds. The dime store cowboys, the wannabees, the all hat no cattle types folded into the mix only confuse what many consider to be one of the noblest of Texas professions.








Other than the NFL team named after the Cowboy, one would be very hard pressed to find one. There is a place though inside the city limits of Dallas, where the oldest cowboy traditions and real cowboy life still thrives. The Great Trinity Forest.

The men here ride in a style that served as a foundation for what we consider modern day western and cowboy life. Their equipment and horses are such that they hail back to a long ago time. Before there was a Texas or a Mexico.

Competent riders on well trained horses who excel at what they do. Busting brush, riding hard and exploring the lost and unexplored parts of the city. It's almost moving art at work with man and horse working in perfect unison as a team.

I have come to believe that were the vaqueros who ride here not on horseback, they would be known as the best woodsmen of the riverbottoms. Exceptional outdoorsmen and adventurers they are the silent hands that often do trail maintenance, remove downed tree limbs and run off the few bad guys down here.

These men thrive in the art of making a horse as light and flexible to the rider's soft touch, as is said today, to work as one.  The history, the horsemanship, the gear, the land, the lifestyle remains part of our heritage and is remembered, practiced and celebrated at various rodeos, gatherings and western shows throughout Texas each year. These events showcase the talents of the culture upon which Texas bases so much of itself. Rare to see it in the Texas wildscape though, in the whole where it was first refined.

The Texas Cowboy-Vaquero culture was inherited from the Spanish cavalry, who adopted it from the Moors which is thought to have come from Asia, through Egypt, across the deserts of North Africa into Spain, spreading across the seas into North and South America.

When the Spanish introduced horses and cattle to the Americas, large haciendas were established in New Spain. This created a demand for skilled men to rope, ride, control, and protect the animals. The vaquero was born. The word "vaquero" came from the word vaca, the Spanish word for cow. Cowboys often referred to themselves as buckaroos. In Spanish, the "v" is pronounced like a "b," so vaquero may have evolved into bukero, then finally buckaroo. Charro is another Spanish term that means expert horseman or cowboy. Charro became the cultural construction of maleness to the Spanish settlers. Now a charro is more of a rodeo show style and not practiced as religion in the wild.

At the time 16th Century Texas was a vast yet-to-be discovered land. Infrequent expeditions by the Spanish to explore the Texas interior by expedition made brief contacts with coastal Native American tribes eventually led them to Spanish missionaries who brought horses, cattle and mules to the area.



The background of the vaqueros, the technique, tradition and lore has become legendary around the world. The Tex-Mex vaquero history is one of special significance for it was the beginning of the working cowboy we know today. It is the saga of the early Spanish and Mexican horsemen of Northern Mexico and South Texas.   

The intent was to establish a colony with missions governed by Spanish Catholic Dominicans, Jesuits, and Franciscan priests. Of course, much history is documented from that point on as our Texas heritage was forming. During that time the massive herds of free roaming longhorn, cattle, horses, livestock that grazed the lush land were under the mounted vaquero's watchful eye, skilled in the use of the rawhide riata for sorting, roping to brand, ear mark or when necessary slaughter.


Horses arrived in 1519 in Mexico with Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes, and cattle soon followed in 1521 with Gregorio de Villalobos. As expeditions moved north transplanting the cattle and horses to the Southwest, the man working the cattle, or the vaquero, became the man on horseback who contributed many of the skills and much of the equipment and rodeo terminology used by the American cowboy. Riding, roping, and branding, along with the rope, saddle, spurs, chaps, and even the word rodeo "roundup" are some of the contributions.

Some areas, particularly in deep South Texas, had the environment conducive to the proliferation of stray cattle and horses. By the 1600s and 1700s Spanish-Mexican settlements and ranches were started in areas around the lower Rio Grande Valley.

Cattle are too fast for unmounted herders and humans on foot do not have the endurance to keep up with cattle on open ranges. Further more cattle herders need some means to stop and control individual animals.  The method developed in Mexico for controlling individual animals is lassoing them with a lariat which is secured to the horn of a saddle. This system seems so simple and effective that it is difficult to imagine any other system being used. But it took many decades if not a century or so for this system to be perfected in Mexico.

The vaquero culture developed into a fine art in Texas through the Spanish mission era by the first the Spanish, then followed by Indians, Mexicans, Freedmen and European Settlers - men who upheld the vaquero traditions as in the centerfire saddle, rawhide riata and hackmore.

Many European settlers had a vast knowledge of cattle raising and production in Northern European pastures but were at a loss in the near unlimited free range of Texas. Before the advent of barbed wire and fencing of the range, settlers rapidly adopted the skills of the vaquero and set to tending herd like the Spanish before them. A pure North American invention, the Texas Cowboy further refined the Vaquero with a western style hat, six shot pistol and easier riding saddle for long hours on a horse.

The influx of farmers, immigrants, fences, trains, and small towns contributed to the demise of the cowboy life. Plowing killed off the range, barbed wire limited access to grass and water, and thousands of hands lost jobs when it became cheaper to ship cattle to market by rail. The stories of this lifestyle became legend and a fabric of our very life today as Texans.

The vaquero style still remains in practice today although some variations have been introduced, but many followers hold tight to the foundations of horsemanship in which the Texas vaquero later called the cowboy excelled.

Manuel, Jesus and Junior

Horses prefer the soft surface to the concrete whenever possible

The horseback riding style in the photos seen here are of a traditional Mexican style that taps the very roots of early cowboy life. When the Spanish settled present day Mexico, the vast open plains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountainous interior were instantly seen as prime cattle country. With near year round grass growth for feed, this open plain area was quickly populated with cattle.

Manuel and his kids out riding the Great Trinity Forest in 2010

Manuel Sanches

Most notable among the vaqueros on the Trinity is a friend named Manuel. We have been riding down here in Joppa before the concrete went in, back when the trails were old rustic gravel roads that served fish camps around Lemmon Lake. He is seen above leading his kids on a trail ride in 2010. Manuel hails from that same area of Mexico where the Spanish first raised cattle five centuries ago.

Manuel usually has children in tow teaching horsemanship as he goes through the woods. He is from a part of Mexico where the old ways of cowboy life in North America first started.


Like many, he keeps a "Rancho" in South Dallas. These are not formal ranches but more like small farms where horses can pasture, a good size vegetable crop can be grown and some horse trailers kept. Works out very well and for someone with a career during the week, makes for a great weekend getaway in his free time.

Wearing his trademark half chaps and festooned with various rope and even a blanket he is always ready for whatever awaits him deep in the woods.



Many would see the riding style on display here as trick riding, a way to show off the way a rider can move a horse.

The truth is, that as we head for the deep privet and heavy timbered woods nearby, that artistic license on exhibition by way of open concrete becomes a very necessary skillset.

At left is Junior, one of Manuel's family members riding Chapulín. This particular horse is the same as that in the 2010 photos taken down here.

Chapulín

Much like the parody tv super hero this horse's name translates into a kind of grasshopper. Chapulín is a smart horse, slightly stubborn and one of the best mounts on the river for a young person to ride.
Manuel is all about teaching the fine touch of the horse and teaching his family members the subtle art of riding. Wish I had some good photos of how this works in heavy brush which happened right after the photo below was taken. It's all about letting the horse doing what it feels comfortable with.

Manuel and Junior

Jesus on his horse Lucero

Jesus is another familiar face in the Great Trinity Forest. He grew up in a ranching family in the mountains above Monterrey.

He is probably the flashiest rider of the dozen others who ride here. A real expert in the saddle. Speaking of saddles, he has some of the best looking saddles, saddle blankets and ropes I have seen.

Those lariats and ropes have removed more deadfall off the trails here than any work crew the city ever hired.

The horse he is riding in the photos this day, is named Lucero, after the famous Spanish singer.

He is often seen here out riding with his wife, who rides a fast quarter horse named Comanche.









Jesus wife is a fan of picking pecans in the fall down here. Sprinkled among the trees bearing small native pecans are a grove of paper shell pecan bearing trees that kick out nuts the size of chicken eggs. One of his horses is seen above, hitched to a pecan near the Trinity Forest Trail Bridge last year.

Jesus is seen at left, from a photo dated October 2011 when Phase II of the Trinity Forest Trail was just about to get a matrix of rebar thrown on it. It was a last hoorah of a ride for all of us before the concrete went in.

The last big ride on the soft surface trail before it was paved

Floral Farms and the Pig Park Rodeo

The rodeo tradition and history is intertwined with the land here too. Still known to many as the Pig Park Rodeo the old dilapidated structures that once held amateur rodeo events still stands today. Barely.

Pig Rodeo Site

Hashed out of a piece of land between the Union Pacific tracks and the Trinity in the late 1940s, the area has always been on the far fringes of Dallas. It has more in common with rural country living than downtown just a few miles up the road. This area is called Floral Farms after the small flower growing operations here and abundance of native wildflowers every spring.

Floral Farms afforded African American residents a community where they could live in a semi-rural setting and be away from the confines of the highly segregated urban areas at that time. The city eventually bought the homeowners out on a voluntary basis in the 1970s.

Red Shouldered Hawk

Unlike Joppa a mile to the north, that sits on a high piece of ground, Floral Farms sits not much higher than the river itself making it potentially flood prone. The removal of homes was done in a half-hearted manner so even 40 years later some structures still stand. Outhouses, sheds and foundations are still visible.


Above is what is left of the Joppa Rodeo Arena. A dilapidated fence marks the boundary of the old arena. In the background are sets of old wooden pens to hold animals used in the rodeo.


The concentric ring you see in the arena is used by current horseback riders for training. Under the weeds, the pillow soft sandy loam  of the arena still exists making an ideal place to train a horse.

Old timers in Joppa and far South Dallas speak fondly of the old rodeo here. In the heyday it was a great community gathering place and the sort of locale where much fun was to be had on a Saturday night.

Old rodeo arena

Great Trinity Forest Trail
This concrete trail built in two phases sits inside the Joppa Preserve and is part of the Dallas County Open Space Project. Originally this land was part of the Millermore Plantation. The original Miller cabin and the later Greek revival Millermore Mansion are now preserved at Old City Park in Dallas. The area later became known as Joppa and Floral Farms. Both were unincorporated freedman's communities for many decades without access to running water and city services.

The paved trail  now reaches 4.1 miles to connect the Loop 12 Boat Ramp with the Trinity River Audubon Center. The centerpiece of the paved trail here is a multi-million dollar bike bridge that spans the Trinity River just southeast of the Trinity River Audubon Center.

2006

2006

Most of the concrete down here was one a mighty fine gravel road that was a great all weather surface with decades of well stabilized ballast in place. Many thought that leaving it as a soft surface path rather than concrete would have been a better choice, to keep the rustic feel of the place.

2011

2011

That changed in 2011 with the construction of Phase II. The three photos here are all taken in the same spot spanning seven years.

2013

2013

 Trinity Trail Bridge Site

2010

A few years ago, the site of the Trinity Trail Bridge was the most remote part of Dallas. Fixed on an inverted U shape bend in the Trinity, the bridge site sits a few hundred yards upstream of the mouth with Elam Creek. Still remains one of the quietest places in the city.

2013

Bobcat cub

Bobcat cub left, adult bobcat right October 2013

Wildlife is pretty easy to spot down here if one knows where to look. Deer, coyotes and bobcats are a frequent sight.


The Great Trinity Forest is still one of those places that without folks minding their manners becomes a rather lawless part of the county.

Blocking in illegal ATV riders on the Trinity Forest Trail

With only a sign or two noting no motorized vehicle access, many abuse the privilege of visiting the woods by taking atvs, 4x4s and passenger vehicles on the concrete trail and beyond.

Hard to get the message across. The folks on the ATVs above were limited in speed only by the governors on their engine at 20mph or so. They told us that they were headed to the Audubon Center trails, which at that late hour on a weekend were closed many hours ago.

At a million dollars a mile in construction costs, sure seems silly not to put up some anti-vehicle posts called bollards and slap some hefty fines on those who tear up the woods with their vehicles. As the city continues it's love affair with building trails of concrete one would hope that the stern message of no motorized vehicles and law enforcement of ordinances would accompany construction.

It was the combustion engine, barbed wire and high speed transportation that drove the horse out of the everyday Texas vernacular. Let's not let that happen down here on the Trinity, one of the last great authentic Texan spots left.

The former Jenkins Farm as it looked during tree clearing for the future Texas Horse Park. Pictured are Sean Fitzgerald with the orange helmet and Tim Dalbey who are extracting tree trunk samples from a huge downed Post Oak estimated to be over 150+ years old

The rough edged realities of progress come quick to large construction sites. What man built and has stood for a century is reduced to scrap over the course of an afternoon. What nature took centuries to grow falls in the fraction of that. It's a dramatic farewell that bulldozers often orchestrate, a permanent change of landscape. Caught in the middle of all that are unseen gems of history that at some point will help Dallasites understand not just the past but where we are headed in the future.

In 1846 Sam Houston gave a speech on the floor of the United States Senate entitled A Tribute To The Indians "As a race they have withered from the land, Their arrows are broken, and their springs dried up;......Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains and wonder to what manner of person they belonged."

Dallas is fortunate to have a handful of very dedicated private citizens who fit the bill of what Sam Houston spoke of so long ago. Nowhere does his speech ring more true than the woods surrounding Big Spring in the Great Trinity Forest. The Yeoman's work here over the last year to discover the centuries of history and the combined preservation efforts will have a far reaching legacy for generations to come.

Through some very hard work Big Spring will become an official Dallas Landmark. Believed to be the first natural landmark in the City of Dallas, landmark designation is traditionally given to buildings, places and physical things. This new landmark, still in just the formative infancy of the process will be unique in what it represents, a rare natural spot ripe with the complete story of Texas at ones feet.

The story and the people involved in the awareness and preservation is rather remarkable and maybe someday once the dust settles some the background of how this came to be will be shared to a greater extent. As of this writing much is still in Square One with regards to how it will all shake out, written on bar napkins, sketched into dirt drawings with a stick and what amounts to over a thousand emails.

Part of that hard work includes some rather obscure data collection and preservation of tree slices from an old Post Oak trunk and a continuing cataloging of plant species around Big Spring.

The dying Post Oak at 811 Pemberton Hill Road as it looked in June 2012

For as long as there has been a Dallas, a Post Oak tree has commanded the high terrace of the Trinity River Valley in Pleasant Grove. From the spot one can see west clear to Oak Cliff,The VA Hospital, Fair Park and Downtown Dallas some miles distant.

The tree is most likely more than 150 years old and witnessed the first surveyors, Texan explorers, pioneers and settlement of this very spot. The Beemans, Bryans, Pembertons, Kirbys, Jenkins, Cantrells and Jassos made a living under this tree as it served as part of their farm and ranching operations over the better part of two centuries.

The rainfall, the weather, the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter that all those families saw over the last two hundred years are recorded in the tree trunk of that old tree.

Post Oaks Quercus stellata are extremely sensitive to root disturbance and lack of oxygen in the root zone, so construction activities that compact the soil, pave over the roots, or change the soil grade can kill existing trees. Chemical contamination of the soil and poor care will slowly kill even the strongest of trees. Roy Appleton of the Dallas Morning News has recently written an article that discusses some of the issue, it serves as a great primer to some of the underlying concerns:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/best-southwest/headlines/20130930-responsibility-for-dump-site-at-horse-property-adds-to-dispute.ece

The area near the old Post Oak was scraped as part of the remediation process and with it went the old Post Oak. Tim Dalbey got word that the tree would be removed from the property entirely in just a couple days so the race was on to get some priceless tree ring "cookies" from the trunk.


The work to remove tree slices first began at the conclusion of a plant survey at Big Spring(results are below, scroll down for an ever growing list). Those attending were able to speak with construction supervisors about removing slices, got the OK and were given word on that Friday that they only had till Monday at dawn to get the tree parts.

The work was supervised by Geo-Marine, the city archeology contractor that coming late Sunday afternoon. The work was started that Friday by Billy Ray Pemberton with his trusty chainsaw.

Followup work that Sunday was completed by Tim Dalbey and Sean Fitzgerald. Sean in addition to being great with a chainsaw is also the very best photographer of the Trinity River, bar none. http://seanfitzgerald.com/ showcases much of what he sees on the river.

Sean Fitzgerald at Lemmon Lake in his floating blind with Roseate Spoonbills flying over him, July 2012

His stunning images dominate public places around town, in print and on the City of Dallas website. 

Tim Dalbey and Sean Fitzgerald

Tim Dalbey has slices of one other Post Oak tree from this same part of town that date back to when the Beeman family first settled the land in the 1840s. Using a scientific method called dendochronology one can first sand the surface of the slice and painstakingly measure and record each growing year.



Growth rings, also referred to as tree rings or annual rings, can be seen in a horizontal cross section cut through the trunk of a tree. Growth rings are the result of new growth in the vascular cambium, a layer of cells near the bark that is classified as a lateral meristem. This growth in diameter is known as secondary growth. Visible rings result from the change in growth speed through the seasons of the year, thus one ring usually marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree.

Many trees make one growth ring each year, with the newest adjacent to the bark. For the entire period of a tree's life, a year-by-year record or ring pattern is formed that reflects the climatic conditions in which the tree grew. Adequate moisture and a long growing season result in a wide ring. A drought year may result in a very narrow one. Alternating poor and favorable conditions, such as mid summer droughts, can result in several rings forming in a given year.

Success! A great clean slice from the old Post Oak trunk

Since Dr Dalbey has two sections from different trees of the same species, one interesting idea will be to cross-reference the data. It should tell what the environment, weather, rainfall and growing seasons were like in this part of North Texas going back several centuries. The slices extracted here are near perfect for such work, free from rot and splitting.



I would not hazard a guess to the absolute age or conclusions that will be drawn from the data. Post oaks can often kick out a false ring when a growing season stops and restarts during the same year.

The slices measured 38 inches or so in diameter, almost too large for any conventional chain saw one would have at home.

Bill Pemberton with a tree slice he started on and Sean finished

Two slices in all were extracted. One was taken by Tim for his dendrochronology work, the other was brought over to the Pemberton home where it was given to Mr Billy Ray Pemberton. His family's slice was sawed by him to a large extent and finished off a couple days later by Sean Fitzgerald.

Very difficult and hard work. So much of it is down here. The reward though is one that few get to experience. Only a handful of folk have ever seen the sunset from the backyard of the Pembertons. A sunset view of many miles to the west. Gotta be a special person to command a sunset audience there. A priceless experience.


The Ongoing Plant Surveys at Big Spring

High School Senior Alexander Neal and Historian MC Toyer discussing the history of Big Spring among the fall wildflowers in the Big Spring pasture, October 2013. Alexander is a student at Townview Magnet and is working on a Senior thesis about preservation and the aspects of the Trinity River Project

The stark contrast of landscapes between the construction next door at the Horse Park and that of the serene Big Spring landscape are readily apparent in the fall of 2013. The late summer and early fall rains have contributed to a new growth of second crop wildflowers in the pasture here that serves as a bio-buffer between the construction and the fragile Big Spring site.

Indian Blanket wildflower growing at the "topographic high" area of the Big Spring meadow. The exact spot where this wildflower is growing is known as 41DL72 a pre-historic Native American site, October 2013

Plant surveys are an important part of understanding the overall environment here. Quarterly surveys have begun here in 2013 which over time hope to catalog the wide and diverse plant and animal life of Big Spring and the surrounding area that will become a future city landmark.

Master Naturalist Jim Varnum, Master Naturalist Jim Flood and Geo-archeologist Dr Tim Dalbey taking notes on a plant species not seen before on previous visits

The plant survey work is led by the local Master Naturalist chapter here in North Texas. The Master Naturalist Program in Texas is a certification process through a Texas Parks and Wildlife program. More information can be found on their website http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/master_naturalist/

One of the more well known and whom many regard as the foremost expert Master Naturalist is Jim Varnum. Pictured above in the red checkered shirt. In addition to his near encyclopedic knowledge of plants, he runs one of the best aggregated online newsletters in Texas called Jim's This and That. A worthwhile link to bookmark as he condenses what is going on around North Texas on a weekly basis. If you ever needed to find something to do in a pinch some weekend outdoors, he always has great suggestions and great insight.

The other Jim, Jim Flood, seen in the middle of the photo, is the trail steward of the Buckeye Trail just across White Rock Creek from Big Spring. His website http://www.texasbuckeyetrail.org/ has contact information about guided hikes and workdays on the Buckeye Trail.

Below is the ever growing and compiled list of flora seen at Big Spring in visits. The list was compiled in spreadsheet format by Jim Varnum. It includes plants through the end of September and number 188 species. An additional 15 new species were documented in mid-October and are not on the list. This list has been previously shared with the City of Dallas office of Trinity River Watershed Management.

Equisetum hyemale subsp. affine	Tall scouring rush	Hrstls	Equisetaceae
Juniperus virginiana	Eastern red cedar	Tree	Cupressaceae
Dicliptera brachiata	False mint	Forb	Acanthaceae
Ruellia humilis	Low reullia, Wild petunia	Forb	Acanthaceae
Ruellia strepens	Smooth ruellia	Forb	Acanthaceae
Acer negundo var. negundo?	Box elder	Tree	Aceraceae -> Sapindaceae
Amaranthus hybridus	Green amaranth	Forb	Amaranthaceae
Amaranthus tuberculatus (PLANTS db) (OLD A. rudis)	Water hemp	Forb	Amaranthaceae
Rhus lanceolata	Prairie sumac	Tree	Anacardiaceae
Toxicodendron radicans subsp. ?	Poison ivy	All	Anacardiaceae
Chaerophyllum tainturieri	Chervil	Forb	Apiaceae
Daucus carota	Wild carrot	Forb	Apiaceae
Hydrocotyle sp. (peltate)	? Pennywort	Forb	Apiaceae -> Araliaceae
Torilis arvensis	Hedge parsley, Beggar’s lice	Forb	Apiaceae
Ilex decidua	Possumhaw holly	Tree	Aquifoliaceae
Asclepias viridis	Green milkweed	Forb	Asclepiadaceae → Apocynaceae
Cynanchum laeve	Bluevine	Forb	Asclepiadaceae → Apocynaceae
Matelea gonocarpos	Anglepod	Vine	Asclepiadaceae → Apocynaceae
Ambrosia artemisiifolia	Little ragweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Ambrosia psilostachya	Western ragweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Ambrosia trifida var. texana	Giant ragweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Symphyotrichum drummondii var. texanum (OLD Aster drummondii var. texanus)	Texas aster	Forb	Asteraceae
Symphyotrichum ericoides var. = (OLD Aster ericoides)	Heath aster (white)	Forb	Asteraceae
Symphyotrichum lateriflorum var. = ? (OLD Aster lateriflorus)	Calico aster	Forb	Asteraceae
Symphyotrichum divaricatum (OLD Aster subulatus var. ligulatus)	Fall aster (white)	Forb	Asteraceae
Calyptocarpus vialis	Straggler daisy, Horseherb	Forb	Asteraceae
Cirsium altissimum	Iowa thistle	Forb	Asteraceae
Cirsium engelmannii	Blackland thistle	Forb	Asteraceae
Conyza canadensis var. =	Horseweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Dracopis amplexicaulis	Clasping-leaf coneflower	Forb	Asteraceae
Eclipta prostrata	Pieplant	Forb	Asteraceae
Gaillardia pulchella	Firewheel, Indian blanket	Forb	Asteraceae
Amphiachyris dracunculoides (OLD Gutierrezia dracunculoides)	Broomweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Helenium amarum var. =	Sneezeweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Heterotheca subaxillaris	Camphor daisy	Forb	Asteraceae
Iva annua	Marsh-elder, Sumpweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Lactuca serriola	Prickly lettuce	Forb	Asteraceae
Mikania scandens	Climbing hemp-weed	Vine	Asteraceae
Packera tampicana	Great plains ragwort	Forb	Asteraceae
Parthenium hysterophorus	False ragweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Pluchea odorata	Camphorweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Rudbeckia hirta var. pulcherrima	Black-eyed susan	Forb	Asteraceae
Solidago gigantea - tall, lin lvs, glab stem	Tall goldenrod	Forb	Asteraceae
Vernonia baldwinii	Western ironweed	Forb	Asteraceae
Bignonia capreolata	Cross-vine	Vine	Bignoniaceae
Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum
Lonicera japonica	Japanese honeysuckle	Vine	Caprifoliaceae
Dichondra carolinensis	Dichondra	Forb	Convolvulaceae
Convolvulus arvensis	Bindweed	Vine	Convolvulaceae
Convolvulus equitans	Texas bindweed	Vine	Convolvulaceae
Ipomoea cordatotriloba var. ???	Morning-glory	Vine	Convolvulaceae
Ipomoea lacunosa	White morning-glory	Vine	Convolvulaceae
Ipomoea wrightii	Wright’s morning-glory	Vine	Convolvulaceae
Melothria pendula	Meloncito, Speckled gourd	Vine	Cucurbitaceae
Acalypha ostryifolia	Hop-hornbeam copperleaf	Forb	Euphorbiaceae
Croton monanthogynus	Prairie tea	Forb	Euphorbiaceae
Poinsettia dentata (OLD Euphorbia dentata)	Toothed spurge	Forb	Euphorbiaceae
Triadica sebifera (OLD Sapium sebiferum)	Chinese tallow tree	Tree	Euphorbiaceae
Tragia ramosa	Noseburn	Forb	Euphorbiaceae
Chamaecrista fasciculata	Partridge pea	Forb	Fabaceae
Desmanthus illinoensis	Illinois bundleflower	Forb	Fabaceae
Desmanthus leptolobus	Prairie bundleflower	Forb	Fabaceae
Desmodium paniculatum	Panicled tick trefoil	Forb	Fabaceae
Gleditsia triacanthos	Honey locust	Tree	Fabaceae
Indigofera miniata var. leptosepala	Scarlet pea	Forb	Fabaceae
Lathyrus hirsutus	Singletary Pea	Forb	Fabaceae
Prosopis glandulosa	Honey mesquite	Tree	Fabaceae
Sesbania herbacea	Coffee bean	Forb	Fabaceae
Quercus macrocarpa	Bur oak	Tree	Fagaceae
Quercus shumardii	Shumard red oak	Tree	Fagaceae
Carya illinoinensis	Pecan	Tree	Juglandaceae
Juglans nigra	Black walnut	Tree	Juglandaceae
Monarda citriodora	Lemon mint	Forb	Lamiaceae
Monarda punctata ssp. = var. intermedia (OLD Monarda punctata var. intermedia)	Spotted beebalm	Forb	Lamiaceae
Teucrium canadense	American germander	Forb	Lamiaceae
Lythrum alataum var. lanceolatum	Lance-leaf loosestrife	Forb	Lythraceae
Callirhoe involucrata var. ?	Spreading winecup	Forb	Malvaceae
Hibiscus laevis	Rose-mallow	Forb	Malvaceae
Modiola caroliniana	Carolina modiola	Forb	Malvaceae
Sida rhombifolia	Axocatzin	Forb	Malvaceae
Melia azedarach	China-berry	Tree	Meliaceae
Cocculus carolinus	Carolina snailseed	Vine	Menispermaceae
Broussonetia papyrifera	Paper-mulberry	Tree	Moraceae
Maclura pomifera	Osage orange, Horse apple	Tree	Moraceae
Morus alba	White mulberry	Tree	Moraceae
Morus rubra	Red mulberry	Tree	Moraceae
Boerhavia diffusa (coccinea)	Scarlet spiderling	Vine	Nyctaginaceae
Forestiera acuminata	Swanp-privet	Shrub	Oleaceae
Fraxinus texensis	Texas white ash	Tree	Oleaceae
Ligustrum japonicum	Wax-leaf ligustrum	Shrub	Oleaceae
Ligustrum quihoui	Quihoui’s privet	Shrub	Oleaceae
Ligustrum sessile fruit
Ligustrum sinense	Chinese privet	Shrub	Oleaceae
Oenothera curtiflora (OLD Gaura mollis (OLD Gaura parviflora))	Lizard-tail gaura	Forb	Onagraceae
Oenothera suffulta (OLD Gaura suffulta)	Kisses	Forb	Onagraceae
Ludwigia octovalvis	Shrubby water-primrose, Narrow-leaf w-p	Forb	Onagraceae
Ludwigia peploides	Water-primrose	Aqua	Onagraceae
Oenothera rhombipetala	Four-point evening-primrose	Forb	Onagraceae
Oenothera speciosa	Showy evening-primrose, Buttercup	Forb	Onagraceae
Oxalis stricta	Oxalis, Yellow wood-sorrel	Forb	Oxalidaceae
Passiflora incarnata	Passion-flower	Vine	Passifloraceae
Passiflora lutea	Yellow passion-flower	Vine	Passifloraceae
Rivina humilis	Pigeon-berry	Forb	Phytolaccaceae
Polygonum aviculare	Prostrate knotweed	Forb	Polygonaceae
Polygonum hydropiperoides (white)	Swamp smartweed	Forb	Polygonaceae
Polygonum pensylvanicum (pink)	Water smartweed	Forb	Polygonaceae
Rumex crispus	Curly dock	Forb	Polygonaceae
Rumex pulcher	Fiddle dock	Forb	Polygonaceae
Anemone berlandieri	Anemone, Windflower	Forb	Ranunculaceae
Clematis pitcheri	Leather-flower	Vine	Ranunculaceae
Berchemia scandens	Rattan-vine	Vine	Rhamnaceae
Geum canadense var. camporum	White avens, Geum	Forb	Rosaceae
Prunus mexicana	Mexican plum	Tree	Rosaceae
Pyrus calleryana	Bradford pear	Tree	Rosaceae
Rubus trivialis	Southern dewberry	Forb	Rosaceae
Cephalanthus occidentalis	Buttonbush	Tree	Rubiaceae
Diodia virginiana (white)	Virginia buttonweed	Forb	Rubiaceae
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis	Hercules’-club, Prickly ash, Toothache tree	Tree	Rutaceae
Populus deltoides subsp. =	Eastern cottonwood	Tree	Salicaceae
Salix nigra	Black willow	Tree	Salicaceae
Cardiospermum halicacabum	Balloon vine	Vine	Sapindaceae
Sapindus saponaria var. drummondii	Western soapberry	Tree	Sapindaceae
Agalinis heterophylla - pedicel ≤ 4 mm	Prairie agalinis	Forb	Scrophulariaceae / Orobanchaceae
Castilleja indivisa	Texas paintbrush	Forb	Scrophulariaceae / Orobanchaceae
Ailanthus altissima	Tree-of-heaven	Tree	Simaroubaceae
Physalis cinerascens	Ground-cherry	Forb	Solanaceae
Physalis turbinata	Thicket ground-cherry	Forb	Solanaceae
Solanum dimidiatum	Horse-nettle	Forb	Solanaceae
Solanum elaeagnifolium	Sliver-leaf nightshade, Trompillo	Forb	Solanaceae
Solanum rostratum	Buffalo bur	Forb	Solanaceae
Celtis laevigata var. =	Hackberry, Sugarberry	Tree	Ulmaceae -> Cannabaceae
Ulmus americana	American elm	Tree	Ulmaceae
Ulmus crassifolia	Cedar elm	Tree	Ulmaceae
Boehmeria cylindrica	Small-spike false-nettle	Forb	Urticaceae
Callicarpa americana	American beauty-berry	Shrub	Verbenaceae
Glandularia bipinnatifida	Prairie verbena	Forb	Verbenaceae
Lantana urticoides	Texas lantana	Shrub	Verbenaceae
Phyla lanceolata (OLD Lippia lanceolata)	Lance-leaf frogfruit	Forb	Verbenaceae
Phyla nodiflora (OLD Lippia nodiflora)	Texas frog-fruit	Forb	Verbenaceae
Verbena brasiliensis	Brazilian verbena	Forb	Verbenaceae
Verbena halei	Texas vervain	Forb	Verbenaceae
Viola missouriensis	Missouri violet	Forb	Violaceae
Phoradendron tomentosum	Mistletoe	Para	Viscaceae
Ampelopsis arborea	Peppervine	Vine	Vitaceae
Ampelopsis cordata	Heart-leaf ampelopsis	Vine	Vitaceae
Cissus trifoliata (OLD Cissus incisa)	Cowitch	Vine	Vitaceae
Parthenocissus quinquefolia	Virginia creeper	Vine	Vitaceae
Vitis cinerea var. =	Summer grape, Swet grape	Vine	Vitaceae
Vitis mustangensis	Mustang grape	Vine	Vitaceae
Tribulus terrestris	Goat-head (yellow)	Forb	Zygophyllaceae
Sagittaria graminea	Grassy arrowhead	Mom	Alismataceae
Sagittaria latifolia	Common arrowhead	Mono	Alismataceae
Sagittaria platyphylla	Delta arrowhead	Mono	Alismataceae
Commelina erecta var. =	Dayflower	Mono	Commelinaceae
Carex sp.	thin, light green leaves	Mono	Cyperaceae
Carex sp.	broader, dark leaves	Mono	Cyperaceae
Carex cherokeensis	Cherokee caric sedge	Sedge	Cyperaceae
Carex crus-corvi	Crow-foot caric sedge	Sedge	Cyperaceae
Cyperus erythrorhizos (red roots) (BO)	Red-root flat-sedge	Sedge	Cyperaceae
Cyperus retroflexus	One-flower flat-sedge	Sedge	Cyperaceae
Cyperis sp.
Iris sp.	Flag	Mono	Iridaceae
Lemna sp.	? duckweed	Mono	Lemnaceae -> Araceae
Juncus torreyi	Torrey’s rush	Mono	Juncaceae
Zephyranthes chlorosolen (former Cooperia drummondii)	Rain lily	Mono	Liliaceae -> Amaryllidaceae
Aegilops cylindrica	Jointed goat grass	Grass	Poaceae
Bothriochloa ischaemum var. songarica	King Ranch bluestem	Grass	Poaceae
Bothriochloa laguroides subsp. torreyana	Silver bluestem	Grass	Poaceae
Cenchrus spinifex	Sand-bur	Grass	Poaceae
Coelorachis cylindrica	Carolina joint-tail	Grass	Poaceae
Cynodon dactylon	Bermuda grass	Grass	Poaceae
Dactylis glomerata	Orchard grass	Grass	Poaceae
Echinochloa sp.		Grass	Poaceae
Echinochloa muricata var. =	a barnyard grass, NCN	Grass	Poaceae
Elymus canadensis	Canada wildrye	Grass	Poaceae
Elymus virginicus	Virginia wildrye	Grass	Poaceae
Panicum virgatum	Switchgrass	Grass	Poaceae
Paspalum notatum var. latiflorum	Bahia grass	Grass	Poaceae
Paspalum dilitatum	Dallis grass	Grass	Poaceae
Polypogon monspeliensis	Rabbitfoot grass	Grass	Poaceae
Phalaris caroliniana	Carolina canarygrass	Grass	Poaceae
Setaria parviflora	Knot-root bristlegrass	Grass	Poaceae
Sorghastrum nutans	Yellow Indian grass	Grass	Poaceae
Sorghum halepense	Johnson grass	Grass	Poaceae
Tridens flavus	Purpletop	Grass	Poaceae
Potamogeton nodosus	Long-leaf pondweed	Aqua	Potamogetonaceae
Smilax bona-nox	Catbrier	Vine	Smilacaceae
Typha domingensis	Narrow-leaf cat-tail	Aqua	Typhaceae

A dozen feral pigs crossing a hike and bike trail in Dallas, Texas Trinity River Trail October 2013

The vast expanse of territory inside the boundaries of Texas contains some of the most diverse environments found anywhere in the world. From the picturesque canyons of the North to the fertile alluvial areas along the South coast, the country vastly changes in every form of geology, ecology and habitat known to man. The constant in all of this, from the rugged mountains of Big Bend to the far sandy beaches of the Sabine are an ever expanding menace to the state, the wily feral pig.

Once the plague of rural farmers and ranchers, feral pigs have started a slow but continual march into suburban and even urban areas in the state. Dallas is one such city, with the Trinity River serving as a natural wildlife corridor which neatly bisects the metropolis. The river greenspace serves as a wildlife highway, allowing near unrestricted access for pigs to meander freely from one zip code to the next along the floodplain.

Were it not for the destruction that feral pigs cause here in Texas, the sight of a dozen feral pigs crossing Dallas newest concrete bike path would be quite amusing. For those not familiar with feral hogs it would be a chance to laugh and joke about the critters as they mosey through the woods unaware of nearby humans.

The reality is that the damage they can unleash is monsterous. Not just costly to repair in terms of dollars, the unseen damage is that to the native plants and animals that call the Trinity River home. A single pig family can damage the Trinity River Forest in ways that can take decades for nature to repair.

It's rather unfortunate that pop culture has sensationalized feral pigs into some super-strong zombie beast that will kill your pets and burn your house down. It's not that way at all. It has become commonplace that most visits to the Trinity River that I will have hog encounters. Not a big deal for me, nor should it be a big deal for anyone reading this. They are an unnatural invasive species of the woods not man-eating monsters. If one were claiming to having been attacked by pigs or having ones pants shredded or feeling the need to carry a pistol in your waistband for protection, well, you'd be labeled a fool. You'd be a laughing stock. A legend in your own mind.

Feral Pigs (Sus scrofa)

Feral pigs, also known as wild hogs, wild boar or feral swine are an Old World species and are not native to the Americas. The first wild pigs in the United States originated solely from domestic stock brought to North America by early European explorers and settlers. Many years later, Eurasian wild boar were introduced into parts of the United States for hunting purposes. In areas where domestic pigs and Eurasian wild boar were found together in the wild, interbreeding occurred. Today, many hybrid populations exist throughout the wild pig’s range.

A feral pig casually dining on a breakfast of plant roots in the Great Trinity Forest

Double stuffed colored oreo pig in Dallas October 2013

In Dallas especially, the feral pigs show the true inbreeding of former domesticated pig genetics and the "wild boar" species hunted on exotic game ranches. Dallas sees many "oreo" colored feral pigs the traditional trademark of a Hampshire domestic breed. Many generations previous to the current pigs, I would guess that domestic Hampshires were turned loose or escaped, then bred with Eurasian wild boar stock to give the rough color markings.




Feral Pig Hotspots According To The City of Dallas

Feral Pig Hotspots noted in the City of Dallas RFP for the 2013 Feral Hog Abatement Program

Feral pigs cannot fly. Nor can they navigate unscathed across the vast network of freeways and interlocking interstates inside the city limits of Dallas. How they move so freely around town is a secret of the animal world. The map above is from the 2013 Feral Hog Abatement RFP Packet. I have highlighted the hot spots noted in the packet. At a glance, the problem appears to be city wide and patterned to look like a wholesale invasion of immense size. Nothing could be further from the truth. The random dots are not random at all and make more sense if one overlays the wildlife corridors that exist in Dallas.

Major wildlife corridors for land base animals in Dallas, Texas

Wildlife corridors run from rural parts of Dallas County straight into the heart of Downtown. The width of the Trinity River Floodway coupled with a lack of development in the flood plain allows animals like deer, coyotes and pigs to travel up and down the Trinity River and tributaries with great ease. Few fences exist other than the Wastewater Treatment Plant. No matter, the animals can easily ford the river to go around the fences. Smaller wildlife corridors like Prairie Creek, Elam Creek, Turtle Creek and Bachman Creek can be used as avenues for travel too.

Lake Highlands- The outlier for the data is Lake Highlands and the random pig or two seen there. Some idiot is releasing pigs there. Someone who does not understand the topography of White Rock Lake, the Spillway fencing or inability of a feral pig to traverse the Arboretum, Forest Hills Neighborhood and Flag Pole Hill before safely making it to the confines of White Rock Creek north of Northwest Highway. Not possible. Pigs can go amazing places across all that area unnoticed and without hitting all the bottle necked corks in the terrain is simply not possible for a pig.

The Lake Highlands feral pigs are solitary and juveniles of small size. Pigs like that never leave their family unit called a "sounder". I have discussed this with a few wildlife biologists and they all think independently that someone is catching pigs elsewhere and releasing one or two at a time north of Northwest Highway and south of Walnut Hill. They need to be caught and thrown in jail.

White Rock Lake Feral Hog
Who dumped this pig? Not my video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH9CIDxeyhs

This juvenile feral pig is scared out of it's head near Mockingbird and Buckner, March 2013. It was killed by a vehicle impact at the corner of Northcliff and Buckner shortly after. Until recently I had only seen a cell phone photo of the feral pig, dead, photo taken by a Dallas Police Officer who showed it to me some days later. This was a feral pig that some human turned loose. Why they would do such a thing is unknown.

Dallas Trinity River Pig Problem

The real concern is what unchecked damage feral pigs are inflicting on the more fragile areas of what the city calls "The Great Trinity Forest". This 6,000-10,000 acre chunk of land(depending who you ask) has some real gems of native wildlife and rare plant species. Pigs love eating all of it which can cause some real trouble.
Feral pigs are “opportunistic omnivores,” meaning they’ll eat most anything. Using their extra-long snouts, flattened and strengthened on the end by a plate of cartilage, they can root as deep as three feet. They’ll devour or destroy whole field of sorghum, rice, wheat, soybeans, melons and other fruits, nuts, grass and hay.

A feral pig eating the seeds of Johnson Grass at Joppa Preserve

Calvert Collins of KDFW Fox 4 reports on the Trinity River pig problem in August:

In the Great Trinity Forest very little acreage is under cultivation to any extent but natural food plots and habitat destruction are a real issue. They compete with the native wildlife, including the white-tailed deer, squirrels, and waterfowl, for food and territory. Hogs may also change plant community composition favoring exotics through disturbance and seed dispersal. They may also affect soil structure, soil nutrients, input of nutrients to streams, and stream invertebrates via their rooting, defecation, and urination.  Hogs are very selective in their choice of foraging areas and will often pattern their rooting in certain spots.

High reeds acting as a shoreline screen for a photographer shooting birds at Joppa Preserve

The ongoing damage at Little Lemmon Lake, Joppa Preserve in the Fall of 2013 is a prime example of feral pig rooting damage. As seen below, the pigs have moved into the southeast corner of the lake and uprooted a large area of reeds and aquatic plants. The pigs are most likely after freshwater mussels, crawfish and grubs in addition to the tubers and roots that grow in this environment.

50x50 foot square area of damage to the lakeshore of Little Lemmon Lake October 2013

The reeds here serve as a breeding ground for tree frogs in the summers and provide a buffered screen for smaller animals to live. It will take years for the reeds to grow back from what was probably only an evening or two of rooting by feral pigs.


Algae blooms, oxygen depletion, bank erosion and soured water have all been attributed to the wallowing behavior of feral hogs, reducing the availability of water sources for livestock and wildlife.

Wallowing in either mud or dust is a common activity among mammals, birds and reptiles, but wallowing in mud is especially notable among pigs and piglike animals, as well as among large mega-herbivores with relatively hairless skin, such as elephants, rhino's, hippo's, water buffalos and warthogs.

Hog wallow at Little Lemmon Lake October 2013

The damage caused by feral swine is further magnified if the definition of damage is broadened to include the potential for transmission of diseases to domestic livestock. Feral swine can harbor a number of diseases transmissible to livestock and/or humans. The pork industry in the United States has nearly eradicated swine brucellosis and pseudorabies, but feral swine serve as a potential reservoir from which these diseases can be transmitted back to domestic stock.


The very real threat of feral hogs transmitting disease has prompted the future city owned Texas Horse Park to install a remote activated cell phone feral hog trap. Watch more about it here Wireless trapping technology at the Texas Horse Park

As demonstrated above, President of River Ranch Charities Wayne Kirk shows archeologist Tim Dalbey a smartphone app that controls the trap at the nearby Horse Park. The photo shows a 2am alert to an animal in the open stockade. In this case, the animal was a stray black lab dog and the trap door was not activated.


If You Encounter Feral Hogs

Feral pigs are as smart or smarter than many dog breeds. They have better noses and sense of smell than any dog and an adult can run 30mph for brief periods. They also have lackluster eyesight and poor hearing. Coupled with a complete focus on foraging for food 6 inches from their nose, they might not hear or see a human if approached from downwind.

Feral pigs are not much more than renegade livestock. The largest pigs are male boars and are solitary. As long as you give them some room and let them know you are present, they will leave the area. They are non-confrontational and will always get out of your sight very quickly.

Pig Sounder at Joppa Preserve

Female pigs known as sows and their babies run in family groups called sounders. Since a female sow can have two litters per calendar year, the sounder is usually multi-generational with a mother, maybe some of her siblings, newborn babies and then some from pigs from the previous litter which one could consider tween or teenaged feral pigs.

If you encounter a large family sounder, just be quiet, still and observe from a distance. As long as the sounder stays together they are not a danger to humans. Really, you could walk right up to them and nothing would happen other than a brief scattering of pigs.

Atmos pipeline crew on the Trinity River Trail October 2013

Always good conversation talking with others down on on the Trinity. Guys like work crews are a great source of information about area wildlife, animal encounters and eager to share odd happenings. No problems with pigs from these guys. Or mountain lions, chupacabras or bears for that matter.

Generally nocturnal on the Trinity River, pigs are most often seen in the hours around dawn or dusk. Be aware of your surroundings, enjoy yourself and you will never have a problem.

A Reminder: Hunting Is Illegal On City of Dallas Land,  Dallas County Nature Preserves and Parks

As far as I can tell, through phone calls, exhaustive open records requests and conversations with the Dallas Police Department, no one is allowed to hunt on City of Dallas property. No one. Beaten this
issue into one that has become a dead horse with the poaching here. The NO HUNTING issue applies to even lowly feral pigs which are not even game animals in the State of Texas. Unlawful discharge of a firearm and/or hunting with airguns, bows, spears, arrows, knives on the Trinity River in parks and public lands is strictly forbidden. Game Wardens are now very aware of the situation at hand here and are ready to enforce the law if needed.

If you want to hunt pigs, great! There are plenty of farms and ranches just down the river, many are only a 10-20 minute drive south of I-20 that will gladly let you hunt pigs, birds and even deer. The classified section of the Dallas Morning News and Craigslist have numerous hunting leases available if so inclined. http://www.dallasnews.com/classifieds/ and Craigslist Hunting Leases

Want to shoot guns on the river, great! Head over to the Elm Fork where a legal gun range will let you punch holes in paper, static targets and even clay pigeons for cheap. Their website http://www.elmfork.com/. Cheaper than a trip to jail, which is what shooting guns down in the Great Trinity Forest will get you.

American White Pelican at the Trinity River Wetland Cells, Dallas Texas, November 2013

As the days grow shorter and the temperature begins to drop the chain of wetland cells in South Dallas often host a random mix of feathered visitors from afar. The Trinity River makes a gradual bend here, a slow graceful bow as it picks up the mouth of White Rock Creek and several unnamed tributary creeks that drain the old communities of Joppa, Pemberton Hill and Fruitdale.

The mouths of these tributaries harbor ancient stands of trees for which no man ever saw any use. As a result those trees now tower far above the traditional second growth woods of ash and pioneer species that dominate much of what is called the Great Trinity Forest. Roosted by Wood Storks in the summers and Cormorants in the winter, these trees serve a vital function as wildlife habitat.

Roseate Spoonbills and Avocets, Little Lemmon Lake, November 2013

The steep channel of the Trinity and the muddy banks here are a mere sideshow attraction compared to the wildlife using the wetlands above. 

November is a transition month for wildlife in the Great Trinity Forest. The land based animals shed their noctural activity and can often be seen in broad daylight. The whitetail deer enter their customary fall rut, the feral pigs openly forage under the pecans and walnut trees along the river.

Most interesting though is the changing of the guard with the bird life on the river. Even if you are not ornthologically inclined, the random birds down here can often combine to stump novice and schooled scholar alike. The mix of Roseate Spoonbills from Central America with American White Pelicans from the Grand Tetons in the same pond together really shows Dallas as a brief crossroads of bird migration.

Pelicans landing at the base of Old Central Expressway Wetland Cell E; I-45 traffic seen beyond

It was a cold summer for the Northern Plains in the United States this year. Those cold temperatures delayed the nesting season of northern ducks by many weeks according to the experts. As a result, eggs were laid later than normal and duckings were slow on the calendar to mature. As of early November many of the over-wintering birds customary to the Chain of Wetlands are still filtering through the Great Plains.

Male Northern Shoveler in non-breeding plumage November 2013

In years past, the majority of male Northern Shovelers would already be sporting their robust breeding plumage. This year very few have their colors grown in. Nor are they in North Texas to any degree.

Pre-dawn light at the Chain of Wetlands, Freedman's town of Joppa to the left, Trinity River to the right. Cell F seen in photo

Dallas Floodway Extension and the Chain of Wetlands

The Chain of Wetlands is a $120 million dollar project funded with roughly $25 million in funds from the 1998 Trinity River Project bonds and $90 million dollars in federal funding.

The Lower Chain of Wetlands consist of ponds D, E, F and G. The ponds were constructed downstream of the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant and stretch from roughly I-45 to Loop 12.

E, F and G are shown at left with yellow lines representing dirt roads that criss-cross the cells.

In theory the wetlands are designed to reduce water surface height within the river bottom by adding over banking capacity along the west side of the Trinity River from the north end of the Cadillac Heights neighborhood to Loop 12.

Access to the Wetland Cells is easy. One can park at the Loop 12 Boat Ramp lot on Great Trinity Forest Way. Then walk up the embankment of the divided road, entering the Wetland Cells via the old Sleepy Hollow Country Club parking lot. Currently the gate is broken at the Sleepy Hollow entrance, the weld failed on the padlocking portion of the gate. Speaking with the city, they decided to allow access to the Wetlands via the large parking lot. Naturally, without barricades to prevent further access it has become a 4x4 offroad venue of sorts.


Many of the vehicles over the course of a few high speeds laps start as brand new vehicles and are quickly reduced to piles of junk, suggesting they are stolen. I could imagine very few owners of new GMC Yukons would drive 40-60mph down dirt roads and taking liberties with sending it airborne. Watch your back if you are on foot or on a mountain bike out there as the vehicles are not expecting foot traffic.

The other parking option is in the Freedman's Town of Joppa, where Fellows Lane dead-ends at a bar gate. Like the bar gate near Loop 12(Great Trinity Forest Way) this entrance has also been undermined to some degree. Though the gate is locked, one can navigate through the vacant lot to the west and then into the Wetland Cell 4x4 roads. This footprint of vacant lots will eventually become a gateway park for Joppa into the Wetland Cells.


Best time of day to see birds, universally, is at dawn. If you can get down into their habitat before they awake for the day, the chances of having some quality time with birds dramatically increases. The 4x4 vehicle antics drive the birds away later in the day, morning is the best time to see them here.

Mallards at Wetland Cell G

Blessed with frequent fall rains and prolonged muddy conditions, travel through the chain of wetlands impaired vehicle access which allowed the birds in late October and early November to really load up in the more secluded areas of Cells E and F.

Master Naturalist Bill Holston and Scott Hudson watching hundreds of Cormorants fly over Cell F

Some of the most inaccessible areas in the Chain of Wetlands feature towering cottonwoods that line a stretch of river near the mouth of White Rock Creek. In the autumn, hundreds of migrating Cormorants roost in the trees there. If one gets down into the wetland cells at dawn, you can watch the spectacle of them leaving for the day en masse.

In the early morning the area is quiet enough to hear the beating wings of a hundred Cormorants over head, a methodical beating unlike anything else. Many visitors to White Rock Lake a few miles to the north can see something similar but the noise of the birds is all but drowned by the noise of the city.

American White Pelicans in Cell F

The stars of the show on such a crisp morning are of course the pelicans. Seen above preening and preparing for a morning of fishing. The social birds are very well organized and use large family groups and pods to form feeding parties.

From a great distance one can view the large birds. No need to crowd them as they afford descent sighting at long range.

The best approach to watch feeding birds like this, is no approach at all. Find a good spot with the sun at your back and let the birds come to you.

American White Pelicans in the Chain of Wetlands

American White Pelican

The American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos is one of the largest birds in North America. It is second only to the Trumpeter Swan in overall height and second only to the California Condor in wingspan. Some of these pelicans have wingspans of 9 feet making them battleship size birds of the sky that rapidly fill a camera viewfinder.

American White Pelicans fly gracefully, spreading their wings and sliding onto the water on their feet as they land. Flight is usually in linear formations or forming a "V." They flap and glide and may soar on days when they can take advantage of updrafts.

American white pelicans don't dive, as do their relatives, brown pelicans, but they are strong swimmers and have subcutaneous air sacs in the region of their breast that give them buoyancy. They are gregarious birds, always found roosting, nesting, or foraging in groups.



Many would assume that White Pelicans are birds of the saltwater and make some kind of wayward migration inland in the fall. The truth is that these birds in Dallas might never see the ocean in their lifetime. They spend their summers in Canada and the Rocky Mountains.

Wetland Cell F

On occasion, one or two birds will show up to North Texas banded. Using a good spotting scope or long camera lens one can read the numbers off the band and look it up in an online database. Those bands show that the Dallas pelicans for the most part, spend their summers in an area bounded by Yellowstone National Park in Montana, the Grand Tetons of Wyoming and lakes in Eastern Idaho.

In the northern part of their range they feast on trout for the summer, making quick work of fish in shoal banks and lakes. Some consider the pelicans numbers as unsustainable to the trout fishery in that neck of the woods and are looking at options to reduce their population.

Breakfast bell is ringing, time to eat

The birds nest and raise young on these mountain lakes and rivers during the summer and as harbingers of fall usually make it down to North Texas by October 15th. In 2013, the first noted arrival of a pelican in Dallas was September 6, 2013 at White Rock Lake with the majority following a month later.

White Pelican at Wetland Cell E

The majority of the overwintering pelicans in Dallas move around from waterbody to waterbody. They might spend the night in the Wetland Cells, spend the afternoon at White Rock Lake and then depart for Lake Ray Hubbard towards sunset. There have been Audubon Society members who have been able to follow the movements of the larger flocks from one lake to the other with great success.

Wetland Cell E loaded with pelicans, cormorants and ducks. In the background is Old Central Expressway and beyond I-45

If they are there, one of the best spots to view pelicans is Wetland Cell E. The subdivided cell only a few acres in size features a prominent peninsula that juts from the east bank.

Bill Holston quietly approaching the shoreline as pelicans work together to drive fish towards the shore

The pelicans seen above work in picket lines, coordinated, driving fish in front of them towards the shore. Cormorants follow close behind, diving as they go to pick up stragglers.

The driving of not just baitfish but even larger game fish like bass and catfish often reaches a fevered pitch as the pelicans trap the quarry near the shoreline.

Seen at left, a pod of pelicans move in to the brush gulping water as the drive. Unlike many birds, the pelicans are not wholly selective of what they are fishing for. Their pouches filter through many gallons of water per minute, effective in the siphoning off of water leaving only fish behind.

Gadwall Ducks, White Pelicans and Cormorants headed right for us at Cell E

A cormorant at Cell E has caught a fish almost too large to swallow and attracted a host of jealous onlookers

Some of the fish caught are surprising in size. Looking through the photos shot at Cell E, a number of large shad, bass and catfish were caught by the cormorants in addition to crawfish from time to time.

Female Gadwall, Female Northern Shoveler a Male Gadwall, Great Egrets await patiently in the background Cell E

The water in the Chain of Wetlands is too deep for wading birds. The stair stepped submarine topography of the cells is designed to move water, provide flood protection and absorb nitrates and phosphates from the effluent discharge used to fill the chain of lakes. The wading birds and their habitat don't fit into the plans so birds like the Great Egrets seen above must get creative in foraging for food.

Great Egret making a succesful plunge for a sunfish in the Wetland Cells

Red-Tailed Hawk at Cell E, agitated and protesting the visiting birds in her territory. This hawk has been a constant fixture between Cell E and the Trinity River for years. Loud and talkative it often puts on a great airshow

I imagine the birds will just need to wait for a dozen or so solid flooding events to overtop the project here that will gradually over time silt in some of these areas creating a vast archipelago of dotted habitat for these birds.

Near the Fellows Lane entrance looking south towards Cells F and G

Many of the duck species in the coming winter months will gravitate towards the east side of Cell G where special aquatic food plots are growing for them. The peninsula and fractured nature of the cell provide cover for the birds and habitat for the winter months ahead.

In the coming year, cells A, B and C will be constructed just south of the Standing Wave and near Cadillac Heights. 

Two male Gadwalls and female Gadwall (lower bird with orange bill)

Unlike White Rock Lake, many of the birds are not here on a day-to-day basis. They use the chain here as a way station and a revolving habitat where they spend part of their time. It attracts some species rarely seen other places around Dallas given the southeastern proximity to the edges of some flyways.

If you are interested in seeing the wetland cells and learning more one of the best ways to safely experience the area is to join the Trinity River Bird Count. The next one just happens to be November 16, 2013 at the Fellows Lane entrance to the Wetland Cells. More information can be found at the Trinity River Bid Count Website here:

http://trinityriver.audubon.org/trinity-bird-count

And the calendar

http://www.trinitybirdcount.com/calendar.html

John Bunker Sands Wetlands a little further down US 175 offers a similar experience with a unique set of exhibits that describe wetland cells, birds and wildlife. They are open the 1st and 3rd Saturdays to the public. If you have not been you should go. More information on their website here:
http://www.wetlandcenter.com/