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Not always, along with the decline of Luckenbach went the rain. I've stood on that very bridge and seen the largest school of baby bullheads I have ever seen (OK the ONLY school of baby bullheads I have ever seen) in the shallows below.

That might've been the year that the cute coed on the back of my bike got so drunk while we were at Luckenbach (all them bikers and cowboys buying her beers were "so nice" she said ) she threw up inside her helmet somewhere near Willow City while we were riding home. Usually it was me that did stuff like that. Mostly I'm glad she didn't fall off.

Birdwatcher

Thats the way I'm recalling it, you could ride in on your bike, sit and sip a Shiner Bock, and be blown away by the musicianship around them tables out back.

Now they have a stage back there and a live band playing on weedends at least. Must be that spectators like me came to outnumber the musicians too much so they had to crank up the volume, and I expect those bands are pretty good. But it aint even in the same ballpark as what went on before. I expect it aint a place to sit and improvise when you've got guys with amps on stage just fifty feet away.

It used to be a place you felt priviledged to be at.

Along the same lines we would often climb on our bikes at the end of the day to take in the bat flight out of the old railway tunnel near Grapetown, just about ten minutes away. Or five on a bike Past the Old German shooting range there are two steep and sudden drainages that when you hit 'em at eighty on a bike the earth drops away from underneath and you go airborne, same again when you clumb back out, and then repeat in the next drainage ten seconds on down the road

You could sit on the edge of the railway cut and be IN the bat swarm, feel the breeze off of their collective wings like it was a floor fan, and smell the reeking ammonia stink that came with it.

So many bats it was like special effects, and you could follow the progress inside the tornado by focusing on the albino bats in the swarm.

Then the state look it over....

...nowadays stern, uniformed, short-haired ladies of uncertain sexual orientation yell at you to keep quiet "to avoid disturbing the bats". An upscale restaurant now sits nearby where the entrance to the old hippie commune used to be, high dollar homesites further down that same road.

Birdwatcher

I just went to look for my book "The West That Was" by John Leakey the founder of Leakey Tx. Couldn"t find it, but it is a good read. The East fork of the Frio held up pretty well through this bad drought about 6-8 in. low. Leakey settled by the "big spring", I haven't been able to find it- private property. You all saw what happened to the Frio at Reagan Wells. Indians and black bear were still around, he was talking about herding turkey and hogs to Kerrville(60-70 miles?)

Leakey of course lies on the other side of Vanderpool Mountain from Vanderpool, the ride over being one of the pre-eminent motorcycle roads in the United States (or was; numbers, law enforcement, and packs of Harleys pretty much smothered it).

Rode it so many times back in the days I could still prob'ly do it blindfolded. One time I climbed off the Ninja long enough to peruse the old graves in the cemetery on the Frio at Leakey and was surprised to find the grave of Mrs McLaurin, victim of the last known Indian raid in those parts, April 19th 1881.

Not an old-time classic Apache raid really, just a woman and some guys robbing the cabin. Mrs McLauren surprised 'em in the act, they shot her and the fifteen year old youth with her, left the other kids alone, just a sad story all around....

http://www.unc.edu/~ecanada/hilton5.html

The Apaches also stole some stock up and down the canyon, a local posse took up their trail but lost it. Ten days later they brung in the Black Seminole Scouts out of Fort Clark who picked up the cold trail and followed it out through the Pecos County, crossed into Mexico and hit the camp of Lipans what did it. Killed a couple of guys, brung back an injured Lipan woman.

Birdwatcher

You would like the book. Leakey took a wrong turn or something and ended up in Montana for awhile.

I'll look for that book.

IIRC, 1881 weren't the LAST known Indian raid in Texas. I believe it was 1883 that a group of Mescaleros and Lipans raided from New Mexico clear to Mason County Texas, a very late date in that area in the history of the Indian Wars. I'm not recalling fatalities, just stolen stock. As usual they eluded the local posses.

Lt John Lapham Bullis and 29 Black Seminoles were called in, intitiating perhaps the all-time greatest tracking duel in the history of the West, IIRC twenty-nine days and, according to this Texas Ranger site, 1,000 miles.

http://www.texasranger.org/dispatch/Backissues/Dispatch_Issue_28.pdf

The Apaches made the safety of the reservation back in New Mexico just hours ahead of their pursuit, Bullis being denied juristiction there by the Indian Agent.

That whole episode oughtta be a Texas legend too....

Birdwatcher

With apologies to folks if this grow tiresome...

Smithwick made about eight miles that first day....

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



...and later, after losing his rifle in the Guadalupe and turning back wrote...



North of 410 where we left it, Nacodoches, four lanes wide, meanders for two miles past older neighborhoods, business and apartment complexes. The Salado running north-south maybe a quarter mile east.

Finally Nacodoches Road opens up on the approach to the creek, the creek itself at that point come from the northwest and then is directed south at the base of a tall bluff, visible in the background of this pic. One hundred and seventy three years ago the location of this pic would qualify for wilderness status today.



West (upstream) of the crossing of the modern roadway, the creekbed has been flood-controlled into oblivion.






On the downstream side of the road lies a park with soccer fields, the creek running through a band of woodlands at the base of the bluff, behind this landscaping business. Almost dry in this drought, mostly carrying runoff from lawns and such...






All that can be said with a certainty here is that the creek always turned south at the base of that bluff, but after more than 100 years of enclosed ranching and farming, and then another forty years of increasingly heavy urbanization, who can say where the mud in the creek came from or how much it resembles the prairie stream of 1838?

Another minor drainage (nowadays in a concrete ditch) feeds in here too. This spot is prone to flooding, and was likely often wet in 1837 too. Dunno if the road really did cross the Salado at this very place back then or where exactly Smithwick stayed overnight, but likely that tall bluff was a familiar landmark to travellers like Smithwick, and to them Comanches what tore through there the next morning.

Worth noting that, maybe ten miles downstream from this point, and maybe four years later, a major fight against Mexican troops would take place on "the prairie around Salado Creek"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salado_Creek_(1842)

Birdwatcher

These were the years when young men out of San Antonio were being knocked off by the scores, Smithwick musta really wanted to hang on to that mule. He made about twelve miles the next day, finally clearing the bounds of modern San Antonio...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



North of the Salado, the rout runs more or less straight north, nowadays a major throughofare running through the North Side, climbing gently over what once was open rolling prairie...



About seventeen miles from downtown, the route passes right by a prominent hill variously known as "Comanche Hill" or today as "Comanche Lookout", a city park. The whole hill now choked with brush as this area gets when it ain't allowed to burn.

Its only about two hundred yards up a moderate slope from the road (which passes along the east side), hard to believe that anyone passing this way in those times wouldn't pause here to scout out the country, watch their back trail, or look fer signs of people who had been watching THEM.

Here's the view from the top looking south towards downtown (tall buidlings barely visible on the horizon)...



Heck, EVERYBODY passing that way must in those times must have stopped there, that goes double for folks rushing to the Alamo. My money says that Smithwick lingered there for a good bit too, watching for his friends to catch up.

Mostly power walkers and families up there nowadays, tho in the past I'm given to understand it was a notorious teen hangout.

I woulda like to check out the route northbound too but the city has not seen fit to clear the brush in that direction.

Another mile and you pass the outer loop (1604) and top over into the Cibolo Creek drainage, the creek crossing point about half a mile past the Rolling Oaks Mall.



Note the new housing development signs by the bridge, the expansion continues....



The Cibolo (Spanish for "buffalo") describes a wide arc north and east of Old San Antonio, forming the present county line for much of that distance. The first twenty or thirty miles of that arc run directly over limestone recharge features feeding into our aquifer such that the creek bed itself basically has two modes... bone dry and rocky as seen here, or raging flood after a tropical storm or some such fills it faster than it can escape underground.




The wispy greener trees in the pic are retama and mesquite, most of the grey stuff that has already lost its leaves is cedar elm. The green trees like in te middle of the creekbed just begining to brown off are Eastern Sycamores. Always a puzzle to me that this tree will grow in these places, must be that they have their feet wet.

Smithwick likely made camp somewhere in this area, maybe on the bank by a rain pool on the rocky creek bed.

Birdwatcher

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



It is about fifteen miles between the Cibolo and the Guadalupe, Smithwick was indeed keeping an "extremely moderate" pace. The remarkable thing is, he was still eighty miles from his destination at Coleman's Fort, the site of that structure being located on the east bank of the Colorado River in present-day east Austin.

A couple of miles north of the Cibolo at last you leave the four lanes and housing developements behind.

Here's the old road...



Brush, mesquite and cedar set in pretty quick around here without fires, so to get a prespective of the country more like it was back then you have to get up on high ground.

The hundred mile Austin/San Marcos/New Braunels/San Antonio Interstate 35 corridor still is one of the more rapidly growing areas in the US and open land is disappearing quick.
A broad valley runs north-south between New Braunfels and San Antone. The Old Nacodoches route runs up the western side, close to the Balcones Escarpment. Interstate 35 runs about a mile east, along the higher ground on the eastern side.

Here's a view from Interstate 35 south of New Braunfels looking east across Smithwick's route. Note that in his day there was scarcely a tree between San Antonio and Austin.



Somewhere along this route in July of 1840, perhaps 1,000 Comanches slipped down from the Hill Country to the west and launched their great raid on the Tejanos.

In more recent times, in 1983 Salem Bin Laden, eldest brother and reported head of the Bin Laden clan, died in this area when the ultralight he was flying hit power lines. Some accounts have suggested that had he still been alive, his younger brother Osama never would have been allowed to do the things he did.

Anyhoo... history passing away along the old route, who knows what stories that old store could tell...



...history preserved... St Joseph's Chapel, built in 1903 by local Catholic German farming families, restored just last year, tho the congregation is long gone...



..and history continuing... the Alamo Shuetzen Verein, one of four traditional German shooting clubs still extant in the Hill Country, the parent club having been founded just down the old road in New Braunfels in 1849. Check out the original rules Prior to 2002 shooting was done using only metallic sights with the exception of those over 70 years of age allowed to use a telescope.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~nbsv/index.html




Birdwatcher

Since my last post, the "Old Cardboard" Smthwick site has gone inactive Pity, that was a phenomenal resource, hope it comes back up.

Anyhoo, not as user-friendly, but available here...

When I left off, Smithwick had just arrived at the Guadalupe River...

http://books.google.com/books?id=8-..._r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false



Driving this route was an impulse deal, and I had not done any prior study or brung any means of accessing the 'net. Therefore I had no idea where the old Camino Real crossed tbe Guadalupe, I was thinking the road veered further east, maybe crossing the river below New Braunfels.

My thinking was this, in New Braunfels there are a set of springs called Comal Springs which give rise to maybe a two mile stretch of river (Comal River) that empties into the Guadalupe. My thinking is that Smithwick probably crossed below the Comal, but in all my years here I had never really explored that pretty town, tho it lies only about an hour away.

Accessing these two waterways aint as easy as you might think. This is Texas and, as always, most of these waterways wind between private land. So while I could FInd 'em easily enough, FOLLOWING them was a whole 'nother deal entirely.

First, a study in springs.

Just below that bridge (Hidebrand Ave.) lies the main San Antonio Spring, headwaters of the San Antonio River (above that the same channel forms an intermitted stream - Olmos (Elm) Creek). As you'll note, the springs have fallen on hard times, three million people drawing on that same aquifer will do that...



As previously stated, much of the present San Antonio River within the city limits comes from a well in the Zoo. In recent years that has been limited due to high E. coli levels in that water, nowadays the difference is made up with recycled sewage treatment plant water. Not a public health issue, but high in nitrates and phosphates with the attendant plant and algae growth that accompany that, as seen here just below the zoo....




So much so that they have to chemically control algae along the river walk proper.

A couple of miles away lies the other great San Antonio spring of days gone by.. San Pedro Springs...



Used to be San Pedro Springs fed a famous, clear pond, a classic swimming hole, and the most likely spot for a fictional Gus and Clara to pitch woo as recounted in Lonesome Dove. Turns out the dwindling pool was finally closed to the public in the 1940's on account of it had gone stagnant due to reduced spring flow, the pool being filled in.

In the nineties the city did a bang-up job of digging out and recreating the old spring-fed water hole, except using city water, note the original bald cypresses, still in place



An idea of what these two springs, and thus the San Antonio River, formerly were like can be seen by observing tbe Comal....





Seen here flowing clear and swift between high dollar condos and homesites. Crystal clear water, an even 78F all year round.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/smith29.jpg[/img]

Comal Springs persists the way it does largely on account of endangered species protection limiting water use by San Antonio in times like the severe drought we are currently in.

Used to be that any landowner could draw all they wanted, and as San Antonio grew, New Braunfels and San Marcos found themselves faced with being left high and dry. An independent landowner south of San Antonio brough the matter to a head, his randomly-dug well hitting a main artery in the aquifer and causing an immediate and enormous drain.

The State put THAT guy on hold by denying him a wastewater permit to discharge the flow into the Medina River, forcing him to cap the well. Shortly thereafter the Endangered Species Act and the threat of Federal action was the club used by the state to put the aquifer in the public domain.

Birdwatcher

I was cruisin' this post for Christmas gifts (books).

I know the guy who sold Quanah's Winchester 1894 a few years back. Obviously the gun was owned and used well after the fighting days of his tribe were finished, but it was still historical, not only due to the attribution to its famous owner but also because he used it on a hunt with Teddy Roosevelt.

OT- Teddy Roosevelt's "Ranch Life and The Hunting Trail" is areally good read. Really.

Who knows how tall they actually were. I've read accounts of them being 7' tall and such and think that is probably bs. I was friends with one, a half-breed admittedly, and have known a few, living where I do in the heart of the old Osage nation.

The sight of the attack by the Osages on a party of Confederate recruiting officers, lay about ten miles from where we used to live. I think only one of the party of approximately a dozen-and-a-half, escaped and that was the kinsman of Merriwether Lewis, Col. Werner Lewis.

The Osages were mortal enemies of the Comanch and probably prevented many depredations along the Kansas-Missouri border by their presence in the Cross Timbers, which the Comanche and Kiowas raided into.

At any rate, back to their height, I'm pretty familiar with the Osage and while they are tall for Injuns, I've never seen one to know he was anywhere's near 7', even in platform moccasins, which were the rage during the Village People era.

As to their wealth, I don't know many that are what I'd call wealthy. Like a lot of the oil boys, they found it difficult to hang onto their wealth. A lot of them still get royalties though. The guy I spoke of did and he pretty much just played around all the time after he inherited it. heheh

http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Indians-Firsthand-Accounts-1750-1870/dp/0486249018

I have and have read the above. I'd recommend it.

http://www.abaa.org/books/268374772.html

The above is one of my most treasured possessions. Mine was evidently a school book of my Mom's as it has a lot of stamps from the state of Texas and writing of her's in it. It was in my Grandma's possession and she gave it to me when I was a little kid. It has an abbreviated account of Hermann Lehman's captivity in it, as well as other fascinating tales.

"A Vaquero of the Brush Country" also J.Frank Dobie. Just a gift idea.

WOO HOOO!!!! Smithwick is BACK, moved to a different site.

Read it while its still so accessible...

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm

...of his 1837 or '38 winter trip Smithwick reached the Guadalupe, tried to ford it and him and the slow mule got washed away....

I let my mule take his own gait, which was extremely moderate, and about sundown reached the Guadalupe. In the meantime a cold norther had come on and, there being no timber on the west bank of the river, I thought to cross over to the east side, which was heavily timbered, and make another lonely camp.

The ford was an ugly one at any time, the current being very swift. Failing to observe that there had been a rise in to river, I plunged in, and almost instantly my mule was swept off its feet, and away we went down the stream. I managed to disengage myself from the saddle, dropping my gun in so doing, and losing my blankets, which I had thrown across the front of the saddle to protect my legs against the cold wind.

I hung onto the bridle, and, being a good swimmer, finally succeeded in getting my mule out on the same side we went in. Having lost my gun and got my powder all wet, there was nothing with which to strike a fire.

We had no matches in those days, the usual method being to take a bit of rag and rub powder into it and ram it into a gun (empty) and fire it out, the flash igniting the powdered rag. Sometimes we took out the flint from the lock of the gun, and with a steel, made for the purpose, or, in the absence of that, a knife, struck sparks into a rag or some other inflammable substance, into which powder had been poured.

But my gun being gone, I was left without any of these resources, and not a dry thread on me, the wind fast approaching the freezing point, and no shelter from it. By this time it was getting dark, and I was shaking with cold.

In this extremity I bethought me of one of Davy Crockett's stories. Stripping the wet trappings from the mule, I tethered him to a bush and set to work vigorously pulling the dry sedge grass, which was everywhere waist high. I mowed the grass in great armfuls, piling it against the windward side of a clump of bushes till I had quite a respectable sized haystack. By the time this was done my blood was warmed Up, and spreading my wet saddle blanket over the windward side of the heap, I wrung the water out of my clothes, crawled into my hay mow and was so warm and cozy that I soon fell asleep.

When I awoke it was getting light. I pushed the grass aside and peered out. There stood the poor mule, all drawn up, shivering in the cold wind, which was sweeping, unobstructed, across the prairie. I kept my bed till the sun got up, when I crawled out.

I had gone supperless to bed, and had nothing to breakfast on. I thought I might be able to recover my gun, knowing that its weight would not permit it to float. I went down to the river to look for it, and there it lay, under about six feet of water. There was nothing in the way of a drag obtainable, so I reluctantly abandoned it. With handfuls of grass I rubbed down my mule, and saddling him, took the back track, wondering whatever could be keeping the company back.

So for an hour or two I was casting about New Braunfels, wondering where exactly this happened. Like I said it had to be below the Comal, and I thought it might have occurred east of the present city limits.

Turns out though that finding "Nacodoches Avenue" running to the river clued me in, that likely being the location of the old Spanish Nacodoches Road AKA Camino Real.

Supporting evidence; the same rail line paralleling the route out of San Antonio crossed here. A short block east lay an old road bridge, preserved as a footbridge...



And at the other end I found this...



Turns out the old fording place was just a hundred or two yards west of the modern Interstate 35.

Here's the view looking upstream (west), now the site of an old mill wier, note the aforementioned railroad bridge...



...and downstream towards the access road and Interstate bridges...



There ain't any public access from the shore along this stretch but here is about where Smithwick fell in, and where a hundred heroes and other assorted reg'lar folk, villains and riff-raff crossed over the centuries.

In 1838 there were woods on the north bank, but nothing but open prairie on the south, saifd prairie stretching clear to Old San Antone.

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher

That�s great history. It makes it even better when we can see the actual places that they crossed the plains, creeks and rivers.

I just received in the mail volume three of Stephen Moore's "Savage Frontier" series, this being "Savage Frontier Volume III 1840-1841"

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Frontier-1840-1841-Rangers-Riflemen/dp/1574412280

This four-volume series has been sadly underserved by marketing. I have had Volume I for years, but did not fully appreciate the value until this thread. Moore's narratives at first appear chaotic, but this is largely because he incorporates and references a huge amount of detail glossed over in more easily readable works.

Case in point, the famous Council House fight of 1840, wherein twelve Comanche leaders came into San Antonio for a peace treaty, bringing with them just two captives, notably the unfortunate Matilda Lockhart.

From Moore we learn that the gambit of seizing the chiefs as hostages against the return of ALL White captives in the Comanche camps had been ordered among ther Texans from the first contact prior to the actual meeting, months in advance.

For those out of the loop, a quick primer on the Council House Fight can be found here..

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btc01

Just to throw in a photo or two, the actual council house meeting might have occurred here, in what is now known as the "Spanish Governor's Palace", one fo the few original Spanish buildings surviving downtown...





The old market square between that row of buildings and San Fernando Cathedral is now occupied by city hall. A WHOLE bunch of history played out here, including the very first public demonstration of barbed wire (1873?), bringing a whole new era to the West. For Lonesome Dove fans, this is wher Gus and Call would have met their second cook, the guy cooking grasshoppers, and the bar where they broke the bartender's nos would have been set adjacent.





Moore gives a detailed account of the first arrivals of Colt's patented weapons. At least one officer in the room when the fight broke out was, according to Moore, equipped with a revolving rifle.

And here, from the book, we have what really may be the oft looked-for "first" use of revolvers against Comanches, this at the Council House Fight (a full FOUR YEARS before Jack Hays and his men famously used revolvers at Walker's Creek), at this point the fighting that started inside the room had just spilled out into the street.

From page 28...

Colonel Lysander Wells, head of the army cavalry, carried one of the new Colt repeating pistols. Ill-trained on how to shoot this new pistol, the startled Texan had his wedge improperly placed and the gun would not fire. An Indian grabbed the barrel, jerked it loose, and left Wells cursing his luck and the new gun.

In the continuing fight, Wells fought hand to hand with his Comanche foe. He finally pulled one of his lap pistols and "fired into the Indian's body," killing him. Another of Wells' cavalrymen, young Henry Clay Davis, used his new Colt pistol to kill another Comanche who was wielding an arrow as a dagger.

So, I nominate Henry Clay Davis as first recorded to have used a Colt's revolver on a Comanche, tho' its true not on horseback. I just started the book, perhaps another incidence will arise. And it should be borne in mind that revolvers were already in use during that time in the Seminole War over in Florida.

...and maybe Lysander Well's as the first documented user of a "backup" pocket pistol when the primary handgun failed, a strategem that continues to occasionally save the lives of a few Cops up until the present.

As to Wells' Colt jamming on account of the wedge, just the other day I finally disassembled an Uberti Colt '51 Navy replica I've had sitting around unfired for years. Much to my surprise, when you tap the barrel wedge back into place, if you tap in in too far it will drive the barrel assembly back onto the cylinder, tying up the gun, as was likely the case with Wells's revolver.

I'm just glad I weren't wrestling with a wild Comanche when I found that out...

Reading further, most histories go from that fight to the incidence of 200 infuriated Comanches surrounding the Texan garrison at Mission San Jose, and then leave off entirely everything between then and the Great Comanche Raid under Buffalo Hump some months later.

Moore OTOH describes at least five separate occasions in the aftermath of the Council House fight where two indivudal Comanche leaders came in to trade White and Mexican captives for Comanche women and children held captive by the Texans, on one ocasion Texans even riding out to the Comanche camp to choose the captives to be traded (thirteen captives had already been horribly tortured to death in the immediate aftermath of the fight in revenge by the Comanches).

Said individual Comanches were reportedly well-known by the inhabitants of San Antonio, indicative of interactions and commerce between ordinary San Antonio residents and the Comanches before these events.

Birdwatcher