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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