Annotation Having been a plant ecologist and park ranger for the US National Park Service, Watson has now returned to her native east Texas and settled in her private nature preserve. She documents a voyage (accompanied by her old blind dog) down the river Neches River, called Snow River by natives. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
A city dweller’s vacant lot . . . A rancher's back forty . . . A hiker's favorite park . . . When the places that we love are threatened, we can be stirred to action. In Texas, people of all stripes and backgrounds have fought hard to safeguard the places they hold dear. To find and preserve these stories of courage and perseverance, the Conservation History Association of Texas launched the Texas Legacy Project in 1998, traveling thousands of miles to conduct hundreds of interviews with people from all over the state. These remarkable oral histories now reside in an incomparable online and physical archive of video, audio, text, and other materials that record these extraordinary efforts by veteran conservationists and ordinary citizens to preserve the natural legacy of Texas. This book holds stories from more than sixty people who represent a variety of causes, communities, and walks of life—from a West Texas grocer fighting nuclear waste to an Austin lobbyist pressing for green energy. Each speaks from the heart in personal reminiscences and first-hand accounts of battles fought for land and wildlife, for public health, and for a voice in media and politics. These impassioned accounts remind us of the importance of protecting and conserving the natural resources in our own backyards . . . wherever they may be. Records of the archive are available at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Five dollars of the cost of this book goes to environmentally friendly materials and processes.
Follow the backroads, the historical paths, and the scenic landscape that were fashioned by geologic Ice Ages and traveled by Big Thicket explorers as well as contemporary park advocates as you explore this diverse area. From Spanish missionaries to Jayhawkers, and from timber barons to public officials, travel along fifteen tours, with maps included.
More than the lifeblood of our natural world, Texas rivers have nourished the human spirit for as long as people have gathered on their banks. A living bond has flowed between Texas writers and rivers ever since the 1960 publication of John Graves’s classic journey along the Brazos, Goodbye to a River. Many of Texas’ leading writers have had their hearts captured by a river, and they have created sparkling accounts of the waterways they love. Now, editors Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester have assembled the best of those works into a revelatory collection of diverse literary voices. Ranging from the desert canyonlands of the Rio Grande to the swampy Big Thicket, from crystal clear Hill Country streams to the Red River’s treacherous quicksand, Viva Texas Rivers! showcases many classic writings along with brand new essays written for this volume. The literary nonfiction is complemented by flashes of poetry that brilliantly reflect these curving ribbons of light. Authoritative and expertly edited, Viva Texas Rivers! offers shimmering accounts of hidden paradises, as well as searing exposés of abuse and despoliation. Yet even in the bleakest times, as these writers have found, Texas rivers can bestow a sacred grace —and unexpected redemption. Viva Texas Rivers! brings you as close to the living nirvana of a Texas River as you can get without launching yourself into a canoe and following a great blue heron as it glides just above the breaking rapids, leading you around the bend as the river flows onward toward the best places in our hearts.
In this stunning photographic tribute to one of Texas’ most intriguing and perhaps least understood rivers, Riverwoods: Exploring the Wild Neches takes readers on a unique adventure along, and sometimes into, the wild and murky waters of the Neches River. The Neches flows through the heart of East Texas, past primordial bottomland forests, timber and oil industries, and elusive denizens—humans, alligators, bobcats, and herons. Although the river and its watershed have inspired authors, artists, and photographers, it can also seem impenetrable, intimidating, or just plain unsightly to outsiders. Spending many days canoeing the river and nights camping on the banks, Charles Kruvand was drawn to the complicated allure of the Neches river and woods. Once common across the southeastern United States, the Neches bottomland forests exemplify an ecosystem that has almost passed out of existence. Thad Sitton, an East Texas native and noted historian, opens the book with an introduction to the historical, cultural, and ecological significance of the Neches River. He takes readers through time from early Native American inhabitants to Spanish and Anglo settlers to present-day East Texans. He also describes the environmental battles fought over preserving parts of the river woodlands surrounding the waterway and wildlife that have depended on the river for sustenance. Through beautiful photographs and stirring recollections of his trip along the river, Charles Kruvand weaves a rare portrait of one of the last wild rivers in Texas.
From exploitation to preservation, the complex history of one of the Southeast's most important natural areas and South Carolina's only national park Located at the confluence of the Congaree and Wateree Rivers in central South Carolina, Congaree National Park protects the nation's largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest. Modern visitors to the park enjoy a pristine landscape that seems ancient and untouched by human hands, but in truth its history is far different. In Nature's Return, Mark Kinzer examines the successive waves of inhabitants, visitors, and landowners of this region by synthesizing information from property and census records, studies of forest succession, tree-ring analyses, slave narratives, and historical news accounts. Established in 1976, Congaree National Park contains within its boundaries nearly twenty-seven thousand acres of protected uplands, floodplains, and swamps. Once exploited by humans for farming, cattle grazing, plantation agriculture, and logging, the park area is now used gently for recreation and conservation. Although the impact of farming, grazing, and logging in the park was far less extensive than in other river swamps across the Southeast, it is still evident to those who know where to look. Cultivated in corn and cotton during the nineteenth century, the land became the site of extensive logging operations soon after the Civil War, a practice that continued intermittently into the late twentieth century. From burning canebrakes to clearing fields and logging trees, inhabitants of the lower Congaree valley have modified the floodplain environment both to ensure their survival and, over time, to generate wealth. In this they behaved no differently than people living along other major rivers in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain. Today Congaree National Park is a forest of vast flats and winding sloughs where champion trees dot the landscape. Indeed its history of human use and conservation make it a valuable laboratory for the study not only of flora and fauna but also of anthropology and modern history. As the impact of human disturbance fades, the Congaree's stature as one of the most important natural areas in the eastern United States only continues to grow.
From its origins on a sandy hillside in Van Zandt County, the Neches River flows through the heart of East Texas. In its watershed lies some of the wildest country in Texas, tucked amid the remains of one of the finest hardwood forests in the world. With the goal of keeping the Neches flowing free, East Texas native and riverman Richard M. Donovan takes readers canoeing down a two-hundred-mile stretch of the upper Neches. Through two national forests and mile after mile of remote river woodlands, he chronicles the river's natural and cultural history, describes its animal inhabitants, recounts stories of early settlers and East Texas hunting traditions, and calls attention to the recreational potential of the river for paddlers and others, whether residents or visitors. Donovan also makes a case against damming the river. He convincingly promotes the idea of turning the Neches into a National Wild and Scenic River, preserving forever the river's natural flow and what remains of the verdant bottomlands of this historic watercourse. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.
Originally published in 1979, Geraldine Ellis Watson's Big Thicket Plant Ecology is now back in print. This updated edition explores the plant biology, ecology, geology, and environmental regions of the Big Thicket National Preserve. After decades of research on the Big Thicket, Watson concluded that the Big Thicket was unique for its biological diversity, due mainly to interactions of geology and climate. A visitor in the Big Thicket could look in four different directions from one spot and view scenes typical of the Appalachians, the Florida Everglades, a southwestern desert, or the pine barrens of the Carolinas. Watson covers the ecological and geological history of the Big Thicket and introduces its plant life, from longleaf pines and tupelo swamps to savannah wetlands and hardwood flats. "This is the work on the plant biology of the Big Thicket."--Pete A.Y. Gunter, author of The Big Thicket (UNT Press) GERALDINE ELLIS WATSON was a native of Tyler County and lived on her private nature preserve in East Texas. She was a plant ecologist and park ranger for the National Park Service for fifteen years. She authored Reflections on the Neches, also published by the University of North Texas Press.
In Big Thicket Legacy, Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller present the stories of people living in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas. Many of the storytellers were close to one hundred years old when interviewed, with some being the great-grandchildren of the first settlers. Here are tales about robbing a bee tree, hunting wild boar, plowing all day and dancing all night, wading five miles to church through a cypress brake, and making soap using hickory ashes.
