[ad_1]
In the hottest weeks of summer, thoughts wander to the coldest rivers in the state.
The historic Medina River rises from the steep southern edge of the Edwards Plateau. Clear and very cool, it then winds over white limestone beds under a shady canopy of fully grown cypress trees.
It leads through Bandera with its dude ranches and authentic remnants of cowboy culture; Stop for a break in a wide gorge on Lake Medina; then waters the quaint Alsatian town of Castroville before winding around the southern edges of San Antonio.
Very close to Interstate 37 and US 281, it flows into the San Antonio River on the way to a confluence with the Guadalupe River near Victoria.
Texas story: Get these top notch books on our Lone Star State
“The first European to see the river was Alonso De León, Governor of Coahuila, who led his expedition through Texas in 1689 in search of the French,” says the Texas online handbook. “De León noted in his diary that he named the stream after Pedro Medina, the early Spanish engineer whose navigation tables he used to map his route through the wilderness with an astrolabe. On other ancient maps, the river appears differently than Río Mariano Río San José or Río de Bagres – Catfish River. “
The Medina River recently featured in a “Think, Texas” column about Tejano patriot José Francisco Ruiz, whose family owned a riverside ranch that fed various troops who migrated fairly regularly through the region.
After all, I visited the medina relatively late in life while following 50 Texan rivers from their mouths to their sources – or vice versa – by car, on foot and sometimes in the water with longtime friend and language teacher Joe Starr. I recorded our adventures in blog posts while Joe took the memorable photos.
At one point on our trip we both visited shore guru Andrew Sansom at the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment in San Marcos. He urged us to write a guidebook about our river trips for Texas A&M University Press. Long story short, we never finished the travel guide, but some sharp blog posts, as well as newspaper and magazine articles, have sprung up from the effort.
A version of the following updated post about the Medina River began as a blog post long before Think, Texas was born. Joe and I did more research a few years later to produce something close to this entry. I’m offering it here in the sense of cooling down, which almost all Texans need in mid-August.
Even pictures of the medina make me feel cooler.
Everything you need to know about the Medina River
Length: 116 miles
Source: Edwards Plateau in northwest Bandera County
Mouth: San Antonio River in southern Bexar County
Lake: Medina
Our main route: Always try alternative routes. How to discover Texas. This trip we took Texas 16, FM 1283, PR 37, FM 1283, FM 471, US 90, Cagnon Road, Macdona Lacoste Road, Nelson Road, CR 1604, Palo Alto Road, E. Charles William Anderson Loop, Interstate 37 streets as well inevitable detours and impulse stops.
Places to watch: In Bandera, the Frontier Times Museum and Courthouse; Hill Country State Natural Area, southwest of Bandera; Castroville to explore Alsatian heritage and architecture, including the Landmark Inn, a state historic site; Medina Lake, good for boating and fishing when the water is high; Castroville Regional Park, not fancy but with good hiking trails; Medina Natural River Area, a nature reserve in the city of San Antonio. (A reminder for your physical and legal welfare: stay away from private land.)
Natural history: Named for Pedro Medina, a Spanish engineer, in 1689, this river rises rapidly between extinct volcanoes that formed along the Balcones Fault. It shares a ridge on the Edwards Plateau with the more famous Guadalupe River. Primarily, it drains Bandera County in a region with an arid, subtropical climate that encourages short grasses and the occasional oak and juniper.
Human history: One of the bloodiest battles ever fought in Texas took place on the river on August 18, 1813, when Spanish royalists faced a ragged army of Republicans, an encounter that was part of the larger struggle for Mexico’s independence from Spain . After four hours, the royalists won resoundingly.
In 1842 Col. John Coffee “Jack” Hays defeated a group of Comanches at the Bandera Pass, a V-shaped incision in the ridge between the Guadalupe and Medina valleys used by American Indians, Spaniards and early Anglos later part of. was the Western Cattle Trail.
More:Lalo, a new top-shelf tequila from Austin, reflects the shared taste of Texas and Jalisco
On maps from the 1830s, the medina serves as the southern boundary of the Bexar department – and thus of Texas. On January 15, 1842, the Emperor Henri Castro negotiated a treaty to settle Alsatian families in a colony on the Medina, which he did with Hays’ help in 1844. Castroville was founded in September of the same year.
As in much of West Texas, very few enslaved people were brought into the communities along the medina; during the 1860 census, just over 100 were counted in Bandera and Medina counties. Unsurprisingly, there was little local enthusiasm for secession. The only real military action in the area during the Civil War happened when General Henry Hopkins’ Confederate Cavalry Brigade passed Sibley on their way to invade New Mexico.
Unlike much of West Texas, there were no fortresses in the valley during the Indian Wars.
Although the US 90 passes through Castroville and San Antonio, the Upper Medina River region generally has few transportation options. For example, in 1880, Castroville refused to give the Southern Pacific Railroad a bonus, so it passed south of town.
Due in part to this lack of development, tourism, including tubing, camping, and dude ranching, remains an important industry.
Some farms produced minimal amounts of corn and cotton, but ranches have produced a lot of livestock since Spanish days. Lackland Air Force Base helped transform the Lower Medina, and the Medina and Bandera counties are now included in the San Antonio Metropolitan Statistical Area.
A beautiful day on the Medina River
Our excursion: The drive from Kerrville to the source of the river is not for the faint of heart – a winding, two-lane road through hills and valleys. Like the other rivers that meander south of the Edwards Plateau, its Mother Gorge is beautiful and rugged.
We followed him down Texas 16, the narrowest federal highway we have ever seen. The river, already swift and lined with cypress trees, appears with full force before reaching the village of Medina, where the north and west prongs meet to form the actual medina.
In the valleys we came across road sections under construction that had narrowed to a lane. Temporary traffic lights instead of flags led the drivers from every direction. Drivers approaching from the opposite direction were mostly polite and paid attention to the backup lights.
Texas story: She grew up in the Cadillac Bar in Nuevo Laredo
The first town of significance is Bandera, the self-proclaimed cowboy capital of Texas, once a camp for cypress loggers and then a magnet for Polish and German immigrants. The beauty of the green valley is complemented by the historic city center and numerous guest anches. We wandered around a bit, but the scene seemed geared towards tourism.
(We should have scratched deeper, as podcaster Evan Stern proved in an episode of his Vanishing Postcards series in an old western bar.)
Our next adventure took us south, a right turn at Pipe Creek on FM 1283, a winding back road to a viewing park over Medina Lake. The park itself was empty and the lake – still low at the end of 2015 – with no activity. But, boy, do those rugged hills make a great backdrop. Seestrasse was littered with “Do Not Enter” signs and devastated courtyards. A few kilometers behind the Tanzbären-Kantina we made a hairpin to the right on FM 471, where the medina near the hamlet of Rio Medina picks up speed again.
The river then flows gently into the plains below in Castroville. After longing to explore this Alsatian community for decades, we were pleased to see that many of the sloping roofs have been preserved.
To catch the river, we hiked through Castroville Regional Park and stopped next to a human snowbird camp. On this beautiful day, joggers and picnickers joined us. The brook curves widely between thick cypress trees that are hung with Spanish moss. It could have been East Texas.
We had lunch at the Castroville Cafe in Alsace – good food, much appreciated – and then we drove east on US 90 and drifted into the dreaded attraction of San Antonio.
To our surprise, little land was developed southwest of the metropolis. We couldn’t get to the mouth of the medina on the San Antonio River just off Interstate 37. Also good: We thought the surroundings would not be nice.
Books to check out:“Texas: A Historical Atlas”, “Rivers of Texas”, “Spanish Texas”, “Flash Floods in Texas”, “Texas Water Atlas”, “Handbook of Texas”, “The Adventures of Big Foot Wallace”.
Floods: In 1932, in a matter of hours, 14 inches of rain fell and Lake Medina rose 22.5 feet. In August 1978, 20.2 inches soaked the city of Medina, and the Manatt Ranch gained 48 inches, a record for 72 hours at the time. Roaring water surrounded the city and plowed through camps in the way. The river peaked at 56 feet in Bandera, which locals said was almost as bad as a 1919 flood. In July 2002, the medina flowed into the Bandera stores and over the overflow at Lake Medina. Downstream, Castroville experienced the worst flood of all time.
State of the river: The Upper Medina, which flows over a limestone bed, is pretty much untouched. Settlers cut down many of the ancient cypress trees, but floods eventually wiped out the logging industry.
In contrast to extreme droughts, the water now runs clear and fast; it is never very deep, except at high tide. As soon as the river drops into the plains, agriculture, industry, landfills and military facilities hit it. The river borders but is not controlled by the Nueces River Authority, founded in 1935. The lower part falls within the confines of the San Antonio River Authority.
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. he can be reached at mbarnes@statesman.com.
History of Texas, delivered to your inbox
To subscribe to Think, Texas, a newsletter delivered every Tuesday at profile.statesman.com/newsletters/manage. And if the weekly email isn’t enough, there’s more. Follow Michael Barnes on Twitter: @outandabout. Are you missing a column? Check out the Think, Texas archives at Statesman.com/news/austin-history.
[ad_2]
