A Texas Memory
May 23, 2012 (Wednesday)
When we first moved out here in Oak Terrace subdivision, we had only well water. Later, the city connected to public utilities water, and made it available to us. We still use the well water for irrigation, but our tap water comes from Lake Texana, Lake Corpus Christi (Mathis Lake), and Choke Canyon Reservoir–the same sources of water for Corpus Christi.
Recently I became interested in the names of some nearby towns, and Edna was one of them. Edna was the daughter of the president of the railroad from Rosenberg to Victoria. The town named after her did not exist until the railroad came. There used to be a town on the Navidad River, not far from where Edna is today, named Texana. You might say that Edna took its place.
The railroad offered to route itself through Texana, because it was a thriving place, with steamboat traffic and lots of commerce. The town, however, was not willing to pay the $30,000 requested by the railroad, so it was built north of Texana, roughly following the path of Highway 59 today. In spite of its glorious history and strategic location on the river, Texana shriveled and died. In 1979, the river there became Lake Texana, and whatever remained of the town now sits beneath the rippling waters.
Earlier in its history, Texana became the object of interest for the Allen Brothers, investors from New York who wanted to turn it into a big city. The town turned them down, so they went up the coast to Buffalo Bayou and established Allen’s Landing, which soon became the city of Houston.
There are parks there by the lake today: Lake Texana State Park and Breckenridge Recreation Complex. Escorting Dale and Ann Pogue in their R.V., Wanda and I took ours to the recreation facility and camped there. The place is full of wildlife, and the history of the area is displayed in a public building there. An old cemetery is surrounded by a stone wall and entrance into the cemetery is possible only via an old-time stile, which is a kind of staircase.
A beautiful white fence enclosed a green area that the deer used as their overnight accomodations. When the sun started sinking toward the horizon, the deer started walking into the enclosure, until at last there was a large herd of them bedded down for the night, safely protected behind their fence. Ain’t nature grand?