The Davis Mountains

This painting is of the view from the roadside picnic area on Texas State Highway 17 up in The Davis Mountains of far West Texas. It is one of my favorite places to be. For one thing, I have so many memories that relate to this scene.

To get there from Houston, I travel west on Interstate 10. From Houston to Columbus, Texas, the scenery is very monotonous. It is flat farm land with most of the trees at or near farm houses. My wife hates this segment of the journey. From Columbus to San Antonio the scenery changes for the better to wooded rolling low hills. At San Antonio, we leave Interstate 10 and take the US Highway 90 west. My heart begins to race a little bit here for this is the beginning of West Texas. Seventy-five miles west of this exit is where I was born and grew up so from here on just about every turn in the road brings back a flood of memories.

Passing through Castroville, I always look over to the Landmark Inn. It was one, if not the first one, of the buildings west of San Antonio to have windows glazed with glass. The Olmsted brothers stayed in this inn in 1854 when they were traveling through Texas doing a travel log for The New York Times. One of the brothers, Frederick, later became a famous Landscape Architect. He designed Central Park in New York City. He wrote a book about their adventures in Texas, titled Olmsted’s Texas Journey. I have read this book several times.

Passing over the bridge of Hondo Creek, I cannot help but remember the story of Rev. Z. N. Morrill who asked his friends and neighbors to get on their horses and charge with him straight down the road into the face of the huge Mexican cannon loaded with grape-shot. This occurred in 1842, when the retreating Mexican army under General Adrian Woll had the seventeen year son of Rev. Morrill as a prisoner. General Woll left a rear guard near Hondo Creek. They had a huge cannon pointed back down the road. The leader of the pursuing Texan army, seeing the cannon, had decided not to advance any further against the retreating Mexican army. Listening to the beating drums of the retreating army, the Rev. Morrill got on his horse and rode up and down the Texan army line asking for volunteers to charge with him the cannon and help him try to save his son. The tragic story of what happened to the rear-guard Mexican soldiers manning the cannon and to the Texan volunteers with Rev. Morrill that charged it is an unknown story to most people today. Most people just drive over the bridge as if nothing ever happened there. I will tell you their story someday when I can keep the tears out of my eyes when I think about what happened to them.

Passing through Sabinal, I wonder about the day in 1928 when my parents were married there in the Court House. I know so little about that wedding day, yet it is kind of important to me since I am here writing this story.

In Knippa, I always stop and drive across the railroad tracks and find my grandfathers house. Now it is really close to being called just a “shack”. Gone are the rose gardens, fish ponds, bee hives, picket fences and the swing on the front porch.

Between Knippa and Uvalde at the old Kramer farm, I still look to see if my paint Shetland pony is in their pasture. She has been dead for nearly sixty years. Then, further on, there is the turn in the highway near Blue Mountain where my grandfather’s farm was. Their home, with all their possessions, burned in 1918. From what I can tell, my grandfather was never quite the same afterwards. Their windmill and water tank used to be right near the highway. A famous artist did a painting of that windmill with Blue Mountain in the background. I still see prints of that painting from time to time.

Getting near Uvalde, the memories just explode in my mind. Coming down the slope of US 90 into town, there is now a MacDonald’s restaurant located where there used to be a four room rent house. I was born in the front room of that rent house in 1934. Passing through town, there is the Willie De Leon Civic Center. Willie worked for my father, a general construction contractor, for all of his life. I have driven thousands of miles in a pick-up truck with Willie going to and from construction sites.

West of Uvalde, the trees start getting smaller and smaller. Finally near Bracketville the scenery is mostly brush and rocks. That is what we will see until we get to Del Rio. As a newly-wed living in Uvalde, I drove the 75 miles from Uvalde to Del Rio every day for about a year. I was the job foreman to construct the instrument landing facilities at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. That’s when the ultra-secret U2 spy plane was based there. During the day, an air force military policeman with a sub-machine gun rode in the back of my pick up truck when I was on the base, not to protect me, but to make sure I didn’t look at their secret airplane. West of Del Rio we drive through endless miles of brush, cacti and mountains. Finally we get to Alpine and turn north onto Texas Highway 118 toward Fort Davis on the southern side of The Davis Mounatins.    

In Fort Davis we take Texas State Highway 17 which follows Limpia Creek up into the mountains. The road starts climbing. With the higher elevation, there is more rainfall. Up in these mountains the valleys are at about 6,000 feet elevation and the mountain tops are up to and above 8,000 feet. Up here the average rainfall is 10 to 20 inches more than in the surrounding semi-desert country.

I have stopped at this roadside park many times over the years and always enjoy the view. It so happens that the ranch in this view once belonged to the brother of my son-in-law. The scene is very typical of The Davis Mountains with lots of grass, cacti, rocks, small oak trees and magnificent mountain vistas.

My sister had cerebral palsy so my mother, who cared for her all of her life, rarely got to go anywhere. I only made one trip with my mother where it was just the two of us. I took her to The Davis Mountains. We stopped here at this roadside picnic area and while looking at this scene one late afternoon, we got to talk, just the two of us.