Look again and you might find new hidden mysteries, even in your hometown.
There is no place like home. That is home for me. Bastrop is my hometown. I know what some of y’all are thinking, “but Bryce, aren’t you from Cedar Creek?” Yes, yes I am, but since no one knows where Cedar Creek is, and the only things that are in Cedar Creek are a gas station, post office, and a Dollar General, Bastrop is where I say I am from. That is where everything was that I ever did growing up. Just 20 miles down the road, Bastrop is my home.
Upon Kaylee and I leaving Flower Mound (if you have been following the blogs you will see the timeline), we originally were going to go back to College Station after our extended stay in Dallas. Another opportunity arose. One of my sisters, Amy, said that she would be at my parents’ house for the coming weekend. Kaylee hadn’t yet met Amy and really wanted to. We ended up taking a four day detour into Smithville to say hey to my family and allow Kaylee and my sister to meet. We had a good time with my family because they are all super awesome.
The day we got back to Smithville, we went back on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website to check out how COVID-19 was affecting the state parks community in and around Austin. We wanted to go to McKinney Falls in Austin, but it had closed the day before. Buescher State Park is actually in Smithville, closed as well. There was a beacon of hope because Bastrop State Park remained open! Kaylee and I did not know how long it would be until Bastrop closed so we jumped at the opportunity and went the next morning.
It was a chilly March morning, a cold front had swept through central Texas and put the temperatures in the 40s. Cold for Texans anyway, but for March? This was absurd. Moving past it, we suited up (thankfully Kaylee had two jackets in her car) and walked nature’s paths. The first paths we walked were actually old golf cart paths since there used to be a nine hole golf course in the front of the park, so not quite designed by God. It took us to a small pond with an even smaller bridge (Kaylee loves bridges). We stopped and got some pictures, including some ring shots.
The whole basis around Bastrop State Park is that it was a project built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The Civilian Conservation Corps (which is a recurring theme in the Texas State Parks system) was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It helped young, unmarried men find work during the Great Depression while also conserving the country’s natural resources. Bastrop State Park was a hub for the CCC back in the 1930s.
The refectory is the centerpiece of what the CCC built in Bastrop back in the ‘30s. A massive stone hall with old lantern style sconces on the outside, the refectory helped Bastrop State Park achieve National Historic Landmark status in 1997. We walked around the outside of the refectory (the inside was locked) then headed for more trails, actual natural ones this time.
Bastrop is called the Heart of the Lost Pines because, for whatever reason, Bastrop has a ton of native loblolly pines that tower up high and a natural terrain like that more closely akin to Alabama or Georgia. Unfortunately, in 2011, the largest wildfire in state history wiped out close to 90% of these pine trees and ruined the natural beauty of Bastrop as well as misplacing hundreds of families by burning down their homes. It was devastating for the Bastrop community. But out of every tragedy comes hope. Many of the pine trees have come back and began to take root. The once barren and charred landscape that surrounded Bastrop is now being reborn into small mini christmas trees. That is what we saw while exploring the hills of Bastrop State Park. The scars of the past making way to the rich new reality that will be a beautiful future.
We hiked through bracken ferns whose lineage you could trace back to when the dinosaurs walked through them, we saw more CCC creations designed to blend in with the natural surroundings, and of course more bridges (Kaylee sure does like a good bridge). The last thing we did before leaving was go to the two overlook spots where the CCC made little huts and gazebos for gazing around. One overlooked the entire park and another was nestled on a hillside overlooking Highway 71 on the outskirts of the Bastrop city limits. I must’ve driven by that spot hundreds of times and I never had seen this little piece of history hidden in the brush at the top of that hill. It was good to be home.
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