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Wharton • Brazoria • Hardin • Cass |
Dates Visited
Conditions
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These four counties were done as part of a larger trip Beth and I planned to New Orleans over Christmas, 2004. Her brother lives in Houston so we visited him and his family (and menagerie of pets), along the way. Naturally, we planned for whatever county highpoints we could get on the long drive. The first three (Wharton, Brazoria and Hardin Counties) were done on the way to Louisiana. On the way home, now up in the northeast corner of the state, we stopped in and made a visit to the Cass County highpoint. Wet weather kept us away from other possible highpoints.
The drive to Louisiana took a couple days. We spent a night in Van Horn, then another couple in San Antonio where we toured the River Walk and the Alamo among other places. From there we spent two more nights in Austin including a stop at the famous Armadillo's Bar and Restaurant where all the famous blues and other musical acts have played over the years. Yes, I tried for a couple county highpoints in the San Antonio and Austin regions, but had no success due to the usual factors: fences, time and dogs. Our first success was in Wharton County.
Wharton County's highpoint is located at a T-junction of dirt roads, not far from the city of Eagle Lake. We went east on Alt-US-90 to the Wharton County Line sign, then right for 2.5 miles to said T-junction. The map shows the region within a 165-foot contour, with the T-junction listed at 166 feet. The whole area is totally flat, and after a little walking around, we judged that the T-junction had just as good a chance as any other spot as being the highpoint. Yes, it was lame, but it counts, and we felt good about that.
Coming from Wharton County, we traveled south into Brazoria County. Being so close to the Gulf of Mexico, the land elevations here were mostly in the tens of feet, a lot of low-lying, quasi-swampy ground. However, Brazoria County's highpoint is an actual hill, called Damon Mound. It is a salt dome, common in this part of the country (Louisiana has a bunch of salt domes). Damon Mound's top elevation is just 146 feet above sea level, but it has good local relief, roughly a hundred feet above the rest of the county. That's a pretty good figure for this part of the state.
We followed state route TX-36 into the community of Damon, which sits atop the mound. We had a trip report from the cohp.org website, but the day was kind of drizzly and wet, and our route would have taken us through some overgrown areas. Instead, we decided to tackle this one head-on, by approaching the landowner whose home (trailer) sits very near the highpoint.
I have to admit the whole place looked kind of unfriendly, and had to work up a little more courage than usual in approaching this home. I parked the truck at the end of the dirt road "driveway", placing me about 50 feet from the front door. Beth stayed back at the truck. Two dogs greeted me and were friendly, one a puppy who had all sorts of energy. The front yard was mostly clear of things, so all in all, I had a little bit of hope this might go well. I knocked on the door then stood back, waiting for destiny.
After hearing some crashing noises, a young woman answered the door. I stated my name and objective. She seemed friendly but told me to wait a moment. She went back in. In the meantime I petted the two dogs, and waited another minute or so, hearing more crashing and banging noises before a gentleman wheeled himself to the door. I greeted him as friendly a way as I could, giving him my name, mentioning my wife and the fact we were visiting relatives in Houston over the Christmas holidays. All this was true, of course, but I figured by stating these facts, I would set his mind at ease, that I wasn't some crazy spook up to no good. Much to my relief he was one of the nicest guys you could want to meet. We talked for a few minutes, he was all smiles and he gave us permission to go tromp about the yard for the highpoint. What a swell fellow, seriously.
The actual "hike" took a few moments, walking from our truck to a small mound behind some sheds and other odds and ends. And that was all was to it. We left the area feeling pretty good. This had gone very well, much moreso than I had expected. It's nice to know there are still a lot of really good people out there. My sincerest thanks to the landowner for allowing us passage. This is why this hobby can be so fun: the highpoints may be nothing much to look at, but the people can be really cool.
From here we continued east into the Houston area. There were no more highpoints for today (12-21-04). We spent that night visiting Beth's brother and his family. The weather had deteriorated into heavy rains that evening and night, setting the stage for tomorrow's batch of highpoints, starting with Hardin County...
We awoke today to heavy rain, starting our drive from our hotel in Baytown. The eventual plan was to get ourselves to Lafayette, Louisiana, with a few county (and parish) highpoints along the way to break up the drive and amuse us. The heavy rain kiboshed a bunch of possibilities immediately since we didn't want to deal with muddy roads. We also inspected the Chambers County highpoint, but seeing it was behind some big oil refinery fencing, passed on by without stopping.
We continued north and east along highways US-190 and FM-787 to a small town called Marvels, then from there into the thicket forest near the "Big Thicket" retreat and what is supposed to be a town called Fuqua. All we saw was a series of dirt roads bladed into the forest. Presumably, one could buy plots of land and do whatever they wanted to do. Some built nice big homes, some had small trailers towed on, some were just piled high in trash, and some were blank. The Hardin County highpoint is just a small bump along the Liberty County line, which runs in a diagonal through the townsite. We followed Bill Jacobs' directions, which were very good, and we found the presumed highpoint location in no time.
The highpoint is a tiny hump of land fronted by two side roads and covered in a thicket of dog-hair trees and vines. The rain started to fall heavier and we made two or three very brief, very wet and scratchy headlong rushes into the trees to get within the highpoint contour. This we felt was sufficient, and the wet weather was not motivating us to stick around longer. Also, the whole area was really creepy and we were just glad to get moving. Beth creatively dubbed this "town" as Scaryville Mud City.
We continued from here into Allen Parish (LA) and the rest of Louisiana, where we spent Christmas, had some snow, visited plantations, petted kitties, celebrated Beth's birthday, highpointed and had a generally merry time. After nearly a week, we re-entered Texas and took care of one more highpoint before the long drive home.
After nearly two weeks on the road, Beth and I were getting ready for the long drove back to our home in Arizona. We had spent a week in Louisiana, starting today at Lake Claiborne State Park, where we spent the night camping at their fine sites. The plan today was simply to pile on a whole bunch of miles westward, with a vague plan to be on the west side of the Dallas-Fort Worth megalopolis by day's end. I hoped to make short detours along the way to bag a few more highpoints. We looked at two in Lousiana: Bossier and Caddo Parishes, the two most northwesterly parishes in the state. We had to pass on Bossier due to the high number of hunters we came upon while driving in the area, while on Myra Mountain in Caddo Parish, Beth stayed in the truck and I made a wan attempt to hike the half-mile amid brush to the highpoint, turning back when I came upon what looked like a decrepit residence, the kind I don't want to chance finding out about more. We did manage to have a bit of amusement visiting the Louisiana-Texas-Arkansas state tricorner before entering into Texas.
We had good luck with the Cass County highpoint, located on the county's west side in the Cusseta Mountains about 7 miles west of Douglassville. We found the local county roads easy to find but bumpy to follow. The top of the range features some communications towers so a decent dirt road goes all the way up. We drove on up, parked and went into the brush and trees a bit to seek out the actual highest point. We found a few candidate areas and called it good after a few minutes. The weather was kind of cool and breezy. The whole journey took about 45 minutes and given what we needed to, we didn't stay long.. The rest of the day was spent getting as far west as Mineral Wells, where we stayed the night.
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(c) 2004 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |