What Lies Beneath

By Bennett Owen

Do we really need any more evidence that everything’s big in Texas? Those million acre fires may be out but the drought that fueled them lingers in THE worst and longest dry spell the Lone Star State has ever recorded. A friend near Austin laments she usually has the fireplace roaring at Thanksgiving … this year the air conditioner was still on full blast.

One unforeseen silver lining is that history is revealing itself throughout the region as man-made lakes recede in the face of the very drought conditions they were supposed to ameliorate. And so, long forgotten villages like Bluffton are revealed for a short while.

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Follow this link to see a video of Bluffton.

This gravestone marks the burial plot of a boy who died just short of his first birthday in 1882.

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Further north, Lake Texoma has dried up enough to expose Old Woodville, Oklahoma…

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An historic railroad town, legend has it that Bonnie and Clyde attended the cock fights here, camping out at a place called Washita Point –

Bonnie and Clyde, March 1933. Credit: Wikipedia

A retreating reservoir in Navarro County, south of Dallas has uncovered an antebellum slave cemetery…

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And along the southwest border, Falcon Lake has receded enough that the ghost town of Guerrero Viejo is accessible, including its impressive church, Nuestra Señora del Refugio. Unfortunately, it’s also virtually a no-go area due to the drug cartels. Please go to the website for more incredible images.

Credit: hectorastorga.wordpress.com

Credit: hectorastorga.wordpress.com

Seems sometimes it’s just one dam thing after another.  In my part of the world, the Clark Canyon Reservoir sits atop what used to be Armstead, Montana, a rough and tumble outpost that, in the early decades of the 20^th century, had bragging rights as the biggest cattle shipping point on the Union Pacific Railroad.  Cattlemen out on Horse Prairie, the Big Hole, the Grasshopper, Blacktail and Centennial would trail their herds into Armstead for loading on a one-way eastward journey to the great feedlots and slaughterhouses of Chicago.    

Credit: NPRHA

One of Armstead’s honored residents was a champion rodeo rider named Alvin Owen who worked four jobs during the depression to keep his wife and two sons fed and who once beat a man to a bloody pulp for calling him a liar, the worst of all insults.  That gave rise to his youngest son’s oft-repeated threat, “be careful what you say or my Daddy will beat the hell outta you!” 

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Soft spoken, affable, yet resolute, Alvin Owen went on to found a trucking company that supported Southwest Montana’s economy for well over half a century.  His legacy lives on, though not too many people could pinpoint Armstead anymore. 

Credit: Smokstak

What I remember of the town is limited to the Hershey Bars I’d get at the general store when we drove out for a visit. By the time I was six we were riding over the town in an outboard motorboat. A couple of times since then, water levels have dropped enough to reveal parts of the old highway, the railroad bed and some building foundations. But what’s scarce in Texas is plentiful in Montana. So for now at least, Armstead remains buried in a watery grave.

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