Hiking at Cooper Lake State Park

A few weeks ago my wife and I traveled to Cooper Lake State Park and hiked several of the walking trails there. The state park, which was established recently, is a beautiful, natural area. The sounds and smell of the forests gave me energy that I rarely experience in civilization. And the man-made lake was calm and oozed an atmosphere of peace (an emotion I needed to feel after a stressful week at work). As we hiked and observed the many small critters that jumped out at us (and then quickly ran away) and colorful plants that brightly shined in photographs, my wife and I fell in love with one of Texas's wonderful oasis's. (below is a brief history of the Texas State Parks)

Overlooking the man-made lake at Cooper Lake State Park...such a beautiful scene.

The North American continent, especially Texas, exhibits many different geographical landscapes (plains, deserts, mountains, rolling hills, lakes, rivers, and flatlands). The Native Americans lived off the riches of land, growing corn and other crops that they could eat for dinner while hunting bison and large game for food and warmth. When the European settlers arrived in the seventeenth century, they faced the wilderness with anxiety yet a strong intention to use the land to their advantage. The rivers were utilized for trade and commerce, while the railroads that snaked across the Great Plains provided transportation for people and mail. However, as the American people moved out west in the nineteenth century, fulfilling their Manifest Destiny proposal, the large areas of nature gradually eroded. Soon, great quantities of animals, including the beloved bison, were threatened with extinction, and the future of American and Texan wildlife looked uncertain. The people of Texas were not entirely blind to the situation at hand; in the early 1860s, the Legislature passed laws to protect fish and other river wildlife against commercial killing. National concern for wildlife ensured, and many citizens feared that the death of American nature would be the extermination of their nation's greatness. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant, in response to the growing alarm, signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law, establishing one of the largest natural national parks in the United States. This law protected two million acres of geysers, vibrant landscapes and mountain wilderness, and thousands of creatures. Later, President Teddy Roosevelt used his sole executive power to create eighteen national monuments, including the Petrified Forest, Mesa Verde, and the Grand Canyon.

The Alamo church and long barracks in San Antonio were preserved by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas at the start of the twentieth century. The church had been a storage facility for Union soldiers after the Civil War. 

No Texas monuments or parks were established during the Roosevelt administration because, unlike other western states, Texas had retained control of its public lands when it was annexed to the United States in 1845. Only Texans could decide what they wanted to do with their sparkling lands. In 1907, a group of Texas women from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas organization mobilized a spirited campaign and persuaded the state legislature to buy more than 300 acres of the San Jacinto battlefield. This move was followed by successful efforts to reinstate preservation methods at the Fannin and Gonzales battlefields, Alamo long barracks, and Washington-on-the Brazos, where Texas's Declaration of Independence was signed. These were the first state parks in Texas. When Governor Pat Neff came to power in 1920, the story of Texas's state parks came to fruition. Neff, a politician who had a deeper commitment to the Texas outdoors, persuaded his colleagues in the Texas House and Senate to create a active State Parks Board. In a 1925 speech, Neff remarked that "pioneers have rarely recognized the value of play" but a parks system would afford a place where people "might go and forget the anxiety and strife and vexation of life's daily grind." Soon after, he traveled 8,000 miles to promote the state parks concept to Texas communities, large and small. The handsome, talented politician regarded this action as his most important achievement as governor. 

The inaugural State Parks Board in 1924 included (L-R) David E. Colp, Phoebe Warner, Governor Pat Neff, Mrs. W.C. Martin, Bob Hubbard, Mrs. James Waelder, and Hobert Key. Neff's political foes vocalized their opposition to the governor's state parks plan, citing that he had "never fired a gun or baited a hook" on Texas lands.

David Colp, an automobile dealer hailing from San Antonio, was named the chairman of the six-person State Parks Board. As an experienced lobbyist who had managed several large highway projects in the past, Colp knew how to get things done, swiftly and inexpensively and effectively. He worked with the governor and many other women organizations to raise money and public support for the new projects. The board quickly brainstormed ideas on locations for their proposed beautiful parks. Isabella Neff, the governor's mother and a vocal supporter of the nature preservation movement, had convinced her son to establish a state park at a small pecan grove along the Leon River prior to her death in 1921. Governor Neff deeded 250 acres of land south of Waco in Central Texas and opened the Mother Neff State Park in 1937. Despite some initial success and state wildlife conservation increasing, the State Parks Board struggled to gain a footing in the government during the late 1920s due to lack of funding; the Board members diligently served without pay for many years. By the 1930s, the State Parks Board was a tiny, forgotten agency. Other bigger, more-pressing matters occupied politics.

"All completed after a hard day of work!" CCC laborers finish digging a well at Big Bend State Park, 1934. More American men were enrolled in the CCC than in the Army at the end of the decade.

When the Great Depression hit Texas in the early 1930s, unemployment steadily rose and young men faced a fear no man would like to live through: how to feed your family at the dinner table each night. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a former New York governor, became president in 1933 and speedily introduced a line of progressive federal agencies and programs that would reestablish the thriving economy and get the American people back to work. The New Deal revitalize American hopes. One of these agencies, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), was created on April 5, 1933, four weeks after the president had taken his seat in the Oval Office. The CCC leadership had an ambitious goal: to put 275,000 men to work by July 1. The CCC hired engineers, landscape designers, architects, and skilled craftsmen to work on state parks and infrastructure projects. Mass tree plantings and digging water wells were common projects at the Texas state parks. It is amazing to study New Deal programs because FDR's tireless actions quickly paved the way for thousands of unemployed citizens to get back on their feet and back at work (and at the same time appreciating the beauty of Texas's state parks). America's stable economy suddenly boomed at the offset of World War II in 1939 (although the nation did not officially enter the war until December 1941 after the Pearl Harbor attack). The state parks in Texas, including cabins, barracks, and flatlands, were used by military officers and soldiers-in-training. Also, the Texas legislature gave the Big Bend State Park deed to the federal government on June 6, 1944 (the day of the D-Day Invasions in Europe); Roosevelt greatly admired the stunning lands in West Texas.

John Connally, governor of Texas between 1963 and 1969, expanded the state parks.

The Texas state parks endured the dark days of WWII and the Great Depression. Yet, the dangers were far from over...the Panhandle faced a expansive drought in the 1950s; particularly, Lubbock's dry spells were bad (the city did not receive a trace of rain in the year 1952). Moreover, Hurricane Carla in 1961, labeled the most intense U.S. tropical cyclone landfill by weather scientists, devastated the Texas coast and plains, including the state parks. Brighter times appeared beyond the horizon for the state parks when Governor John Connally established the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in 1963, an agency that would oversee all environmental projects and existing organizations, including the Game and Fish Commission. Also, Connally proposed a larger budget for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and larger state parks near urban, highly-populated centers to boost tourism and attract out-of-state business to Texas. He succeeded in both goals. The number of state parks next to larger cities increased, and there was a number of dramatic improvements to the facilities at existing state parks, including new restrooms, shelters, fishing piers, water tanks and picnic areas. Following the passage of Texan LBJ's Civil Rights Act of 1964, the state parks desegregated and opened their opportunities to colored folks. The number of citizens that visit Texas's gorgeous state parks increases each year; there is an active appetite to explore the vast, splendid landscapes the Lone Star State has to offer. My wife and I have also star-gazed a couple of times at Cooper Lake State Park; and since we turned off our lights and were in the pitch dark, we were able to see many of the constellations on a clear night, including Orion, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper. The stars were alluring and a perfect way to end an incredible night. If you ever swing by a city or town in Texas, consider also visiting a neighboring state park, where I promise you will enjoy admiring Mother Nature and lose yourself in a world of bliss and peace.

Dog prints on one of the trails at Cooper Lake State Park. (I know my dog would love to chase the squirrels at the park!)

The hiking trails at Cooper Lake State Park are safe and clearly labeled.

There are many plants at Cooper Lake State Park; the Texas countryside is beautiful!

Cooper Lake State Park also offers shelters and camp sites.

"The greatest happiness possible to a man...is to become civilized, to know that pageant of the past, to love the beautiful, to have just ideas of values and proportions, and then, retaining his animal spirits and appetites, to live in a wilderness."  - J. Frank Dobie