Unlike any other park, Chamizal memorializes diplomacy. When the Rio Grande shifted course at the end of the 1800’s, it created an island and a seven decade long border dispute with Mexico. President Kennedy went to Mexico to finalize an agreement, and LBJ later participated in the joint ceremony at the border here. There’s a beautiful mural on the visitor’s center, and I remember from a previous visit that there’s a film that explains the importance inside.
Above the fireplace mantle in the sitting room where LBJ’s mother used to entertain guests is this rather macabre image of a skull. Only after the ranger told me that it was an optical illusion, could I see the image of a young woman looking at her reflection in her dresser mirror. The lesson for Lyndon was to look deeper and try to see things differently. His father was a state representative and taught him the art of politics. His wife, Ladybird, financed his campaign, and under tragic circumstances he becomes President.
The park film on LBJ’s legacy is a bit old but excellent, with recordings from Ladybird Johnson, Vernon Jordan and others. It’s difficult to imagine a time when a Democratic President could win in a landslide on a campaign based on Civil Rights and government spending to alleviate poverty. It also seems strange now to think that his downfall would be being too hawkish militarily in Vietnam. How much the country has changed since then. I wonder what would have been his legacy if LBJ had looked at things differently and decided to abandon the war instead of escalate. Perhaps he would not have withdrawn his candidacy and could have continued his ‘great society’ initiatives.
The first and most famous mission on the San Antonio River was San Antonio de Valero, better known as the Alamo, which is owned by Texas and managed by a non-profit. I grew up thinking of the Alamo as a fort, but it was a Franciscan mission, first of a chain built along the river with irrigation aqueducts, ranches, orchards, farms and homes. The riverwalk that connects the World Heritage missions is a pleasant place to explore the architecture, history, and culture of the area that’s known as the heart of Texas. Alamo actually means ‘poplar’ and refers to the Cottonwood trees along the banks.
Unlike their experience with the Pueblo Revolt at Pecos and across what’s now New Mexico and Arizona, here the Spanish missionaries largely completed their religious conversion and integration of most local Native Americans, aided by intermarriage over time. In return for Catholicism, disease and obedience to the crown, Native Americans built these missions, worked in the fields and defended their new communities. In the early 1800’s Napoleon invaded Spain and put his brother on the throne, opening the door to the independence of Mexico. By 1824, Mexico was a federal Republic and the missions were secularized.
General Santa Anna had trouble maintaining control of Mexico’s northern states. American merchants sold guns to the Comanche, and then the American settlers blamed the Mexican government for not defending against Comanche raids. The Mexican government insisted that settlers convert to Catholicism and tried to ban slavery, but American colonizers like Stephen Austin promised 80 acres of land for each slave new settlers brought. Slavery was an underlying reason for the Texas Revolution, as the settlers could use them to grow cotton and didn’t want the Mexican government to halt the immoral practice. Texas statehood legalized slavery, which subsequently boomed, and then they seceded and joined the confederacy.
While I grew up hearing heroic stories of Davy Crockett, it’s impossible to ignore the legacy of both Native American and slave exploitation represented by the Alamo, first as a Spanish mission and then as a rallying cry for Texas and for slavery. The Alamo website portrays pro-slavery Texan founders Stephen Austin and Sam Houston as freedom fighters for liberty and ignores the people they enslaved. Lying to our children about the dark truth of the founding of Texas is deeply wrong, perpetuates the injustice of racism, and prevents atonement and reparations. I did not visit the Alamo.
The ranger blamed Clinton for choosing the overly long name of the site, and he also explained why some Presidents get public sites and some stay private. Mostly it depends on what the family and community decide. Truman’s family donated their home, and the community here in Hope started trying to turn this house into a national park site as soon as Clinton was elected. The park is still developing as the Clintons are very much still living. One tip, unless you’re interested in the history of a particular brand of cone-shaped speakers, ignore the “open” sign at the large yellow house next to the parking lot and head through the black iron gate in the corner.
Since it is open to tours, including the upstairs which was closed during Covid, you can stand in the living room, amid mementos arranged by Clinton’s mother, and listen to the poignant story of Clinton’s early childhood. His father, a WWII veteran, traveled to Chicago for work and died in a car accident driving back here, never meeting his son. His step-father was an abusive louse, who Bill kicked out of the house when he grew large enough. To spare his younger half-brother Roger from any embarrassing questions about their mixed family, Bill changed his last name to Clinton, despite how he felt about his step-father. There’s not much evidence of Clinton’s life there, beyond a book, a letter from Georgetown and the neighborhood itself, which still has the low railroad crossing nearby where young Bill used to listen to the trains go by and wonder if he was ever going anywhere.
There was a storm coming when I took this photo of the Overseer’s House on Oakland Plantation which may help convey the dark, menacing sense of the place. I visited Magnolia Plantation years ago with my kids, and I remember the slave huts. This plantation illustrates a later period when most farms employed day laborers, but here they still had tenant farmers. The ranger euphemistically explained that they were technically “day laborers who just happened to live on the plantation”. The sign on the iron gate dates Oakland to 1821, but that’s just when the cotton plantation was renamed. The French first used slaves to plant cotton here in the 1790’s.
This tragically moving site has poor signage, marking several places you can’t park but no entry sign for the actual parking lot around back. So I ended up driving around more than expected, and I noticed some African Americans living in run-down shacks right down the street from large new plantation-style homes complete with landscaped grounds, wrap-around porches and white colonnades. I think it shows an abysmal lack of sensitivity to or remorse over the centuries of mistreatment of slaves and laborers to intentionally choose to live in a plantation style house here, especially before investing in decent housing for the descendants of the victims.
Over three thousand years ago, Native Americans built something massive here with over five million man-hours of labor. I took the photo from the top of the largest bird-shaped mound built over 700 feet wide and 70 feet high. There are additional mounds in a north-south line as well as a series of three parallel ridges, forming an octagonal plaza 3/4 of a mile wide. Tools found here show that materials came from all over the greater Mississippi watershed. Artifacts show refined stonework, fired clay crafts, beads, and detailed figurines. Topography and excavation show signs of a quarry, dock, swales and a causeway, demonstrating sophisticated engineering techniques and planning for the Late Archaic. The north-south lines suggest calendar knowledge, perhaps for agriculture.
This park is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and is managed by Louisiana which charges a small fee, despite also being a NPS unit. I doubt many Americans are familiar with this site, which dates back to the Shang Dynasty in China, the first Dynasty of Babylon, the expansion of Egypt and the Ancient Greeks. Certainly it belittles the lie that the Native Americans never built anything.
Flooding has always been an issue here. French traders established the first trading post near here in 1686, buying pelts from the Quapaw and shipping them down the Mississippi. They build a fort, which is abandoned due to flooding. Then they build another nearby and again move due to flood. After the French and Indian War, the Spanish take over the fur trade and reestablish a fort on the original location. The French get it back and then sell the whole “Louisiana” territory to the US. The post is briefly an important territorial capital, but the Union shells the confederates here during the Civil War destroying much of the town. And what’s left over becomes a backwater as the Arkansas River shifts away in 1912 and the remnants slowly erode into the bayous.
The photo shows the Little Post Bayou in the foreground and the Arkansas River in the background. With climate change increasing flooding broadly, the River has now risen again, reconnecting with the Post. Most of the history is now underwater, including French, Spanish, British, Native American and Civil War battlegrounds. But some foundations remain, along with subtle signs of confederate trenches in the woods. The post is a wonderful place to view wildlife, with many geese, a few deer, a red headed woodpecker, alligators, and a snowy egret on a tiny island in a little lake. The ranger, who loves wildlife, repeatedly assured me that the alligators here were adorable loving creatures and perfectly safe for people. I kept my distance from the large one I spotted.
Okay, the photo is crooked. But in a way, that’s appropriate. As the ranger Randy explained, “there’s more than you know” here. Turns out, the school board took all the public school funds, gave them to the all white school, and told the African American community to build their own school on their own. So that’s why this is considered one of the finest looking schools in the country, because of racism and theft.
The Supreme Court may have ordered schools to desegregate, but many local school districts did everything they could to resist. As ranger Randy said, “you need to ask why there were only nine”, referring to the Little Rock Nine. In fact, there were many more than nine African American students in the district, but the school board put all kinds of restrictions on who could get in to the white school: you needed a 3.8 GPA, you weren’t allowed to participate in any extra-curricular activities, and you could neither report nor retaliate to bullying. They specifically designed the rules to reduce the number of black students to a small few who they could force into quitting.
The mob arrived first. The nine were told to arrive later and meet nearby. Well, all except for Elizabeth Eckford, who didn’t have a phone. She went right up to the door, surrounded by a hateful and threatening mob and was met by the National Guard. She expected the soldiers to protect her and let her pass, but they had been ordered by the governor to block any of the nine black students from entering. Confused and alone, she walked back to the bus stop and waited, enduring constant torment from the racist mob.
The case goes to Federal court, which disallows the Guard from blocking the students. The police try to defend the nine, but there’s a riot. Finally, Eisenhower nationalizes the Arkansas National Guard and sends in the 101st Airborne to escort the students inside more than three weeks after school began. The students endure physical and verbal abuse daily all year. The governor closes all the schools. The voters approve it. The Federal court declares that unconstitutional. And eventually, black students make it through to graduation.
Perhaps the racists thought that it would be easier to intimidate the smart kids, but they fully understood what was happening, why it was important that they didn’t give up and why they still shouldn’t give up.
Wilderness exploration is nice, but I really enjoyed spending a couple nights here to rest and look for inspiration. Unfortunately I couldn’t literally recharge, as the nearest supercharger is in Little Rock, and I doubted my hotel would let me run an extension cord out into the parking lot. The entire area is full of hills, forests and lakes, but the downtown area is unique, being both historic and still thriving. There are fancy restaurants, stylish hotels, and, of course, bathhouse row. There seems to have been a few boom & bust cycles that created a few winners, some losers and some interesting adaptations. The longest running, original and most traditional bathhouse is Buckstaff. I’m up early, but there was already a line outside when I walked past, as they don’t take reservations. Maybe I’ll come back someday for a spa treatment. For now, it’s enough to just wander around, put my hands in the hot water public fountains, peer in the shop windows, admire the Art Deco and other architecture and hike up the hill into the trees.
I love this statue. Carver was born at the end of the Civil War and was kidnapped and orphaned by the Klan. His mother’s owners retrieved him and raised him here, where he studied the plants near the creek as a child. He was educated mainly in Kansas, despite racial barriers, and eventually became the first African American to graduate from his school. His manner was mild, but he demonstrated great determination in the face of poverty, adversity and prejudice.
Recognized for his extensive scientific knowledge of botany and for being a groundbreaking African American scientist, he was hired to teach at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee University. His goal was to help the least in society, so he worked on modernizing agricultural techniques used by African American farmers, even bringing a cart from the university out to the fields to teach, a technique copied by the US Department of Agriculture. He published many books and pamphlets, developed patented techniques and is best remembered for developing the lowly peanut into a highly profitable series of products. He testified to Congress about the peanut and scientific agricultural techniques and was widely recognized for his many accomplishments.
I know Carver is an inspirational figure admired for overcoming obstacles, but I can’t help but wonder how many others were denied even the limited opportunities he had. Slavery existed here for 244 years, with 10 million sent across the Atlantic and maybe another 10 million born into slavery here. None of them were properly educated. None had the freedom to pursue their dreams. And all died without being able to fully contribute their talents and ideas to improve the world. How many young, inquisitive minds were destroyed by slavery? How much human enlightenment was snuffed out to pick cotton? Carver was one of the first born after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and he spent his life making the world a better place for all of us. But I can’t help but mourn the incalculable loss of all the other people during those 244 years and after who could have contributed as well or even more.
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