History
Brazos Bend State Park occupies land bordering the Brazos River and includes within its boundaries low-lying areas left over from the River's previous meanderings. Pre-Columbian inhabitants included a series of Native American groups, most notably the Karankawa. The land passed through a variety of landowners' hands, resulting in some of the existing structures on the Park grounds, including a brick cistern built with slave labor. The Park's current nature center is built into a structure previously utilized as a hunting cabin. Over the years, improvements were made to the various water bodies in the Park for both recreational and flood management purposes. A low-elevation levied walkway surrounds the perimeter of some of the larger water bodies (Elm Lake, 40 Acre Lake, etc.). While significant modifications were made to the land within the Park in the past, the current management strategy is to allow, in balance with the recreational elements of the Park's mission, the maintenance of a natural landscape. In 1984 the Park was officially opened to the public, its lands having been donated to the state several years previously. In 2009, the Park celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a variety of special events and recognitions. Today the Park is run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, with the assistance of an active non-profit volunteer organization.
Read more about this topic: Brazos Bend State Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)