December Holiday Party

Pool Session Report

October Meeting Minutes
by Robert Langley

Trip Reports

Morgan's Birthday
by Cecilia Gill

Pecos River - a Brief
by Donna Grimes

Canoe Kind of Guy

Buffalo Bayou's Concrete Channel

by Louis F. Aulbach

In 1966, oilman George Mitchell and Terry Hershey organized the Bayou Preservation Association in order to prevent the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers from implementing their plan to channelize Buffalo Bayou with concrete from Shepherd Drive to downtown. Mitchell and Hershey enlisted the newly elected U.S. Representative George H. W. Bush in their cause, and the three of them were instrumental in saving Buffalo Bayou from the fate that befell the other bayous in Houston. Yet, an earlier concrete channelization of Buffalo Bayou in the downtown area goes unnoticed and is largely unknown today.

In 1927, the City began clearing and straightening Buffalo Bayou. Its banks were graded so that bulkheads and retaining walls would keep the bayou within its new course. The plan was to remove the sharp hairpin curve between Texas Avenue and Smith Street, and re-direct the bayou in a smoother bend as it flowed toward Main Street.

The original course, which curved to the east nearly half way through the blocks between Texas Avenue and Preston Avenue, was filled and a new channel was cut. Concrete retaining walls were installed along both the south and the north banks. The retaining wall on the north side from Preston Avenue to Smith Street started at fifteen feet high. Then, as the bayou's course turned east at Franklin Avenue, the retaining wall rose to a height of forty feet. The re-channelization was completed in 1928.

The accompanying diagram shows how the re-channelization permitted the City to recover property in City Blocks 40, 60 and 61 by filling in the old channel of the bayou and the large gully that extended to Smith Street in Blocks 60 and 61. The new Farmer's Market, which opened on March 21, 1929, was constructed on these recovered City blocks. The City also obtained the land in Block 38 through imminent domain.

The Farmer's Market was demolished in 1958, and the Wortham Center occupies the site today. The Tranquility Garage is located beneath the Wortham Center. The devastating flooding of Tranquility Garage and the adjacent underground areas in downtown during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 resulted from a breach in the retaining wall at Tranquility Garage. One has to wonder of the bayou was simply seeking its natural course, which the topography of the land has dictated, and the full force of the flood waters sought to return to the old channel.

The retaining wall along the north side of the bayou has proved to be much more enduring. Reaching a height of forty feet above the bayou, this wall has provided a level base for the extension of Franklin Avenue to Washington Avenue and a parking lot for the U. S. Post Office, today, and Grand Central Station which occupied the site previously.

At the corner Franklin Avenue and Brazos Street stands the George Bush Monument. Ironically, the statue of the man who helped save Buffalo Bayou from becoming a concrete drainage ditch from Shepherd Drive to downtown overlooks the only section of Buffalo Bayou that has been channelized with concrete.