Assessing Climate’s Effect on Americans

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED, A Journey Through Texas (1854)

Few Americans are as closely associated with the idea of a cultivated landscape as Frederick Law Olmsted. As a landscape architect, he designed Central Park in New York City to provide visitors with a calming and contemplative space apart from the urban world just beyond its borders. In the 1850s, Olmsted undertook a research tour of the South and published the results in several volumes, including A Journey Through Texas. Here, Olmsted describes the role of environment, geography, and climate as factors shaping the west Texas region he visited.

That part of Western Texas lying near the Rio Grande, has a character of its own. It is a region so sterile and valueless, as to be commonly reputed a desert, and, being incapable of settlement, serves as a barrier — separating the nationalities, and protecting from encroachment, at least temporarily, the retreating race.

The extreme Texan settlements have reached the verge of this waste region. A line drawn from the head of the San Saba southward, to the upper waters of the Guadalupe, thence westward, along the mountain-range bordering the sterile plains, to the head of the Leona at Fort Inge, thence along the course of the Leona, the Frio, and the Nueces to the coast, will mark the limits of valuable land, of probable agricultural occupation.

Along the coast lies a sandy tract, with salt lagoons and small, brackish streams. This is the desert country, which became familiar to our army on its way from Corpus to Point Isabel, at the outbreak of the Mexican war in 1846. It merges into the level coast prairies which, forty to sixty miles inland, become undulating and covered with a growth of prickly shrubs, upon a dry, barren, gravelly soil. The same character, with trifling variations, belongs to the whole region as far north as the Pecos, where the sterility becomes so great, that even the dwarfed shrubs disappear as the country rises into the great plains.

The coast prairies have large districts of fertile soil, and, if supplied with water, might be available as pastures for rough cattle and sheep; but water is only to be found in gullies and holes, where it is not only muddy and of bad quality, but liable to disappear entirely during the heats of summer, when even the grass withers and dries up.…

The valley of the Nueces contains much rich land, but low-lying and malarious. The river is navigable for small steamboats for about forty miles. The bar of Corpus has about six feet of water.

The grassed region below the chaparral wilderness, extending to the coast, is the resort of immense herds of wild horses, as well as of numbers of deer, antelope, and hares. The mustangs are the degenerated progeny of Spanish estrays, now as wild and fully naturalized as the deer themselves. They associate in incredible numbers, like the buffaloes, a single herd sometimes covering a large tract, and, if frightened, rushing to and fro in sweeping lines, with the irresistible force of an army. From their numbers are recruited additions to the stocks of Texan and Mexican herdsmen, and the business of entrapping them has given rise to a class of men called “mustangers,” composed of runaway vagabonds, and outlaws of all nations, the legitimate border-ruffians of Texas. While their ostensible employment is this of catching wild horses, they often add the practice of highway robbery, and are, in fact, simply prairie pirates, seizing any Property that comes in their way, murdering travelers, and making descents upon trains and border villages. Their operations of this sort are carried on under the guise of savages, and, at the scene of a murder, some “Indian sign,” as an arrow-head or a moccasin, is left to mislead justice.

The wild horses are easily collected, by means of long fences, called “wings,” diverging on either side from the mouth of a “pen.” Having been driven within this, the mares of a herd are caught with the lasso, and the stallions, which do not repay breaking, turned loose or wantonly shot. Here and there a “ranch” is established, forming a temporary home and retreat for the “mustangers.” The herds probably suffer extremely in the dry season, and have been much injured during generations of exposure and hardship. They are narrow-chested, weak in haunches, and of bad disposition, and are worth about one tenth the price of improved stock, a herd tamed to be driven, selling, delivered at the settlements, at $8 to $15 per head. Many stories are told of the incurable viciousness of tamed mustangs. An old animal which you have ridden daily for twenty years, will, when his opportunity comes at last, suddenly jump upon you, and stamp you in pieces, his vengeance all the hotter for delay.

No part of the immense remaining territory towards the North, seems to possess the slightest value. It is a dry gravelly desert, supporting only worthless shrubs. Such was distinctly its character at the point where we crossed it, and from all the definite description we could obtain from officers who had led trains, or scouting parties, here and there over it, or Texans who had traversed the various routes into Mexico, it nowhere offers more attractive features. Should it become desirable to plant settlements within it, for reasons other than economical, probably a few spots might be selected, where a sufficiently good soil, with wood and water, exists for such a purpose, and it is also true, that our acquaintance with it is but limited and somewhat vague; for what one calls desert, another calls prairie, and what to one is pure sand or clay, to another is a light or heavy soil the impression depending much upon the soil the traveler has been accustomed to cultivate, as well as especially upon the season in which his observation is made.

The climate, which, throughout West Texas, begins to approach that of Mexico, has here become absolutely Mexican, and is marked by an extreme dryness — rain so seldom falling during the summer, that ordinary vegetation perishes for lack of moisture, leaving the soil to the occupation of such Bedouin tribes of vegetation as have the necessary powers of endurance.…

We saw this country in April, probably to the best advantage. Our road lay across a series of elevations, between the beds of insignificant brooks, tributaries of the Nueces. Several of these, dry in later months, contained now running water, and in their valleys, here and there, the gravelly soil was black, and grass was abundant beneath the shrubs, while upon the barren surface of the ridges, even the chaparral growth almost disappeared. The “bottoms” of two or three of these creeks were marked by a thin belt of wood, as hack-berry and elm, and those of the Nueces and of Turkey creek, its principal branch on our route, were well shaded by timber. But even at this season, pasturage was the only use that suggested itself for these lands, and this would be impracticable, where sheep would lose their whole fleece in the labyrinths of thorns, and cattle stray instantly out of sight, and beyond possible control.

There is, however, one circumstance which may ultimately lead to important modifications in the fate of this region. It is the fact that a change has recently been gradually manifesting itself in its meteorological conditions toward a steadily increasing amount of moisture. By common Mexican report the commencement of this change is coincident with American occupation. It is certainly, if well attested, a remarkable scientific phenomenon. In the settled districts of Western Texas, the evidence seems to have been so palpable as to have become a matter of common allusion. New springs were repeatedly pointed out to us; upon our route into the hills north of San Antonio, at least three or four such were met with, and we were told of a neighboring farm which, when purchased, had its only water from the river, while since, first one, and, subsequently, four perennial springs had broken out upon it, whose flow was steadily increasing. Around the city, irrigation, which, ten years before, had been indispensable, was almost entirely disused, the canals being suffered to fall out of repair, and all the farmers who have settled the vicinity trust their crops to the skies alone, as in the East. Our guide to the Rio Grande attested the fact, and observed that he had never before this trip found running water in the bed of one of the creeks (I think the Chican) which we crossed.

The volume of water in all the Texan rivers has been observed to be increasing, and a number of streams, whose flow, at intervals, has been subterranean, are said to fill their superficial beds. These facts connect themselves with an increased growth of trees and grass upon the plains. Julius Froebel reports having seen, near the Pecos, an abundant young growth of mesquit trees, beneath millions of old trunks which still stand, though they have been dead no one knows how long, while no intermediate growth exists, and among the present chaparral large stumps are not unfrequently to be found, indicating a former forest. We ourselves noticed a similar young growth of mesquit trees upon open prairies.

These phenomena are thought to be explained by the comparative rarity of fires since Americans entered the country. Hundreds of miles, formerly burned over each year by Indians, now escape, and the young seedlings, then destroyed, have had time, where this has occurred, to become strong enough to resist prairie flame. This growth retards evaporation as well as the instant flowing off of rain water, so that freshets are fewer and streams more steady, while the retained water furnishes vapor to the summer atmosphere, for precipitation, upon slighter causes. The theory connects itself with those upon the original formation of prairies, and must be left to the discussion of experts.

Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), 441–447.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS