| Abstract: | The Big Thicket of East Texas, which at one time covered over 2,000,000 acres, served as a barrier to civilizations throughout most of historic times. It was an inhospitable, inaccessible region, uninhabited even by the Native Americans. The Indians who lived on its fringes only ventured into the thicket to hunt. Early Spanish colonists in East Texas also avoided this region. The Spanish instead established their missions on the northern and southern extremes of the thicket. The Big Thicket became something of a no-man's land in the early Nineteenth Century. Fugitives from justice, run-away slaves, and the rugged hunter and trapper who resented civilization, all sought refuge in the thicket. But over the next half-century an assault on this virgin wilderness began in earnest. First came the great migration of American settlers, followed by the railroads, timber companies, and oil producers. Each group whittled away a portion of the Big Thicket. By the 1920's much of the Big Thicket wilderness had been destroyed by timber firms and oil producers. Fortunately in 1927, R. E. Jackson, a railroad conductor whose daily route carried him through portions of the Big Thicket, formed the East Texas Big Thicket Association with the specific purpose of saving over 400,000 acres of the region. However, a lack of funds and the timber demands of World War II killed the project. Jackson's Association limped along and eventually expired in the 1950's.. |
|---|