501 Ranch Spa and Retreat, Ranch, Hunting

SABINAL Canyon

BY GREG WALTON

... a treasure in the Texas Hill Country

The Sabinal River Canyon, like many of the river canyons of the Southern Edwards Plateau, is a beautiful and unique place. It lies along the southern edge of the Texas Hill Country, in the transition zone between the Edwards Plateau to the north and the South Texas Plain to the south.

Topographically, one could consider the Edwards Plateau to be the southern edge of the Great Plains. Limestone is brittle stuff, and when the Balcones Escarpment was formed, the uplifted edges splintered and quickly began to erode, creating hills, ridges and deep canyons. It has been suggested by some that the Texas Hill Country could more accurately be named the Texas Canyon Country. Much of what we assume to be upthrust hills are in fact uneroded fragments of the Edwards Plateau, long limestone ramparts reaching south before they disappear entirely. It is the canyons which represent dramatic geological processes, not the “hills.”

Underground streams soon found their way to the surface, creating springs and rivers. In this way the watersheds of the Devil’s, Nueces, Frio, Sabinal, Medina and Guadalupe Rivers were formed. Moisture from the Gulf, encountering the Escarpment, is sent skyward, only to return as torrential rainstorms. The canyons themselves developed steep sides and a flat fertile bottom generally on a north/south axis.

The land in the Sabinal Canyon is broken into medium and small-scale agriculture operations and undisturbed woodland pastures. Many old ranches are still in the hands of families who originally settled them.

Hub Thompson (1901-1991) whose grandparents were the first white family in all of the Southern Hill Country, recounts, “To settle this part of Texas all you had to do was fight the Comanche, the bears and the wolves, survive the floods and outlast the droughts, and the land was yours”.

As in many small communities in Texas, the people here, the history and the natural environment are inextricably bound together.

We who know this land, most of us anyway, recognize that we are not the first culture here, and we won’t be the last. For 20,000 years or more native people explored these same canyons and streams, hilltops and springs. They hunted and fished and cherished this area as we do today. They left middens, cook stoves, tools, weapons, bones and skeletons behind, as they made their homes here. No doubt they admired the trees and river, the sunsets and serenity we too appreciate. Likely it was as sacred to them as it is to us. We carry that knowledge with us, and it becomes yet another reason for protecting and preserving this landscape.

The most remarkable tree here, though, and the one for which the river was named, is the bald cypress (taxodium distichum), or “Sabinal” in Spanish.

As the early Spanish explorers made their way east across Texas in the sixteenth century, they named each of the rivers and creeks for its dominant feature. The Nueces was named for the abundant nut (pecan) trees, the Frio for its cold, spring water. Further east one finds Seco (Dry) Creek and then Hondo (Deep) Creek. The Sabinal River was named for the large stands of bald cypress.

In the Spanish language an individual cypress tree might be called a sabino, but when one is referring to a large group of them the Spanish language attaches an “al” to the end of the word, converting Sabino into Sabinal. The bald cypress is the tallest tree

See SABINAL CANYON, page 64