| |
ROCK AROUND TEXAS
by Jim Steely, Chief Historian, Texas Historical Commission
While Texas may not display stonework of the combined age, mass
and astonishing dry joints at Machu Picchu in Peru, the state features
a fascinating diversity of the raw material from limestone seabeds
to granite uplifts. And as a result of fragile human hands marking
and shaping this hardest of natural resources for at least a thousand
years, Texas enjoys a seemingly endless variety of "rock art" both
in its prehistoric natural rock shelters and in the masonry art
of its more recent buildings and structures.
Spanish viceregal decisions in the 1700s to urbanize the San Antonio
River valley brought the European Renaissance directly to this corner
of the New World through master stone masons and their essential
metal hand tools. At San Fernando (later called San Antonio) and
La Bahia (later named Goliad) from the 1730s through 1770s, convenient
limestone quarries yielded lightweight tufa rocks for sturdy walls
and soft marl for fine carving. Priceless results of tossing sophisticated
Roman building traditions onto the Texas frontier can be contemplated
today at missions Conception (the most intact) and San Jose (the
most elaborate), at the Alamo (the most fateful), and at Goliad's
Espiritu Santo (the most refreshingly rural).
Frontier fort constructions of local stone represent some of the
best preserved post Spanish craftsmanship in Texas. The rock chimneys
of Fort Phantom Hill, optimistically mortared and stacked in the
early 1850s, survive as lone sentinels of a long abandoned defense
line on the plains north of Abilene. Higher budgets and standard
designs from Washington, D.C., characterized permanent fort facilities
after the Civil War, best seen at the stone ruins of forts Chadbourne
and Griffin, and at the marvelous restorations of forts Concho,
McKavett and Richardson. All these outposts of obsolete federal
policy and expert rockwork are featured along the Texas Forts Trail.
Railways in the 1880s allowed the industrial revolution to penetrate
deep into Texas, carrying unprecedented loads of people, materials
and information rapidly and regularly. No better example exists
of railroad technology's impact on "rock around Texas" than the
1882-88 State Capitol in Austin. As originally projected, the Capitol
was to be built entirely of limestone, brought by rail from a quarry
southwest of the city near Oak Hill. When that rock was found to
contain flecks of iron that rusted and stained freshly dressed stones,
attention shifted to Granite Mountain in Burnet County. A new railway
brought 16,000 carloads of "sunset red" granite more than 60 miles
to the construction site, where it formed the massive exterior walls
of the building. That Oak Hill limestone didn't go to waste, forming
most of the interior walls of the statehouse.
A statewide courthouse construction boom quickly spread the optimism
and artisanship of the Capitol project in the 1880s and 1890s around
the state. A combination of favorable taxing laws, robust economy,
arrival of stonemasons from distant lands, and expansion of the
railroads created a golden era for local "temples of justice" that
tapped the state's vast reserves of rock on a grand scale. Some
frugal courthouse budgets took advantage of local quarries, resulting
in stately limestone buildings at Albany, Granbury and Hillsboro.
Other projects paid for affordable rail transport of red sandstone
from the Pecos River valley out west all the way to San Antonio,
Sulphur Springs and Waxahachie. And a number of commissioners courts
sought to mirror the new granite State Capitol by exporting Burnet
County stone to Cuero, Fort Worth and Paris.
Further advancements in technology after 1900 resulted in cheaper
and lighter building structures of steel and concrete. But stone
remained a popular finish material, now sliced into thin veneers
and hung on geometric skeletons with clever hidden fasteners. Grand
public buildings, and even urban highrises, utilize this universal
system that might incorporate local limestone, as on the University
of Texas at Austin's Battle Hall of 1910; polished green granite
from who-knows-where, as on base of the 1918 skyscraper South Texas
Building in San Antonio; or dense limestone imported from Indiana,
as on the 1939 Federal Building in Galveston.
Texas rock remains a tremendously popular building material today,
evidenced by the bustling old quarry at Granite Mountain, and active
limestone mills dotting the Edwards Plateau. One of the oddest compliments
to the timeless beauty of stonework is the recent tendency of the
state's Department of Transportation to cast massive concrete retaining
walls into the pattern and texture of rough faced, random ashlar
rocks. Heritage tourists and seekers of Texas rock art are encouraged
to get off those gilded freeways and look for the real thing along
the state's blue highways and travel trails. Genuine Texas rock
is out there; it's a pleasure to admire, and to preserve.
Back to Publications
|
