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Chandra
Moira Beal's Splash
Across Texas
BARTON
SPRINGS & ZILKER PARK Page 2
Sunken
Gardens
1947 Bathhouse
The Environmental Debate
Maintenance
Endangered Barton Springs salamander
Philosophers' Rock
Pecan tree
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Barton
Springs, page 1
The
Sunken Gardens, enclosed by circular stones, was built between
1935-38 on the south side of the creek by the National Youth Administration.
This spring originally powered a mill, then an ice factory. The state's
first fish hatchery was established at Sunken Gardens. Most of the
walls have washed away and are in need of repair, but the spring still
flows. As of this writing, Sunken Gardens will probably be fenced
off to protect the Barton Springs salamanders.
A flood in 1935 left four inches of mud in the Barton Springs bathhouse
and washed away the Lake Austin Dam. Zilker Park was left under water
for days. A new bathhouse was built in 1947 for $180,000.
It was designed by Groos and Driscool, the same firm that designed
the Deep Eddy bathhouse. The 1947 bathhouse still stands and has large
open-air dressing rooms and grassy areas.
During World War II, soldiers wrote to their families about
fighting for Barton Springs. It was an Austin treasure. Little did
they imagine that the land around Barton Springs would develop rapidly
after the war. An environmental debate over the springs has
been raging since the late 1950s when the Parks and Recreation staff
noticed trash and dead animals in the runoff coming from the Barton
Hills subdivision, or what used to be the Rabb land, and high levels
of fecal coliform. In the 1960s, an environmental group formed and
began addressing these concerns with the Parks Department. A plan
for a greenbelt was drawn up but not built, yet the public showed
an interest in extending Zilker Park up Barton Creek. However, the
city didn't respond and valuable recharge areas in the aquifer were
rapidly developed. Robert Mueller was a locker boy and cashier at
Barton Springs. He offered to sell a portion of his land, about forty
to fifty acres on the south side of the creek from the pool up to
Campbell's Hole, buth the city declined to buy it. The city passed
up several opportunities to buy and protect the land surrounding Barton
Springs, and today it is an endangered natural resource. |
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Barton
Springs Pool
Photo courtesy Chandra Moira Beal, 2001 |
Barton
Springs does not use chlorine. Between 1929 and 1962, the pool was
drained twice per week and cleaned with copper sulfate to remove the
algae, which turned some of the rocks blue-green. In 1962, the city
stopped using chlorine; instead workers scrubbed it with giant steel
brushes pulled by tractors, then flushed it with water from a fire
hose. It takes forty-five minutes to drain the pool, and about two
hours to refill it. This practice continues today. The endangered
Barton Springs salamander survived the entire time that copper
sulfate was used to clean the pool. Sheffield has witnessed floods
that completely encircled the bathhouse, yet the vegetation always
grew back and helped make the water clear because it kept the silt
from being disturbed by swimmers. It is unlikely that the salamanders
are endangered by chemicals used in Barton Springs. More likely, fecal
coliform running off from development all around the springs is the
culprit. If fecal coliform counts are above 200 colonies per 100 milliliters
of water, and visibility is impaired by more than four feet, the pool
closes. The pool also closes as a precaution when there is thunder
and lightning, and if more than one inch of rain has fallen over the
Barton Creek watershed within twenty-four hours. Folks in Dripping
Springs at the headwaters will call ahead to warn us if flooding is
imminent. For more information, see the chapter on Organizations (page
337).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addendum:
Why is there algae in Barton Springs? Every day about noon, a bloom
of blue-green algae (oscillatoria) rises to the surface of Barton
Springs, turning the crystal clear waters into a murky soup. The City
of Austin has been required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
to change their maintenance procedures to protect the Barton Springs
Salamander (the salamander was recently added to the Endangered Species
List). Unless the pool's flow reaches at least 54 cubic feet per second,
maintenance workers cannot lower the pool water to clean. Average
flow is currently about 30 cfs. The last time workers were allowed
to clean the pool was May 18, 1999. This is a complicated, heated
issue. For the full story, see Robert Bryce's recent article:
http://www.auschron.com/issues/dispatch/2000-04-21/pols_feature7.html
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Philosophers'
Rock (Click on photo for plaque)
Photo courtesy Chia-Wei Wang, August 2006 |
The
1950s also saw the development of Philosophers' Rock. Roy Bedicheck,
a naturalist, J. Frank Dobie, a folklorist, and Walter Prescott Webb,
a historian, would gather on a flat rock near the diving board and
talk about an infinite number of things. John Henry Faulk, Walter
Bremond, and Skinny Pryor were known to drop in. A statue by Santa
Fe artist Glenna Goodacre at the main entrance to Barton Springs honors
these men. "If I have to fight for this country, I will not fight
for the flag, or the American 'way of life', or democracy, or private
enterprise or for any other abstractions, which seem cold as kraut
to me. But I will fight to the last ditch for Barton Creek, Boggy
Creek, cedar-covered limestone hills, blazing star and bluebonnets,
golden- cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos... This love of your
native land is basic." - Roy Bedicheck.
People often ask about the pecan tree directly across from
the diving board on the west side of the pool. No one knows exactly
but it is probably several hundred years old. In 1970 people feared
it would die so a backup tree was planted behind it. Support poles
were built around the original tree and the trunk gutted and rebuilt.
The older pecan tree finally succumbed but the stump was saved as
a lifeguard throne. Barton
Springs > more next page
Barton
Springs, Page 1
Copyright
Chandra Moira Beal and La Luna Publishing
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