The
hike and bike trail emerges from beneath the Franklin Avenue bridge on
the north side of Buffalo Bayou. As the trail winds along the bank, the
landscaped slope forms a small park which is accessible when the water
level of the Bayou is within its normal range. Ahead, we see the trail
go under the Milam Street bridge. This bridge is fairly modern. It was
built in 1947, but this crossing of Buffalo Bayou dates to the time
before the founding of the City of Houston.
As Stephen F. Austin worked to establish his colony in Texas in the 1820's, he encouraged the immigration of men of economic means such as Jared Groce. Groce transplanted his plantation from Alabama to the Brazos Valley near modern day Hempstead, and within a few years, Groce was producing quantities of cotton that could be exported from Texas. In the mid-1820's, Groce transported 100 bales of cotton to the junction of White Oak and Buffalo Bayou. Near what is now the Milam Street bridge, Groce and his crew forded the bayou. His wagons bumped along a trail hacked through underbrush and giant trees across the future site of Houston to Harrisburg where he loaded the cotton on John R. Harris's steam-powered barges for the trip to Galveston.
The importance of this "road" was not lost on the Allen brothers. In 1837, the town of Houston contracted with David Harrison to build a bridge across the bayou at this point. Augustus C. Allen donated the timbers and heavy planks for the bridge which was 300 feet long and was constructed at a cost of $1,500. The low wooden bridge at the foot of Milam Street was completed in October, 1838, and it was Houston's the first bridge over Buffalo Bayou. A bridge over the other important crossing of Buffalo Bayou at Preston Avenue was completed shortly afterwards in November, 1838.
The young town of Houston had to learn about the hydrology of Buffalo Bayou from the very beginning. A few months after its construction, the Milam Street bridge was damaged by a flood in February, 1839, and it had to be repaired by David Harrison. In the 1840's, a second bridge made of wood and concrete was built at the foot of Milam Street to accommodate the increase in commercial traffic into the city. That bridge was destroyed by the floods of October and November, 1843. Finally, about 1850, the bridge was replaced with a "little iron bridge" that served for a long time thereafter.
At the end of the
Civil War, an incident took place at the Milam Street bridge that would
have repercussions for the city for the next 140 (or more) years. The
story begins with John Kennedy, an Irish immigrant who came to Houston
in 1842 and opened a bakery. The young Kennedy was quite industrious
and soon expanded his business enterprises and land holdings in
Houston. In the late 1840's, he took over the trading post operations
after the Torrey brothers abandoned their Houston business and he
opened the Kennedy Trading Post in the narrow two-story brick building
at 813 Congress Avenue across from Market Square. Kennedy was an early
parishioner of St. Vincent de Paul Church, Houston's first Catholic
church, and he and his wife Matilda contributed to the building fund
for the church building and donated lots for the cemetery.
By 1860, John Kennedy had erected a flour mill at Congress Avenue and the Dry Gully, the large drainage that ran down what would be Caroline Street, that produced twenty-four barrels of flour a day. He also built the Kennedy Building, a three story structure located at 220 Travis Street and Congress Avenue. It was this building that Kennedy leased to the Confederacy in 1862 for use by the ordnance department as an arsenal.
After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, soldiers who were returning to their homes in Texas raided the Kennedy building, taking items that they might need to re-establish themselves on their farms in the countryside. The government stores in Houston were appropriated by soldiers and families of soldiers while ordinance stores "were either carried off or destroyed, and guns, shot and shells were thrown into Buffalo Bayou." After his place had been looted, Kennedy disposed of the remaining ordinance by taking it to the Iron Bridge at Milam Street and dumping the munitions and into bayou.
The disposal of the ordinance from the arsenal was part of a broader effort to deprive the approaching Union forces of the equipment and supplies of the Confederacy. During the war, blockade runners and ammunition barges had operated between Houston and Galveston. Ordnance and supplies came to Houston by the shipload, and in June, 1865, there were three of these vessels at the dock in Houston. These barges, "loaded with rifles and cannon balls were driven up stream as far as possible and sunk." The low water bridge at Milam Street was as far upstream as the barges could be moved, and there they were scuttled.
Although significant amounts of material and munitions had been disposed of in the bayou, no organized effort was made to remove the ordnance from the bayou. Houston seemed content to let the bombs and guns lie in the mud of the stream bottom. Nevertheless, the citizens were reminded of this episode periodically, especially during periods when the tide was very low.
On Sunday morning, February 10, 1867, Henry Donnellan and A. C. Richer, partners in the tin business returned to their home on the north side of Buffalo Bayou via the Milam Street bridge for dinner. While waiting for dinner, the two men were examining a shell that had been exposed in the shallows of the bayou. The shell exploded and both men were fatally wounded. The tragic event stunned the whole town and it remained in the local memory for years thereafter, such as on Wednesday, November 21, 1877, when the police found an old bombshell under the Iron Bridge at Milam Street that was "similar to the one that killed Henry Donnellan."
For the next thirty years, the disposed munitions attracted little interest. However, in late January, 1906, a low tide exposed the remains of the Civil War disposal effort. One of the old barges, although mired in the mud, had been visible above the surface for many years. Now, the shallows of the bayou were exposed and the City authorized the Houston Yacht and Power Boat Club to clear the bayou above Main Street in order to construct a "harbor for pleasure craft and launches." On January 30, 1906, "a blast was placed under the ancient wreck of an old ammunition boat" and the explosion attracted a large crowd to the scene. A hundred or more men and boys gathered along the banks of Buffalo Bayou below the Milam Street bridge and began digging and scrapping the bottom of the bayou with sticks and other implements looking for cannonballs, bombshells and other dangerous Civil War relics.
In the forty years since the munitions were disposed of, this was the largest number of relics recovered from the site. Many of the bombshells were still quite dangerous. The gunpowder was found to be dry and very explosive, even after having been submerged for so long. The memory of those who had died in the past while handling these relics of the war was carefully noted as a precaution to those who were collecting the souvenirs. The items recovered included Civil War era rifles and cartridges that were shipped to Texas from France, cannonballs, and some money and a diamond ring. Mayor Baldwin Rice and two City Commissioners inspected the excavation and were pleased that the "three old hulks have been removed" from the waterway.
The iron bridge at Milam Street was replaced with a concrete bridge by 1924, and no more was heard about the buried Civil War artifacts and cannonballs in the mud of Buffalo Bayou. That is, until 1947, when a new concrete bridge was built to replace the earlier one. During the construction of this bridge, which was designed by J. G. McKenzie and built by the C. E. Lytle Company, 351 cannonballs were uncovered and taken to Fort Sam Houston for disposal.
This information caught the attention of real estate developer, history buff and treasure hunter Carroll A. Lewis, Jr. In February, 1968, Lewis and the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society, a group of like minded persons who shared Lewis's interest in history and quest for hidden treasure, probed the area below the Milam Street bridge. The soundings that they took indicated that objects seemed to be buried in about 5 feet of mud, close to the bridge.
In the early summer of 1968, Lewis organized an excavation of Buffalo Bayou near the Milam Street bridge in hopes of locating and recovering artifacts from the sunken ships or barges. His efforts to find these Civil War relics relied on the eye witness accounts of three Houston residents who participated in the 1906 excavations at Milam Street. Each of them had vivid memories of the event that took place over sixty years earlier, even though each was only a young boy at the time.
John Gresham claimed that he and his grandfather, John S. Taylor, boarded the sunken boat at Milam Street during the low tide which was accentuated by a north wind that had blown the bayou water out and exposed the ruins. Gresham and his grandfather boarded the old Confederate ship which his grandfather recognized as the Confederate blockade runner Augusta. Taylor had served as the cannoneer of the ship while a member of Hood's Texas Brigade. The schooner Augusta had made a trip to New Orleans, Mobile and back. While docked near the Milam Street bridge, the 65 feet long and 20 feet wide schooner was sunk about thirty feet downstream from the bridge with its bow pointed out toward the middle of the bayou. Gresham recalled that the forward cabin of the ship was extant and the muzzle of an iron cannon was sticking out. The deck of the boat was gone, but the ribs were still visible. Among the ruins, they picked up about forty cannonballs which later were taken to Fort Sam Houston and exploded by the Army.
W. L. Cleveland remembered the old boat that could be seen in the middle of the bayou near the Milam Street bridge when the water was low. He recalled the time that it was blown up after some divers had recovered several boxes of rifles from the boat.
Felix Joe Richard was there when a north wind caused a low tide in Buffalo Bayou and a boat was exposed. The boat was about 60 feet long and 25 feet wide. There was another boat across the bayou, but it appeared to be buried more deeply in the mud. Richard went onto the boat and found boxes of shells, boxes that could have had rifles in them, cannon balls and a cannon that was bolted down to the main deck.
On July 20, 1968 at 8:00 am, the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society set a thirty ton drag line on the Milam Street bridge to dig the bayou mud. Believing that the sunken boat was near the middle or closer to the south bank, they dredged that area first. Six and a half hours later, at 2:30 pm, a 3" Parrott type cannonball was found at a site ten feet from the bridge in center of bayou. Subsequent digging recovered an impressive array of ordnance and military equipment, including three Parrott cannon projectiles of CSA manufacture, two 3" Blakely cannon projectiles of British manufacture, a 12 lb Borman fused cannon ball, a Williams wiper Minie ball and a 10" Brass Naval ordnance cannon fuse dated 1861. Other military items included three Blakely brass nipple fuses, pistol balls of 28, 31, 36 and 44 caliber, rifle balls of 50, 58, 69 caliber, an Enfield bayonet, a musket wrench, grape shot, and an octagonal, 36 caliber rifle barrel with its front sight attached. Additional items included a belaying pin, square nails, spikes, chest locks and keys and other items that would have been the typical cargo of a Confederate supply ship.
Carroll Lewis, who supervised the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society recovery of the Civil War relics, said that his organization would not do any additional excavations, but he felt that many more artifacts were left in the bayou to be recovered. This recovery operation was financed by the Houston Antique Gun Collectors Association for display at their annual meeting on August 4, 1968 and they had satisfied that commitment. He did say, however, that the artifacts would be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
It is not known whether the display at the Museum of Natural Science ever took place. The recovered artifacts were most likely retained in the personal collections of the treasure hunters.
During March of 2010, a combination of a strong low tide and a gusty north wind created low water conditions in Buffalo Bayou that were similar to those of 1906. This time, however, even though the old pilings and bulkhead of the bayou were exposed and the muddy bottom of the bayou visible to a large extent, no Civil War artifacts were seen lying on the stream bed. If they are there, they are mired deeply in the sediments of the bayou.
All material printed on
this
page
and this web site is copyrighted. All rights reserved.As Stephen F. Austin worked to establish his colony in Texas in the 1820's, he encouraged the immigration of men of economic means such as Jared Groce. Groce transplanted his plantation from Alabama to the Brazos Valley near modern day Hempstead, and within a few years, Groce was producing quantities of cotton that could be exported from Texas. In the mid-1820's, Groce transported 100 bales of cotton to the junction of White Oak and Buffalo Bayou. Near what is now the Milam Street bridge, Groce and his crew forded the bayou. His wagons bumped along a trail hacked through underbrush and giant trees across the future site of Houston to Harrisburg where he loaded the cotton on John R. Harris's steam-powered barges for the trip to Galveston.
The importance of this "road" was not lost on the Allen brothers. In 1837, the town of Houston contracted with David Harrison to build a bridge across the bayou at this point. Augustus C. Allen donated the timbers and heavy planks for the bridge which was 300 feet long and was constructed at a cost of $1,500. The low wooden bridge at the foot of Milam Street was completed in October, 1838, and it was Houston's the first bridge over Buffalo Bayou. A bridge over the other important crossing of Buffalo Bayou at Preston Avenue was completed shortly afterwards in November, 1838.
The young town of Houston had to learn about the hydrology of Buffalo Bayou from the very beginning. A few months after its construction, the Milam Street bridge was damaged by a flood in February, 1839, and it had to be repaired by David Harrison. In the 1840's, a second bridge made of wood and concrete was built at the foot of Milam Street to accommodate the increase in commercial traffic into the city. That bridge was destroyed by the floods of October and November, 1843. Finally, about 1850, the bridge was replaced with a "little iron bridge" that served for a long time thereafter.
At the end of the
Civil War, an incident took place at the Milam Street bridge that would
have repercussions for the city for the next 140 (or more) years. The
story begins with John Kennedy, an Irish immigrant who came to Houston
in 1842 and opened a bakery. The young Kennedy was quite industrious
and soon expanded his business enterprises and land holdings in
Houston. In the late 1840's, he took over the trading post operations
after the Torrey brothers abandoned their Houston business and he
opened the Kennedy Trading Post in the narrow two-story brick building
at 813 Congress Avenue across from Market Square. Kennedy was an early
parishioner of St. Vincent de Paul Church, Houston's first Catholic
church, and he and his wife Matilda contributed to the building fund
for the church building and donated lots for the cemetery.By 1860, John Kennedy had erected a flour mill at Congress Avenue and the Dry Gully, the large drainage that ran down what would be Caroline Street, that produced twenty-four barrels of flour a day. He also built the Kennedy Building, a three story structure located at 220 Travis Street and Congress Avenue. It was this building that Kennedy leased to the Confederacy in 1862 for use by the ordnance department as an arsenal.
After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, soldiers who were returning to their homes in Texas raided the Kennedy building, taking items that they might need to re-establish themselves on their farms in the countryside. The government stores in Houston were appropriated by soldiers and families of soldiers while ordinance stores "were either carried off or destroyed, and guns, shot and shells were thrown into Buffalo Bayou." After his place had been looted, Kennedy disposed of the remaining ordinance by taking it to the Iron Bridge at Milam Street and dumping the munitions and into bayou.
The disposal of the ordinance from the arsenal was part of a broader effort to deprive the approaching Union forces of the equipment and supplies of the Confederacy. During the war, blockade runners and ammunition barges had operated between Houston and Galveston. Ordnance and supplies came to Houston by the shipload, and in June, 1865, there were three of these vessels at the dock in Houston. These barges, "loaded with rifles and cannon balls were driven up stream as far as possible and sunk." The low water bridge at Milam Street was as far upstream as the barges could be moved, and there they were scuttled.
Although significant amounts of material and munitions had been disposed of in the bayou, no organized effort was made to remove the ordnance from the bayou. Houston seemed content to let the bombs and guns lie in the mud of the stream bottom. Nevertheless, the citizens were reminded of this episode periodically, especially during periods when the tide was very low.
On Sunday morning, February 10, 1867, Henry Donnellan and A. C. Richer, partners in the tin business returned to their home on the north side of Buffalo Bayou via the Milam Street bridge for dinner. While waiting for dinner, the two men were examining a shell that had been exposed in the shallows of the bayou. The shell exploded and both men were fatally wounded. The tragic event stunned the whole town and it remained in the local memory for years thereafter, such as on Wednesday, November 21, 1877, when the police found an old bombshell under the Iron Bridge at Milam Street that was "similar to the one that killed Henry Donnellan."
For the next thirty years, the disposed munitions attracted little interest. However, in late January, 1906, a low tide exposed the remains of the Civil War disposal effort. One of the old barges, although mired in the mud, had been visible above the surface for many years. Now, the shallows of the bayou were exposed and the City authorized the Houston Yacht and Power Boat Club to clear the bayou above Main Street in order to construct a "harbor for pleasure craft and launches." On January 30, 1906, "a blast was placed under the ancient wreck of an old ammunition boat" and the explosion attracted a large crowd to the scene. A hundred or more men and boys gathered along the banks of Buffalo Bayou below the Milam Street bridge and began digging and scrapping the bottom of the bayou with sticks and other implements looking for cannonballs, bombshells and other dangerous Civil War relics.
In the forty years since the munitions were disposed of, this was the largest number of relics recovered from the site. Many of the bombshells were still quite dangerous. The gunpowder was found to be dry and very explosive, even after having been submerged for so long. The memory of those who had died in the past while handling these relics of the war was carefully noted as a precaution to those who were collecting the souvenirs. The items recovered included Civil War era rifles and cartridges that were shipped to Texas from France, cannonballs, and some money and a diamond ring. Mayor Baldwin Rice and two City Commissioners inspected the excavation and were pleased that the "three old hulks have been removed" from the waterway.
The iron bridge at Milam Street was replaced with a concrete bridge by 1924, and no more was heard about the buried Civil War artifacts and cannonballs in the mud of Buffalo Bayou. That is, until 1947, when a new concrete bridge was built to replace the earlier one. During the construction of this bridge, which was designed by J. G. McKenzie and built by the C. E. Lytle Company, 351 cannonballs were uncovered and taken to Fort Sam Houston for disposal.
This information caught the attention of real estate developer, history buff and treasure hunter Carroll A. Lewis, Jr. In February, 1968, Lewis and the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society, a group of like minded persons who shared Lewis's interest in history and quest for hidden treasure, probed the area below the Milam Street bridge. The soundings that they took indicated that objects seemed to be buried in about 5 feet of mud, close to the bridge.
In the early summer of 1968, Lewis organized an excavation of Buffalo Bayou near the Milam Street bridge in hopes of locating and recovering artifacts from the sunken ships or barges. His efforts to find these Civil War relics relied on the eye witness accounts of three Houston residents who participated in the 1906 excavations at Milam Street. Each of them had vivid memories of the event that took place over sixty years earlier, even though each was only a young boy at the time.
John Gresham claimed that he and his grandfather, John S. Taylor, boarded the sunken boat at Milam Street during the low tide which was accentuated by a north wind that had blown the bayou water out and exposed the ruins. Gresham and his grandfather boarded the old Confederate ship which his grandfather recognized as the Confederate blockade runner Augusta. Taylor had served as the cannoneer of the ship while a member of Hood's Texas Brigade. The schooner Augusta had made a trip to New Orleans, Mobile and back. While docked near the Milam Street bridge, the 65 feet long and 20 feet wide schooner was sunk about thirty feet downstream from the bridge with its bow pointed out toward the middle of the bayou. Gresham recalled that the forward cabin of the ship was extant and the muzzle of an iron cannon was sticking out. The deck of the boat was gone, but the ribs were still visible. Among the ruins, they picked up about forty cannonballs which later were taken to Fort Sam Houston and exploded by the Army.
W. L. Cleveland remembered the old boat that could be seen in the middle of the bayou near the Milam Street bridge when the water was low. He recalled the time that it was blown up after some divers had recovered several boxes of rifles from the boat.
Felix Joe Richard was there when a north wind caused a low tide in Buffalo Bayou and a boat was exposed. The boat was about 60 feet long and 25 feet wide. There was another boat across the bayou, but it appeared to be buried more deeply in the mud. Richard went onto the boat and found boxes of shells, boxes that could have had rifles in them, cannon balls and a cannon that was bolted down to the main deck.
On July 20, 1968 at 8:00 am, the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society set a thirty ton drag line on the Milam Street bridge to dig the bayou mud. Believing that the sunken boat was near the middle or closer to the south bank, they dredged that area first. Six and a half hours later, at 2:30 pm, a 3" Parrott type cannonball was found at a site ten feet from the bridge in center of bayou. Subsequent digging recovered an impressive array of ordnance and military equipment, including three Parrott cannon projectiles of CSA manufacture, two 3" Blakely cannon projectiles of British manufacture, a 12 lb Borman fused cannon ball, a Williams wiper Minie ball and a 10" Brass Naval ordnance cannon fuse dated 1861. Other military items included three Blakely brass nipple fuses, pistol balls of 28, 31, 36 and 44 caliber, rifle balls of 50, 58, 69 caliber, an Enfield bayonet, a musket wrench, grape shot, and an octagonal, 36 caliber rifle barrel with its front sight attached. Additional items included a belaying pin, square nails, spikes, chest locks and keys and other items that would have been the typical cargo of a Confederate supply ship.
Carroll Lewis, who supervised the Southwestern Historical Exploration Society recovery of the Civil War relics, said that his organization would not do any additional excavations, but he felt that many more artifacts were left in the bayou to be recovered. This recovery operation was financed by the Houston Antique Gun Collectors Association for display at their annual meeting on August 4, 1968 and they had satisfied that commitment. He did say, however, that the artifacts would be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
It is not known whether the display at the Museum of Natural Science ever took place. The recovered artifacts were most likely retained in the personal collections of the treasure hunters.
During March of 2010, a combination of a strong low tide and a gusty north wind created low water conditions in Buffalo Bayou that were similar to those of 1906. This time, however, even though the old pilings and bulkhead of the bayou were exposed and the muddy bottom of the bayou visible to a large extent, no Civil War artifacts were seen lying on the stream bed. If they are there, they are mired deeply in the sediments of the bayou.