Next year, a big bash is planned for the 50th anniversary. Terry Deckard, a reporter, wrote an article about it in the newspaper, which made the front page. For a little while, the going is easy. The Island Monster. (Ron Baselice/The Dallas Morning News). That was a prank. The rocky cliffs of the mountains hung like surreal portraits before us. Our goal is to finish in 70 hours, and were a couple of hours ahead of pace, so we decide to nap, stretching out on the gravel beach like dead men. Open Menu. height: 2em; Lake Worth, TX (2.0 mi.) Reporter Jim Marrs broke the story to the world. "Four units of Fort Worth police and the residents searched in vain for the thing, which was reported seen at Lake Worth, near Greer Island.". s one of those lovely West Texas spring days, when the rain has washed the air clean and the desert is in bloom. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead. In his now famous Wilderness Letter, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author was addressing the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, a newly formed body whose mandate from Congress was to identify and help protect public recreational areas. I soon learned that its actually the areas plant life that gets people most excitedincluding Williams, who after Vietnam spent ten years studying with a renowned botanist. It follows the same stream as before, which flows small in these parts, and again we are transported back in time. ", Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. For decades, stories of the Lake Worth Goatman or the Greer Island Goatman have captivated those fascinated by such mythical beasts. We travel on. padding-top: 15px; I hear him cry out, and I am more annoyed than worried. 2015. Radisson Hotel Fort Worth-Fossil Creek. The goatman had a parfait," the letter said. One man from Florida managed to add three or four to his life list in an hour; a woman celebrated reaching her target of six hundred birds, approximately two thirds of the entire species tally for North America. The stories are enduring. Daylight makes things comprehensible again, but paddling into the wind is futile. As if searching for the rest home we have fled. Kirby is looking all around, and up at the tops of trees, with the wonderment of a wallaby that has never touched the forest floor before. Ill haul the boat up the bank as Doug lifts from below. If youre not interested in staying in hotels or resorts, the Bolivar Peninsula is covered in Airbnbs for you to peruse and spend the weekend. Spanish moss hung from the limbs of centuries-old bald cypress like a shroud. He places his head against it and smiles, as if receiving some kind of deep medication. After an hour or so we have to turn on our headlamps to stomp on the spiders nesting in the boat. If one such waterway is the Neches River, whose banks can be so thick with brush as to appear a solid green mat, it also makes sense to ask what might lurk in the woods. On the afternoon of July 10 that year, the Star-Telegram's front page carried a headline above the fold "Fishy Man-Goat Terrifies Couples Parked at Lake Worth.". Its reddish-black, algae-rimmed but seething with life: minnows and water striders. Take FM 2627 about 17 miles to Black Gap WMA headquarters. As I contemplated the more than forty miles of multiple-use trails that crisscross the limestone-pocked Hill Country SNA, I was not about to admit defeatat least not before trying my luck on a few of the more measly slopes. And a tire with a rim came flying 500 feet off that ridge., People in the shocked and scared crowd looked up and claimed to have seen a 7-foot hairy creature running along the edge of the ridge. There arent any hotels on the island itself, but there are hotels in the Bolivar Peninsula and Gavelston. Goat Island is an island located in Lake Worth, in Tarrant County, Texas. We make our best guess, press forward, and, on the other side of the swamp, find it again. Services from rental manager . In her book "The Lake Worth Monster," author Sallie Ann Clarke recalls a personal close encounter. The banks are fifteen-foot mud cliffs, straight up. From the air, you can imagine the volcanic eruptions and roiling tectonic plates that created those formations, as well as appreciate the expanses that prehistoric people had to cover to reach safety. Texas has an incredible amount of land to cover if you plan sightseeing. [3] History [ edit] He does not fall but kneels, like a football player on the sidelines with his helmet off, and stares into the forest. But if you dont believe in mystery, fact is kind of worthless.. Rob Denkhuas, manager of the Fort worht Nature Center, holds up a picture of the "Lake Worth Monster." Witnesses described the creature as half man, half goat, towering seven feet tall and. Theyre a casual-chic seafood and steak restaurant with a full bar. Miraculously, he has landed on a log in a sitting position, just inches away from the nest of tree roots, which would have skewered him like an action-film villain. Who knows? 956-541-8034.). I feel like I could go on like this forever. These days, the mine shafts exhale a strong scent of guano thanks to Townsends big-eared bats and other species that have colonized the tunnels. The rugged non-highway roughly parallels the Rio Grande, crisscrossing creosote-dotted washes, ashy deposits, and ancient lava flows, and it is not without its dangers, as the park ranger repeatedly warned me: a road explorer may encounter wild animals, flash floods, and even horseback-riding ladrones from across the border, who have recently been divesting unattended vehicles of camping gear and electronics. .subscription-box { By the time we pull into Gonzales, its five in the morning, and were filthy, our clothes smeared with mud. One of the first federally sanctioned wilds in Texas. Back in 1969, the residents of Ft. Worth, Texas experienced a wave of sightings of a 7 foot tall white Bigfoot type creature which came to be known as the 'Lake Worth Monster, aka the 'Goat-Man'. It looks short and easy on the map, but once youre in, it gets big quick. (A note to the anxious: yes, the indigo snake reaches up to eight feet in length, but it is nonvenomous andbonuspreys on rattlesnakes.) Waiting. [4 Amazing ] South Padre Island Beach Camping, https://uphomes.com/blog/moving-to-galveston-tx/, Kemah Texas (Tourist Hotspot Whats There). In the darkness we hear a team just behind us, a man and a woman dragging their canoe. Home. Lakeside, TX (2.2 mi.) Visible Anyone can find this group. Failing to finish isnt uncommon. The Saltwater Inn is rated 4.2 out of 5 stars and is located directly across the Intracoastal waterway from Goat Island. The Devils River has a reputation as the loneliest, prettiest, most dangerous, and best damn fishingest waterway in all of Texas. We get the boat back in the water only to discover another jam fifty yards later. The Goat Man of the Lake. These soils are often found on footslopes and backslopes of ridges. The sun itself, glinting and sliding down off the shiny leaves of the canopy above, must come to rest upon you with a certain accumulated weight. (Open daily, $3. But its the Texas wild, preserved on some of the states private ranches, that offers many of the most surprising aerial viewsof herds of antelope, giraffes, and zebras in the Rio Grande Valley, for example, or brilliant blue waterfalls and lagoons in the Hill Country. Along with being in charge of land management at the park, shes become the go-to collector of all things monstrous. Green milkweed, another monarch favorite, is naturally-occurring on the island. A headline in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the next morning read Fishy Man-Goat Terrifies Couples Parked at Lake Worth., It was up on there on those cliffs and it was running back and forth, said one witness in an interview with WFAA from a story archived in the SMU Jones Film Collection. I squat in the weeds, exhausted and furious. Soldiers and sailors in Vietnam wrote their parents in Fort Worth and asked for more news, and reporters from far and wide wrote stories about it. He has come to goad those still struggling through the end of the race. White Settlement, TX (2.6 mi.) There are volcanic rocks arranged in almost perfect circles atop mesasthe remnants of primitive dwellingsand recesses in the sides of the cliffs that represent Texass first high-rise apartments. Mature trees offer shade, and step-like layers of rock make it easy to get. He nods, and we get back in the canoe. Goat Island is legendary among Lake Martin boaters for its free-roaming goat population. Theres nothing to be done, so I shut off the light and flop, catching the log in my midsection, then scramble spastically up the roots and to the top of the cliff. "He may hear about it and just turn up. What are you trying to say? I yell at him. Except that whoever wrote the letter a man who lives somewhere near Beaumont, based on the postal cancellation isn't the only person to make such a claim. According to Dan Genest, spokesperson for Dominion, the Goat Island project is in the engineering stage, but has to be completed by 2016 as part of Dominion's . I decided whoever had come up with that name must have been hallucinating, but then, after an unplanned detour into a cedar thicket, I rolled onto a nice bobbing stretch of single track along Bandera Creek. But the man who shot the photo now says talk of a swamp beast is "silly." The fleeing "monster" looked more like a prankster with a fur or rug, Allen Plaster, 59, of Fort Worth, says. We move on, come to a swamp, into which the tannin-bronze vein of the creek disappears; we have no more guidance. Despite not being professional archaeologists, Fort and Mills have studied up and developed an uncanny ability to sniff out where prehistoric people once dwelled. But he had no interest in naming more names or publicly taking credit or blame. Im ready to go back. The next night, the monster, in front of a couple of dozen witnesses, was said to have uttered a "pitiful cry" and hurled a tire from a bluff at them. The island is small enough to fall under one zip code: 77650. My own total was forty species for the day. The dunes were aglow in the afternoon sunlight, as though the sand itself were luminescent. The police also revealed that they had received reports in the past but had laughed them off. See link under the "Related information" Section. Though most of it is private landincluding part of the still prosperous JA Ranchthe 28,000 acres that make up Palo Duro Canyon State Park are the most breathtaking, an abrupt, uneven landscape made all the more dramatic by the strata of rocks that vary crazily in hue: the bright reds of the Quartermaster shale, the yellow and lavender mudstones, the sculpted sandstone that has been stained over millions of years by iron oxides. You will also be intimidated. It is also here that the Comanche, the dominant military power on the South Plains, famously made their last stand in the Red River War. ACCORDING TO LEGEND, the Lake Worth Monster lives on the shores of the West Fork of the Trinity River. Wed set up on a well-used bankMexican vaqueros, or perhaps smugglers, had left a fire pit and a few flattened beer canswhen gusts of more than 40 miles per hour roared around us, mashing our tent and scattering our supplies. Bubbles of all sizes and shapes, as if some miniature spring resides there, and he stands looking at it a long time, while all around us, the leaves unfold wider and ever greener. One witness said the monster gave off a pitiful cry, like something was hurting him.. Thanks for the input and letting me know I'm not completely crazy. Just say it! For years an unnamed Lake Gaston resident housed goats on the island in keeping with the island's name. (I say measly, but thats relative when the rise from canyon to cliff top can span two thousand feet.) Then again, watching the world from behind my windshield was not the experience I had already driven ten hours from Houston for, so about twenty miles in, I ventured to whats left of Mariscal Mine, a picturesque if eerie collection of ruins that sits amid a series of ravines. You can look across the channel and see Goat Island from your table! It made the pages of the daily newspapers and whipped Tarrant County into a monster-hunting frenzy in the summer of 1969. After about seven and a half miles, we reached our campsite and, with daylight still to burn, dropped our packs and kept exploring. Fort, who is an avid hiker, mountain climber, and horseman, did not know about this archaeological treasure trove when he first started buying parcels in Pinto Canyon, back in 1996. Getting There: Little Lake Creek Wilderness is in the southwestern corner of Sam Houston National Forest, which is off I-45 and U.S. 59 about 50 miles north of Houston. Villafranca organizes a Lake Worth Monster Bash at the nature center in October to celebrate the monster (this years bash is scheduled for Oct. 4). He said the tire went airborne only because it hit a bump after they rolled it. Theyll have to head upwind again, all that distance adding hours to their time. From the rough waters of the Devils River and the eerie bayous of Caddo Lake to rugged Palo Duro and the Rio Grande jungle, here are eighteen places that will reconnect you with our world at its wildest. My childhood home in the Houston suburbs, like those of so many others, chewed into the edges of this land back in the sixties. Both her descriptions and the photo show a large white something, though it doesn't seem to favor a goat at all. A guy that lives in the back of the cove goes and feeds them every morning at sun up. It is located with many other preserves along the banks of the Trinity River south of Dallas. The island was created when Lake Worth was impounded. A fierce rush of anger overwhelms me. I grabbed my rod and within a few casts had caught my first crappie. Though accessible from the various boat ramps around the lake, those who are inclined to power themselves to the island (e.g. Eventually, I crossed paths with a retired couple who were traveling in an elaborate school-bus-cum-RV that seemed built for the Apocalypse; seasoned off-roaders, they clued me in to the hiking trails along Black Gap Road, away from the river. "I had a Coke float. Lakewood Brewing Co. even decided to pay respect with a limited-release Goatman beer. Kirby is still sprouting water, and he keeps stopping after only a few steps. John Reichart told police that the creature leapt from a tree and landed on his car, and he showed them an 18-inch scar down the side of his car as proof. width: 100%; But this next story is absolutely true. Theres still not much sign, but this is where you might wait and watch, and I think for sure that if I worked in one of Houstons glittering skyscrapers, evaluating the language of oil and gas leases or executing tax law, I would have to come to this spot frequently in the autumn with my rifle or bow and arrow and sit quietly and wait, and hope, or go stark-raving mad. Worse, I discover that during the logjam melee I neatly snapped the shaft of my paddle. IQ Token. Goat Island is a physical feature (island) in Galveston County. There are also poisonous snakes, thorny vegetation, and quicksand pits the size of manholes. For his part, though, Plaster isn't talking anymore. Hes not uncomfortablenot yethes just not had a lot of practice walking so far in a place hes never been before. Greer Island is an island in Texas. Perhaps the monster moved on to less-populated environs, and maybe it's dead by now, his bones to be discovered decades later by a lucky anthropologist. It would have been like a history." That night, at Loop Campalong the roads western end, just above the banks of the Rio GrandeI unzipped my tent panel and counted the constellations. He co-founded the Panhandles first ranchthe JA Ranchand erected some of the first buildings in the region. 10-acre islands for sale, starting at USD 299,000. The act defines wilderness as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, and in Texas, as any nature-lover can tell you, finding such areas is often a tall orderbecause for all of our land, very little of it has not been trammeled. 2014, The Dallas Morning News Inc. All Rights Reserved. "If I'd seen it before I wrote the book, the book would have been quite a lot different," she told the Star-Telegram in 1989. One hundred and seventy-eight miles to go. The Lake Worth Monster is a satyr-like creature that terrorized the people of the city of Lake Worth in Texas in July of 1969. (Open daily, $3 per vehicle. Researchers have made documentaries and written books. Google the Goat Farm. They helped fuel munitions manufacturing for the U.S. military, but near the end of World War II, the American quicksilver industry collapsed, and so did the mines operations. As if this werent enough, when you drop your altitude to, say, five hundred feet above the canyon floor, you see something else: vestiges of prehistoric life. Crime Rates The island is small enough to fall under one zip code: 77650. I do not care. This hardly mattered to Ursula or me: in the maze of bayous, we felt as if wed entered an old, unspoiled world. But I had no idea. width: 35%; Lester, that restless spirit, is gone. But Kirby is not hearing, or is hearing something else. Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide By Loren Coleman, Joe R. Lansdale mystery novel The Bottoms, Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. No family, no deck, no house. No one is exactly sure. I yell to Doug over the roar of the wind, suggesting we just gut it out, paddle hard into the heavy gusts. She hands us another round of peanut butter and honey sandwiches; I take a bite and nearly gag. And I know that I will have to find out. Getting There:From Sheffield, travel 22 miles south on U.S. 349. [1] The lake has a moderate fluctuation with stained clarity. She hands us another round of peanut butter and honey sandwiches; I take a bite and nearly gag. North America. We encountered no one. height: 2.5em; Human beings have lived and taken shelter here since the end of the last ice age, some 13,000 years ago. 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