Every Drop Counts
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Every Drop Counts - Water in the Wild Horse Desert
Our perpetual cycle of drought and rains keeps us aware of the value of a ready water supply. We are blessed with a community infrastructure that provides us with clean, fresh water at the turn of the tap. Not so in the good old days.
As the waters of the Gulf of Mexico ebb and flow with the tides washing against the shores of South Texas, the interior tends to be a pretty dry place. The Wild Horse Desert really is a desert. Unless you were situated along a stream or river bed in the 1800’s you had a problem keeping a supply of drinkable water. The earliest ranchers, Spanish and Mexican land grant holders, were often clustered along the Rio Grande River where their land grant property touched the life giving Rio Grande. The old maps show very long and thin sections of land. Each ranch had its narrow end on the river and a ruler straight, long piece of land to the north of the river.
Ranchers holding land grants farther away from the Rio Grande often were faced with the constant problem of digging wells by hand to provide water for themselves and their livestock. The railroads started crisscrossing our nation in the mid 1800’s. But bringing a railroad into the Wild Horse Desert presented a problem. Those magical steam locomotives required water to run, a lot of water.
Robert Kleberg earned the title “Modern Moses” when he was able to drill deep wells in 1898 to access an underground lake three times the size of Connecticut. This aquifer would fuel the steam locomotives, new communities, and the development of irrigated farming between the Rio Grande and Corpus Christi.
According to James Allhands’ book, Gringo Builders, the water needed for the initial construction on the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico railroad was purchased from the Tex-Mex Railroad at five dollars a car and delivered to the start point of construction in what would become Robstown. Robert Kleberg had managed to drill an artesian well at Kingsville, but along the work line water was an ever constant problem. There was a constant shortage of water or cars to haul the water in.
During construction the steam engine would have to haul the rails, ties, supplies, and water from the starting point in Driscoll’s pasture to the end of the construction. The work crews and their work animals had to have enough water to drink. The steam locomotive required wood or coal for fuel, and water, lots of water. There was an ever present problem of the locomotive dieing on its trip back to the supply yards for lack of water. Even after the completion of the railroad it would be a requirement, for many weeks, for all trains traveling between Brownsville and Rudolph to carry a supply of water for the steam locomotive. That was a distance of 62 miles where sufficient wells had not yet been drilled by opening date of passenger service, July 4, 1904.
A century of population increase and use of the waters of the great aquifer have had a cost. Wells no longer gush water like Kleberg’s first artesian well. We are asked to conserve this liquid treasure. When you next turn on that tap to get a drink of clear, fresh water consider the past and you will realize the full value of this asset. Come visit the 1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum and ponder the history of water in the Wild Horse Desert.