First, I gotta say I am loving this retirement life! Well semi-retired I am still hanging around the store 3 days a week. Hiking twice in one week, Yahoo!
I did a piece a while back on the Goodwater Loop but now I want to break it down and do sections more in detail. I am starting with the Tejas Camp to Sawyer Point Park section. This is probably the most historic section as it contains some crossings from yesteryear.
As you can see Hunt Crossing is high and dry. Before the North Fork Dam was built and Lake Georgetown flooded the area the San Gabriel was crossed four times by low water crossings in this area. As the lake filled only Hunt Crossing remained. Hunt Crossing is on County Road 258 at the Hunt family cemetery. It is Also where the Goodwater Loop crosses to the north shore of the river/lake and begins its roughly thirteen-mile trip back to the North Fork dam.
Thirteen miles? Yes. Lake Georgetown only extends for eleven miles through the canyons of the North Fork, so we are quite a way off the lake at the only reliable crossing in today’s world.
Back in days before the lake there were four low water crossings of the river, Booty’s Crossing, Russell/Jenkins Crossing, Box Crossing and Hunt Crossing. The crossings were named for the Families who built their homes and villages near each. They were known locally as the Booties. The Booties were local weekend hangouts for the farm families of the area, the citizens of Georgetown, and the students at Southwestern College the oldest university in Texas. The people would fish, swim in the river and picnic on the shore. The crossings formed natural swimming holes and gathering places for the local families many who were related.
Georgetown wanted the dam because of horrific floods that inundated the town in 1921 and 1952. Williamson County wanted the dam because it needed the water. But the most devasting result of the dam to the local people was the loss of the Booties.
The San Gabriel River is only 120 miles long but has two large dams. It is one of the most controlled rivers in America. But on this day, it is a little more than a drainage ditch due to our ongoing drought.
The trip from Tejas Camp to Sawyer Point Park is a little over four miles each way, so today’s hike was 8.6 miles. The trail starts off on a graded path that runs between Hunt’s Crossing and Box Crossing. Sections are the old roadbed. At Box Crossing the trail ascends into the bluffs along the lake shore.
The trail tops out atop the bluffs shown above. I then drop into a side canyon that has been burnt earlier this year.
Here I get my first look at the lake although I should have seen the lake once I left Box Crossing.
At Sawyer Point the trail became very rugged.
At the primitive campground halfway through Sawyer Park I turned around and headed back.
I really like to visit places where I have a back story and imagine how it was in a simpler time, swimming and picnicking on the river with the family on a Sunday afternoon? ……sadly, it just doesn’t happen anymore.
Old Man Wandering 