Texas Beach Landings

[GAHorn]

George, are you saying that there was once a bridge from the mainland to Matagorda Island ?? or did the sheriff have an office there ?

The original course of the Colorado River had it's mouth into Port Lavaca bay, and led to a huge log-jam at Matagorda (the town) back in the 1800's. Numerous attempts were made to clear it, as it impeded river navigation, important to commerce in the 1700/1800's. In the 20th century the river was dredged from the town all the way to it's present mouth, and the dredged spoils were deposited along the new channel's eastern edge, creating a continuous connection to the island. The state hwy now is on top and along those spoils. That western (old island) area is now called the "penninsula" and is where our house and the strip was. It was immediately south of the present heliostat restricted area "R-6320", on the beach.

[wingnut]

[quote="gahorn"] but taxying across a state hwy was actually an offense.[quote]

I wonder what the state law is in Arkansas. You have to taxi accross State HWY 980 to get to my hangar and many others, although this hwy only serves the airport. Maybe it's grandfathered in because the taxiway was here first? It's fun to hear the "WHAT!!??", when giving new customers directions to my hangar.
"Take the mid field taxiway off the east side of 17/35, taxi about 75 yards, stop, look both ways, watch for armadillos and other livestock, cross the state hwy, take a left at the fire hydrant to the only unmarked building with shade trees and tomato plants growing around the well house."
"Yes, we've taken car of your reservations at the Dew Drop. Nicest place in town, servin up the best possom belly and crow gizzards around, complete with a spitoon in every room and a cement pond for your skinny dippin pleasure"
Courtesy car?
"Would you like the 68' Powerwagon, or 72' Pinto? How 'bout air freshener, pine or potpourri?"

[GAHorn]

Well, look at it this way.... getting to YOUR place may satisfy their hunger to "do something WRONG" out of their system before they shut down in front of your hangar..... This is a good thing, because anything done by YOU to their airplane will definitely be RIGHT! (Hell, I even RAN that STOP SIGN when I taxied up there! It was INVIGORATING!)

RPulley pic, click to enlarge

[flyguy]

(Hell, I even RAN that STOP SIGN when I taxied up there! It was INVIGORATING!)

YAH AN I TOLE HIM ISA GONNA VIGORATE THE BAK OF HIS HED CAUSE THAT STOPSINE MEENS HIM TOO - -

TRULY IN BEAUMONT KANSAS THERE WAS A HOTEL ACROSS THE HIWAY FROM THE AIRSTRIP. YOU TAXIED OUT ONTO THE MAIN STREET AND AS YOU CAME TO THE INTERSECTION, YOU HAD TO "STOP" AT THE STOP SIGN. THE OLD TOWN CONSTABLE WOULD PARK UP THE ROAD AWAYS AND IF AN AIRPLANE DIDN'T STOP HE WOULD RACE DOWN THE HILL, LIGHTS AND SIREN SCREAMING, AND GIVE THE PILOT A CHEWING OUT AND A FUNNY LITTLE "TICKET" WHICH SAID "WELCOME TO BEAUMONT HOTEL"WAS A SPOOF BUT SCARED THE HECK OUT OF THE NEWBIES............ THE PLACE IS STILL OPEN BUT RUN BY DIFFERENT FOLKS.............. http://www.hotelbeaumontks.com/

http://skyvector.com/#46-20-2-1191-3002

[DKent]

George, the Matagorda area is certainly a great area to fish !,, specks, flounder and Redfish! I have fished the area many times. I first thought you were talking about Matagorda Island , the one that has a landing strip and no roads (un-accessable by land) but now I understand where you were typing about, the area south of Matogorda (town) which is an island yet not the "barrier Island" I thought you were refering to, sorry

[jon s blocker]

Made many landings on San Jose island which is just North of Port Aransas. It is State owned, but leased by The Bass Brothers. Many Presidents, VPs, and VIPs, have stayed and hunted there. They keep some exotic animals and stock animals on the island. We land on the Gulf side below the high tide water line. We usually land at the far north end by Cedar Bayou Pass, but occasionally land just to the south of the main house, where there is a sunken shrimp boat. Was great red fish and trout fishing, but haven't landed there since the hurricane. They have a nice landing strip there, which is private and is VERY off limits. Went out there several times years ago when a good friend of mine resurfaced and extended the runway. They used to land private jets on it. Now it is mostly King Airs. Jon

[GAHorn]

The area of the island to which you are referring is immediately west of the river-mouth (where our house was). The closed airport in the right-margin of this pic is the old "Cullen" family place. It is an east/west paved runway about 5K long. It is "clsd" but I landed there in a state of TX Conquest back in 1998. My passenger was the Director of TX Parks and Wildlife, Andy Samson. Andy got out of the airplane and was met by "Fred" Cullen who lived in the house adjacent to the rwy. Andy signed some documents which transferred that Cullen property to the state, and we flew back to Austin. Now that entire area is state property and is a wildlife refuge. The west end of the island is a Nat'l wildlife refuge.

matagorda.jpg (20.5 KiB) Viewed 4362 times

The "Pierce-pvt" airport is actually an old USAAF training field. It was used by a group of Houston investors in the 1970's to found a private space-venture which included the famed "Deke" Slayton. The site was originally considered by NASA as the Mercury Program site, but they settled on Cape Canaveral. The Houston group attempted a few launches of kerosene/oxygen rockets of the Redstone-class, but they all failed. (One blew up on the launch-pad at the present "Pierce-pvt" site, and one actually launched and failed immediately after launch, and a third required destruction about 20 secs after launch. The Houston Space venture went bankrupt, but I was ready to hold a "rocket-launch" party on the roof of our beach-house about 10 miles to the east.)

As another point of interest.... look at that north-bound runway at Pierce. About 1/4 mile to the north, in the bay, local shrimpers and fishermen would occasionally lose a net onto some submerged object. Finally, someone managed to pull their net up and found artifacts (anchor/cannon?) from an old ship. It turned out to be one of the ships, "LaBelle", of the French explorer "LaSalle", which had anchored (run aground?) there to weather out a storm in 1684-5.) The French remained onboard as night-time protection from the Karankawa indians who lived in the area, and during the daytime they would explore inland, leaving the ship anchored. Apparently a storm sank the ship and the explorers set up a site onshore. Their remains were subsequently found a few years after the ship was discovered between Goliad and Victoria where they'd attempted to set up a fort. (LaSalle was murdered by mutineers as he attempted to return toward the Mississippi R.)
The Univ. of TX built a coffer-dam around the ship, pumped out the sea-water and archeologically excavated the ship. The artifacts are on display at the U/TX museum.

The body of a Frenchman was found curled up onto the anchor-rode in the fo'ward anchor-hold. He was very well preserved (surprisingly considering all the crabs in the area). They performed a DNA test and located his present-day relatives in France and he was returned to them for burial.

I flew circles around that wreck with Andy Samson, taking photos for the state in the late '90s. The site was excavated, the artifacts removed, and the coffer-dam taken-up, and the site was re-flooded and has returned to nature.

BTW, the small town of Palacios is just at the north end of that pic, and is where the fly-out lunch at "The Outrigger" restaraunt was held during the Galveston convention.

Anways... back to the earlier part of this thread... continuing northeast from the pic above, you will come to the mouth of the dredged river, and our house and the grass runway was located at the mouth where that little black circle is on the beach. (Not the blue heliostat restricted area... the tiny black circle on the Gulf beach.) We were on the west side of the road at the mouth. Anyone who ever drove down to the beach always knew the red house on stilts with the sign above the door, "Horn's Hideaway".

beachhouse.jpg (16.82 KiB) Viewed 4349 times

[jon s blocker]

Pretty cool George. I have done alot of flying in that area but only landed on Matagorda Island a couple of times. A friend of mine was coming back from Galvaston, scud running about 100 feet off the water trying to get to his strip, when he got socked in by a cold front. He spent the night on that airstrip, with his wife in the plane, with wind gusts up to 75MPH. I flew down the Island about a month ago and was sad to see how much trash was on the beach, mostly for the hurricane, but also it was interesting to see how many boats etc., were scattered along the shore. Jon

[hilltop170]

Anways... back to the earlier part of this thread... continuing northeast from the pic above, you will come to the mouth of the dredged river, and our house and the grass runway was located at the mouth where that little black circle is on the beach. (Not the blue heliostat restricted area... the tiny black circle on the Gulf beach.) We were on the west side of the road at the mouth. Anyone who ever drove down to the beach always knew the red house on stilts with the sign above the door, "Horn's Hideaway".

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George- Is this the place?

Mouth of Matagorda River

[GAHorn]

That's the "new, modern" place!

If you look closely, you can see where the "oyster shell" road, has now been paved. The grass strip would be just behind your right wing...you just passed it. That road (which now makes a 45-degree right-turn to meet up with the state highway... used to continue straight across. You can see brush, etc. that used to be landscaping for houses along the old road's path. After the road crossed the hwy,...the very first house on the right would have been ours.

The family sold out about 15 years ago, and a developer came in and installed that camper/trailer/RV camp adjacent to our old property (our house stood about where the light-sandy place is just to the right of the dark, ashphalt parking lot.)

The old Cullen place would be dead-ahead on the horizon, and the old Houston Space Venture launch site (now Pierce pvt apt) another 10 miles ahead. When I was a youngster we had an old Allis-Chalmers tractor we kept between the pilings of our beach-house. It had a platform built upon it's 3-point hitch setup with a school-bus seat bolted to it for riders, and I used to drive it IN the surf for miles along that beach. Once got it buried and had to pay $100 out of my allowance to get a wrecker to pull it out before the tide came in. That was a ton of money to a 17 yr-old. Had an early romantic interlude at that house. Ahhh. the memories....