One of the best things about living in Brykerwoods is the proximity of Pease Park, the historic crown jewel of the Austin Parks system, and the Shoal Creek Hike and Bike Trail. We drive by them every day but probably not many of us give these incredible public amenities a second thought. They have always been there and they always will, right? The reality is that just might not be true. Their beautiful canopy of trees, the green lungs of our neighborhood, could disappear within a generation unless we take immediate steps to restore and revitalize it!
Pease Park and the adjacent trail areas are in trouble. They are overused and under loved. The aged cedar elms have been ravaged by wind storms and droughts. The majestic live oaks have had their root zones compacted by heavy pedestrian foot traffic and their top soil scoured away by periodic flooding. The underbrush, including new tree saplings, has been cut away in order to discourage criminal activity and make the area undesirable as a camp ground for transients. There has been no concerted effort to plant new trees on the scale needed to replace the ones being lost each year. Without action the park could become a torrid, dusty wasteland and the term “greenbelt” could become a misnomer.
This would be a very sad end to an illustrious past. Governor Elijah Pease gave the acreage along Shoal Creek to the City of Austin for use as a park in 1875. Even at that early date the park already had a rich history. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers had camped there. Comanche Indians attacked early settlers along Shoal Creek. Union General George Armstrong Custer’s cavalry troops pitched their tents south of the present West 24th Street bridge in 1865-1866, during Reconstruction. Author and Austin resident O. Henry even featured the area in a short story about buried Mexican treasure: Bexar Script No. 2692. However, it was not until 1926 that city fathers finally began developing Pease Park into the oasis we are familiar with today. Environmental activist Ms. Russell Fish followed suit in the 1960’s by pioneering the construction of the Shoal Creek Hike and Bike Trail northward through the park parallel to the creek.
Since then Austin has changed dramatically with an exploding downtown population that leaves an increasingly heavy foot print on the park. Eeyore’s Birthday celebration and Frisbee golfers found permanent homes at Pease in the 1970’s and 80’s. These thousands of new users, time, weather and plain general neglect have left the park in alarming shape. The end of 2008 finds the park and trail limping along on borrowed time.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has done a comprehensive study of the park at the request of the Austin Parks Foundation. They issued their assessment and made a series of recommendations for its restoration in June, 2007. The plan involves removal of invasive species of vegetation, restoration of the soil’s health and curtailing erosion by planting native grasses and wildflowers and undertaking a concerted re-forestation effort. Several demonstration plots of different mixes of grasses and wildflowers have already been installed to help determine what plants and methods will work best in revitalizing the soil and encouraging native groundcovers. However, the money to implement all of the Wildflower Center’s proposals for Pease Park is woefully lacking.
Funding for park maintenance is always a difficult issue in every City Budget. Parks are an easy thing for council members to slash in favor of other needs perceived as more urgent. Increasingly, the City of Austin depends on private groups like the Austin Parks Foundation for funding and volunteer assistance to make up the shortfall in parks’ care.
A new group called “Friends of Pease Park” has been formed under the umbrella of the Austin Parks Foundation to focus on this one park and its problems. It plans to raise money for the re-forestation of the park and greenbelt and for implementing all of the recommendations of the Lady Bird Wildflower Center study. The group’s immediate goal is to plant over 100 large trees in the park in February, 2009 in conjunction with the Foundation and the City Parks Department and to establish a system for their irrigation.
If you would like to contribute financially to this very worthy effort, please make your check payable to the “Austin Parks Foundation-Trees for Pease” and mail it to the Austin Parks Foundation, 701 Brazos, Suite 170, Austin, Texas 78701. Your donations to the Foundation are tax deductible. For more information, you can contact Charlie McCabe or Rosie Weaver at the Austin Parks Foundation at 477-1566 or Richard Craig of “Friends of Pease Park” at 477-0737.
If you would rather pitch in with some sweat and muscle, The Parks Foundation has scheduled several “volunteer days” for neighbors and friends in Pease Park for Friday-Saturday, October 17-18 and Friday-Saturday, December 5-6, 2008. Just show up at the park’s Kingsbury Street entrance at 9:00 a.m. on those dates with work gloves and water and Parks Foundation personnel will put you to work!
If we all finally give Pease Park and the Shoal Creek Greenbelt a “second thought” and a few dollars or some sweat equity now, we can hopefully keep them green and healthy for another 135 years. After this year’s incredibly brutal summer, we can all agree that Austin needs the shade!
by Richard Craig
