Natural Features in Texas
105 places·1 county·Page 3 of 3
Featured places available on the Whistlestop audio tour guide app
This is a sample of locations. There are many more audio stories on the app.
Nature·Travis County
Where Slaughter Creek Sinks
US 290 crosses Slaughter Creek here, and for most of the year there is nothing under the bridge. That is not drought. It is the creek doing its job. A short way upstream Slaughter Creek runs onto the outcrop of the Edwards limestone, and from that line downstream its bed is perforated with sinkholes, solution cavities and open fractures that take the flow underground.
Nature·Bastrop County
Where the Houston Toad Actually Lives
The endangered toad named for Houston has not lived there since about 1970, and this sandy county is its last real stronghold. It needs two things that rarely occur together: soil loose enough to burrow into and stay damp through a Texas summer, and shallow ponds that hold water long enough in late winter for tadpoles to develop but dry out before fish can colonize. The deep sand under the pines here provides the first and the seasonal ponds the second.
Nature·Montgomery County
Where the Piney Woods Begin
The change from prairie to pine forest happens over a remarkably short distance north of Houston, and the reason is soil and rain together — a few more inches of annual rainfall and sandier, better-drained ground is enough to tip the balance from grass to loblolly pine. This is the southwestern corner of a pine forest that runs unbroken into Louisiana, Arkansas and beyond. Fire held the boundary in place for thousands of years; without it, pine and hardwood advance into open prairie steadily.
Nature·Bastrop County
Where the Sand Gives Way to Clay
The soil changes over a short distance along this stretch, from the loose sand that supports the Lost Pines to the dense dark clay of the Blackland Prairie approaching Austin. That single change decides almost everything visible from the road — which trees grow, whether water sinks in or runs off, what was farmed and what was grazed, even how the fences sit.
Nature·Harris County
White Oak Bayou and the Concrete Years
This bayou was rebuilt as a drainage machine. Through the middle of the twentieth century long reaches of White Oak were straightened and lined with concrete on the reasoning that flooding is solved by moving water downstream faster — which works for the reach you armor and worsens the problem for everyone below it.