Trans-Pecos Oasis

An Overnight Adventure at Independence Creek Preserve

By E. Dan Klepper

The landscape lays hard and dry along Texas 349 north of the Trans-Pecos outpost called Dryden. Limestone plateaus rise and fall in flattops and draws, gray and bare as bones. Spindles of creosote and catclaw trace the ground, and more browning juniper than stars in the sky gives testimony to prairies fallen victim to overgrazing and drought.

But this badland, just west of the Pecos River, deceives the eye with its prosaic illusion. Like all great and subtle works of the natural world, this one—once revealed—astounds. Thirty-six miles north of Dryden, the highway tops a last unremarkable plateau before diving into a broad green valley. Here, the limestone geology expels thousands of gallons of freshwater, then guides it down a white-rock-draw called Independence Creek. This waterway and its environs are considered a true oasis, a respite in the desert where a diversity of life survives and thrives.

Much of the expanse of Independence Creek and the surrounding plateaus seen from the highway comprise Independence Creek Preserve, an ark for an imperiled ecosystem whose land, water, birds, fish, mammals, and insects have come under the stewardship of The Nature Conservancy of Texas. The Preserve, like many Conservancy properties around Texas, opens to the public several times a year during its “Open Weekend” events.

Although activities such as hiking, birding, and mountain biking are available here during Open Weekends, most of the action occurs around water. The Preserve’s Caroline Spring discharges an estimated three to five thousand gallons a minute, and a manmade waterway called the raceway (because the water “races” along) collects and carries the water over shallow streambeds and into deep, clear pools. Once the water has entered Independence Creek, it continues to flow eastward for several miles before reaching the Pecos River, increasing the river’s water volume by more than 40 percent at the confluence.

Participants quickly recognize the Preserve as an oddity as much as a rarity in this transitional desert region of Texas. It’s rare for its abundance of spring water, and it’s odd because the Preserve’s desert wetlands underwent an extreme modification by the land’s previous owners—the Hicks and Roden families—throughout the 1900s. Designed to bring electricity to the remote site in the days before the regional power company extended the power grid, a waterwheel and impoundments transformed the freshwater marsh into a string of ponds, waterfalls, and shallow streambeds surrounded by fig trees, magnolias, Italian cypresses, and lawns.

The daylight hours spent at Independence Creek Preserve expose the beauty of our state’s natural world and the efforts made to conserve and restore it. But night is the true revelator. The Preserve’s remote location and unobstructed skies grant a vision of the firmament that spreads across the landscape like shattered glass. Galaxies shimmer, horned owls appear silhouetted against the starlight, and gray foxes yelp softly in the darkness. These moments impart an understanding of our own sense of place and set a marvel in motion that proves nature both humbling and empowering at once. It is, without a doubt, a revelation worth safeguarding, today and for the future.

See the full article in the January 2012 issue.

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