DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Forty-five miles. That's how far the Cuero I Archeological District stretches along the Guadalupe River Basin — forty-five miles of ground that, when somebody finally stopped to look carefully at it, turned out to be holding nine thousand years of human memory just beneath the surface.
Now that'll make you slow down and reconsider the next time you're driving through DeWitt County like you've got somewhere better to be. The whole district came into being for a specific reason — a proposed reservoir was threatening the cultural resources along that stretch of river, and somebody decided those resources were worth defining and preserving before the water moved in. So in 1972 and '73, archeologists went to work.
What they found was, by any measure, remarkable. Three hundred and fifty-two significant prehistoric and historic sites. Three hundred and fifty-two.
Spanning nine thousand years of human occupancy in one river basin. Think on that number a moment. The remains of camps left by prehistoric nomads.
Evidence of historic Indians — Tonkawas, Comanches — people who knew this land long before anyone else was drawing maps of it. And then, layered on top of all that, the traces of early Anglo-American settlement, which began taking shape through the colonizing efforts of Green De Witt back in the eighteen twenties and thirties. One river.
Forty-five miles. Nine thousand years of people making their lives along the same stretch of water. The Guadalupe wasn't just a landmark — it was a corridor, and the ground along its banks has been quietly keeping score the whole time.
What the marker says
Extending 45 miles along the Guadalupe River Basin, Cuero I Archeological District was created to define and preserve cultural resources threatened by a proposed reservoir. Archeological investigation in 1972-73 revealed 352 significant prehistoric and historic sites spanning 9,000 years of human occupancy. The remains include the camps of prehistoric nomads and of historic Indians such as Tonkawas and Comanches. Other sites mark early Anglo-American settlement, which began with the colonizing efforts of Green De Witt in the 1820s and '30s.