DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you've been drivin' through Bastrop County and you've noticed something that doesn't quite add up — tall, dark pines rising out of central Texas like they got separated from the herd and just decided to stay — well, friend, you are not imagining things. Those are the Lost Pines of Texas, and their story starts a long, long time before any of us were around to scratch our heads at them.
We're talking prehistoric pine forests, vast ones, spreading across land that looked nothing like it does today. Then, gradually — and here's where the earth itself starts doing the storytelling — land areas rose. Possibly due to glacier activity, the marker says, and I love that word 'possibly,' because even the geologists are standing back with their arms folded, saying, well, something big happened here.
Most of those ancient forests moved east. Most of them. But not these.
Ideal local conditions kept the Lost Pines right here, eighty miles west of the main pine belt of Texas. Eighty miles. That's not a short walk from the rest of the family.
That's a world away. Now, one of the first written records of these trees was made in 1807, by a man named Zebulon Pike — the same explorer for whom Pike's Peak was named. He looked out at these pines standing in the middle of Texas and, well, he wrote it down.
Probably because you don't just see something like that and not say something about it. Come the nineteenth century, those loblolly pines weren't just a curiosity anymore — they were the county's main industry. Lumber, cut right here in Bastrop County, loaded onto riverboats, hitched to ox-wagons, and shipped out to points all over Texas.
The Lost Pines were holding up the whole economy of the place. And here's what I keep coming back to: these trees were separated from their kind by some slow, ancient force none of us fully understand, they survived it, they thrived in it, and then they turned around and built a county. Sometimes getting left behind is just another way of putting down roots.
What the marker says
Located 80 miles west of the main pine belt of Texas, these trees probably were once part of vast, prehistoric pine forests. As land areas gradually rose, possibly due to glacier activity, most of the forests moved east. Ideal local conditions have kept the Lost Pines intact. One of the first records of the trees was made in 1807 by Zebulon Pike, explorer for whom Pike's Peak was named. In the 19th century, these loblolly pines supported the county's main industry. Local lumber was shipped by riverboat and ox-wagon to points all over Texas. (1969)