DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for Selkirk Island in Matagorda County tells it this way, and I'm passing it right along to you. Now, if you've ever driven through Matagorda County and looked out at the flat green land where the Colorado River spreads itself wide and lazy before it finds the Gulf, you might not guess that what you're looking at was once a maze of islands. Channels cutting every which way, branches of the river splitting off and looping back, all of it shifting and alive.
That was Selkirk Island — and to understand it, you have to go back to the very beginning of American Texas. William Selkirk was born in 1792, and he came to Texas from New York in 1822 as one of Stephen F. Austin's original Old Three Hundred settlers.
That's the founding generation, right there. The first three hundred families Austin brought into the colony, the ones who got in early and shaped what came after. Selkirk was among them.
He wasn't just along for the ride, either. He was a surveyor for the Austin colony — a man who walked the land, measured it, drew it up, made it legible on paper. And he served in the colonial Militia.
In 1824, Austin sent a group out to make a treaty with the Waco and Tawakoni Indians, and Selkirk was part of that group. A surveyor and a diplomat, of sorts, out on the Texas frontier. Also in 1824, the Mexican government issued Selkirk his land grant — among the first ever issued to American colonists in this territory.
They called it Selkirk Island, and when surveyors went out to map it that same year, they found a landscape defined by water. Several islands, formed by the branches and channels of the Colorado River spreading across the property. That's what the grant was: not one piece of ground, but a cluster of islands woven together by the river.
And there was one more thing the surveyors found in 1824. A log raft. Not a boat — a raft of fallen trees, jammed up and blocking the river near Selkirk's property.
That raft hindered navigation inland for many years. It sat there, a great wooden tangle, making the Colorado a harder river to travel. William Selkirk died in 1830.
He didn't live a long life on that grant. But here is the remarkable thing: ownership of that property has remained in his family ever since. From 1824 to today, by the marker's telling, Selkirk's descendants have held the land.
And those descendants have been prominent civic and business leaders in Matagorda and Galveston counties across the generations. The land itself has changed. Recent dredging closed the channels, so the property is no longer divided into islands at all.
What was once a scatter of islands threaded by river branches is now simply land. And in the nineteenth century, a sawmill stood where Mill Creek once emptied into what is now the dry east bed of the Colorado River. The river moved.
The mill is gone. But the name holds. Now.
I said I'd give you everything the marker has, and I am saving the best for last. According to legend — and the marker says legend, so we're telling it true — one of Jean Lafitte's pirates hid a treasure at the northern end of Selkirk Island. A land grant issued in 1824.
A family that never let go of it. Two hundred years of floods and dredging and shifting channels and dry riverbeds — and somewhere at the northern end, if the legend is right, something is still waiting. Somebody's been sitting on that property a long, long time.
Whether they know what they're sitting on is another matter entirely.
What the marker says
William Selkirk (1792-1830), one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old three hundred" settlers, came to Texas from New York in 1822. Selkirk was a surveyor for the Austin colony and served in the colonial Militia. He was part of a group sent (1824) by Austin to make a treaty with the Waco and Tawakoni Indians. His grant of land, known as Selkirk Island, was among the first issued by the Mexican government to American colonists in 1824. Ownership of the property has remained in his family since that time. Selkirk's descendants have been prominent civic and business leaders in Matagorda and Galveston counties. Originally Selkirk's land grant consisted of several islands formed by the branches and channels of the Colorado River. When the grant was surveyed in 1824, a log raft (fallen trees) blocked the river near Selkirk's property. This raft hindered navigation inland for many years. Recent dredging closed the channels so that the land is no longer divided into islands. In the 19th century a sawmill stood where Mill Creek once emptied into the now dry east bed of the Colorado River. According to legend, one of jean Lafitte's Pirates hid a treasure at the northern end of Selkirk Island.