Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Clairemont and Fluvanna
November 13, 2002

A steady drizzle kept the windshield wipers on intermittent as serapes of fog draped the rugged ridges. Before complete darkness set in we had seen the glistening red clay bubbling and oozing down the arroyos of the breaks. We sat hunched forward, peering through the obscurity of nightfall, driving slowly, watching for deer panicked beyond reason. Why were they out in the horrible weather? After two crossed the road in front of us we saw no more; but the crashing wave of fear in that split second made us wide-eyed cautious for the final ten miles. I told Deborah that a mountain lion must have forced the deer from the cedar and hackberry thickets of the draws. The fog worsened, the rain came down heavier, and it seemed we would never get to Post.

Deborah and I were returning to the Croton Breaks of Garza, Fisher, Scurry, and Kent Counties, the eroded clay scablands between the Double Mountain and Salt Forks of the Brazos River. For the next two nights we would stay at the Garza Hotel, explore the Old Mill Trade Days, and visit the Garza Historical Museum. But most of our time would be spent meandering to Fluvanna, Clairemont, Jayton, Rotan, and Camp Spring. Despite the 25 mph wind, the constant drizzle and the low gloomy clouds we would be awed by the lonesome beauty of the region.

The Texas GenWeb website reports, “Fluvanna was established by realty promoters who knew that the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railway would terminate at its site. By the time the railroad arrived in 1908, the town site had already been staked off and lots put on sale. It boomed briefly and by 1911 had two real estate offices, a thirty-room hotel, a lumberyard, a cotton gin, and other businesses. Fluvanna's importance lessened when major highways bypassed the area, and when the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific closed the Fluvanna station in 1941, the town's days as a shipping center were over.”

On Saturday afternoon, Deborah and I drove the long, main street through what is left of Fluvanna, making note of architectural and landscaping styles. Houses were far apart. Sometimes only an old foundation remained, accompanied by ancient lilac bushes, trumpet vines, arborvitae, and drifts of garden four-o-clocks. When we stopped to admire the decorative elements on the roof of an old wooden house, a gentleman came to warn us: “In a small town, we know all the cars of the residents, so I just wanted to make sure you weren’t trouble.” After we dropped the names of some ranchers we know on the road into Post he warmed up a bit, telling us about the fine nuts on the native pecan tree in the yard of the old house.

On the way to Clairemont on Sunday the flight of a hundred white pelicans amazed us as they cautiously soared over the highway on their way to the Alan Henry Reservoir. Clairemont is a ghost town. We spotted a single inhabited house a mile north. There might have been more down the tiny, dirt roads that weaved among the huge old mesquites. We did not dare to find out – we could see the fishtailing ruts of those that had been there before us. I tested one country lane by walking a hundred feet down it and came back with ten-pound clay overshoes. We spent thirty minutes jumping puddles, walking around the abandoned gas stations and stores, photographing faded paint designs on the storefront of the “Buzzer Den”. More than one person almost stepped on a wayward rattler as they stopped for a coke or a beer, a popular local gathering place until the 1980s.

The jail encouraged our curiosity. Built of local red sandstone, its original mortar seemed to be nothing but grainy yellow clay. At some point, the outside had been re-mortared with a device that created perfect cylinders of concrete. Inside, the steel cage of the jail cells seemed inhumanly cold. The constant dripping of rain brought to mind the infamous Chinese water torture – surely inmates of the jail “saw the light,” and straightened out their lives after spending such hard time.

The town of Clairemont was established in 1892 with several stores, a bank, a newspaper, and a hotel. In the 1950s, a small-scale oil boom inflated the population to 300. In 1954 a two-year court battle resulted in the relocation of the Kent County Courthouse to Jayton. The old single-story courthouse, also built of red sandstone, is now a community center. The top floor burned in 1954 and has been replaced with a metal roof. Kent County schools were consolidated in the 1950s and Clairemont rapidly declined. The Brazos Breaks are vivid evidence of the depopulation of rural areas. The centralization of relief services during the Great Depression was also a factor.

The ghost of my pioneer grandfather lives within me, and when I travel the area, I see with his eyes the potential for various forms of development in the region – from historical museums to bed and breakfast ranches. Deborah and I are keeping tabs on the local real estate market. We may never be able to afford a small landholding nestled alongside red rock cliffs striped by bands of alabaster gypsum above the willows and cottonwoods of one of the wet-weather creeks, but the dream is growing.

A mile east of town, at the Kent County Showbarns, we turned north down a hard gravel road to the Clairemont Cemetery. We startled a deer as we came through the gate, and when it leapt the high fence on the west side, it caught its back legs and staggered when it landed. Several of the grave markers were erected by the Woodmen of the World fraternal organization. These monuments are seven-foot-tall concrete tree trunks with branches lopped off. The organization’s medallion is located near the top of each one and the bases are adorned with concrete calla lilies and ivy vines that climb symmetrically up the sides of the trunks. As I prepared to photograph one of the grave markers, Deborah nudged me with her elbow. “You came seeking a ghost forest and here you’ve found it. It’s not the Mesquite Ghost Forest of the Breaks that you were looking for, but it’s a ghost forest nonetheless!” We saw at least a dozen more such markers in both the Snyder Cemetery and the Mount Olive Cemetery in Big Spring as we slowly moseyed home.