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The Blue Holeby
Bob Bowman | |
Deep
in East Texas, near the Angelina-Jasper
county line, an old rock quarry has found a place in Texas
history.
Known today as the Blue Hole, the old quarry supplied much
of the rock used to build Galveston’s
sea wall
after a
hurricane slammed the city in 1900--one of the worst natural disasters to
hit the North American continent.
The hurricane
struck on September 8, killing 10,000 to 12,000 people on Galveston Island and
flooding the city of Galveston
with nearly sixteen feet of water.
The storm lifted debris from one row
of buildings and hurled it against the next row until two-thirds of the city,
the fourth largest in Texas, was destroyed.
People
trying to make their way through the storm were struck by flying bricks and lumber
and sometimes decapitated by slate from roofs in the 84-mile-an-hour winds.
Following the storm, using rock from the Blue Hole quarry and other places, Galveston
began work on a six-mile long sea wall standing seventeen feet above low tide.
Sand pumped from the Gulf’s floor also raised the island’s grade by as much as
seventeen feet.
After
the quarry was closed, it was filled with seeping water and became as blue as
a summer’s sky. One legend says a small railroad car used to haul rocks out of
the quarry was caught at the bottom of the hole.
Before the site was fenced
and closed to visitors, teenagers discovered the Blue Hole as one of the best
swimming
holes in East Texas, even though
its rocks, and craggy walls made it a dangerous place to take a dip.
Mrs.
Pearl Witherell of Lufkin recalls
going to the Blue Hole as a teenager with her brothers. “I was afraid to swim
there, but my brothers climbed to the cliff and dove into the water,” she said.
She
recalled the Blue Hole as “one of the prettiest places I had ever seen,” but by
1975, when she made another visit, “it had been trashed by kids”
One story
says three teenagers came to the Blue Hole in a blue pickup truck, parked it on
the cliff above the hole, and decided to go skinny-dipping.
As they were
swimming, their truck’s brake failed and it and plummeted to the bottom of the
Blue Hole, carrying with it their clothes. The teenagers walked naked for miles
until they found help.
The blue truck supposedly still rests at the bottom
of the Blue Hole, providing a companion to the old railroad car. |
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