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It’s
been a long time since a train stopped at Shumla,
a West Texas ghost town as ethereal as steam escaping from a coal-fired locomotive.
Shumla had its beginning in 1881 as construction crews raced to connect
the eastern and western halves of America’s second and southern-most transcontinental
rail line. Once a tent city stretching more than a mile long, it teemed with hundreds
of Chinese and European-immigrant graders and track layers as well as crew bosses,
engineers, and a variety of camp followers including peddlers, whiskey sellers,
gamblers and working women you wouldn’t feel comfortable introducing to mom.
One of the railroad engineers had been to Eastern Europe and thought the
area 15 miles west of Comstock
in present Val Verde County looked like the countryside around the Ottoman fortress
of Shumla in the Balkans. Accordingly, the Southern Pacific put the spot on its
system map as Shumla, Texas.
Though Shumla’s original reason for existence
ended with the completion of the tracks, steam-powered trains needed to take on
water and coal about every 30 miles. Once regular east-west traffic began, Shumla
became a section point with a depot, water tank and foreman’s house.
Despite its depot, Shumla did not have enough population to support a post office
until 1906. But Shumla never saw better days than when the construction workers
camped there.
Shumla was only one of many construction camps along the
SP right of way, though not all of them survived as towns. The most common indications
of camp sites are occasional sets of stone walls about two-and-a-half feet tall
once used as canvas tent bases.
Professional
archeologists and relic hunters over the years have found woks, opium bottles,
fragments of tea cups and Chinese coins around these camp sites in addition to
other trash associated with construction and temporary human occupation.
At Shumla, a 1995 archeological survey noted the remnants of a rectangular dry-laid
stone structure about 20 feet wide and 70 feet long, a collapsed dome oven used
for bread baking, a piled stone forge for blacksmith work and rock piles suggesting
tent sites.
Just west of Shumla, the archeologists found a toppled limestone
grave marker with an inscription in crude Danish. Translated to English, it read: |
Here Under Rests
That Dear Child
B.K. Kristiansen
Born 181. 1882
Died 71. Same Year. |
Given the date, the
headstone – which has since disappeared – indicates the grave of a European construction
worker’s child. If that’s correct, it demonstrates that some of the rail workers
had their families with them as they moved east at a rate up to two miles a day.
All
that’s left of Shumla today is an old concrete motel on U.S. 90 dating from the
early automotive era, the word “Cabins” still faintly visible in white paint,
the shell of an old grocery store and the walls of one house. |
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The motel closed in the late 1940s or early 1950s and the grade has gone downhill
for Shumla ever since.
On the old Ross Ranch about a mile west of its
original location is the 1882 depot, a frame structure moved across the highway
when the SP discontinued the Shumla station as more efficient diesel engines replaced
the old coal-burners. A bit farther west of the ramshackle depot is the original
section foreman’s house, with some later add-ons.
A few years back, retired consulting archeologist Elton Prewitt
of Austin bought 270 acres in the Shumla
area. That real estate transaction coincided with something of resurgence for
Shumla.
On a ranch not far from the original town has risen a new Shumla,
a collection of modern buildings that nationally recognized prehistoric rock art
expert Dr. Carolyn Boyd operates both as a base for ongoing research and as the
setting for a unique school. With Shumla as an acronym, the school’s mission statement
is "Studying Human Use of Materials, Land and Art."
Situated in one
of the richest archeological areas in the world (with more than 2,000 recorded
sites and more than 300 known pictograph sites), the non-profit Shumla School is
a one-of-a-kind facility. Boyd, her staff and volunteers are using the study of
ancient rock art and archeology as a way to engage not-so-easily-engaged children
and to transform them into eager learners and problem solvers.
Additionally,
the Shumla school is a rock art research center gaining international attention.
Three top scientists in the field of rock art who have lectured at the school
– Dr. James Keyser, retired U.S. Forest Service archeologist; Dr. David Whitley
of the Arizona State University and Dr. Jean Clottes of the French Ministry of
Culture all have declared that the area around Shumla deserves inclusion in the
United Nation's World Heritage List of 851 unique world-wide cultural or natural
sites.
As for the surviving structures of the railroad era, Prewitt –
president of the Shumla school’s board – hopes some individual or organization
interested in railroad history
can acquire the old Shumla depot before it is completely gone and restore it.
“We’d sure like to have it at the Shumla School,” he said.
© Mike Cox - "Texas Tales"
January 18,
2008 column
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