Formal efforts to save the Big Thicket from the devastation of the lumber and oil industries began with the founding of the East Texas Big Thicket Association by R. E. Jackson in 1933.

Until the 1880s the inhabitants dwelt scattered through the woods and lived off what they raised on subsistence farms. The Handbook of Texas is free-to-use thanks to the support of readers like you.

Remember that all snakes, venomous or not, are protected in the preserve and that it is illegal to kill them. Other tribes from as far away as Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas made periodic hunting trips into the thicket for bear meat, skins, and tallow. The shore line that contained the thicket rose above the waters of the Gulf during the Ice Age, and was built up by silt washed down and deposited by some ancestral Trinity River.

Cactus and ferns, beech trees and orchids, camellias and azaleas and four carnivorous plants all occupy what is called the thicket, along with the pines, oaks, and gums common to the rest of East Texas.

The first settlers stopped on the eastern edge of the Thicket, but soon the Thicket itself was spotted here and there with log cabins and with people who lived off the land as naturally as their Indian neighbors.

This is frequently called the bear hunters' thicket. Backcountry camping is allowed in some units of Big Thicket National Preserve.

Do I have to worry about snakes or other dangerous predators?
You might see a snake if the conditions are right.

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However, bears may be making a comeback from surrounding states.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/big-thicket. Still largely undeveloped, the Big Thicket is a vast expanse of bottomland hardwood forest north of Beaumont. After the booms, life settled back to its normal, rural pace and remained so through the 1930s.

The Big Thicket Bear Hunters Club of Kountze “They Dream Of Killing the Bears” By W. T. Block. Eleven species of bats may be seen flying overhead at dusk, consuming the plentiful moths (over 1600 species), beetles, and mosquitos. Why is Big Thicket called a National Preserve, not a National Park? A free permit is required and is available at the visitor center.

There is no charge for any activity in the preserve, including hunting and fishing. A A baygall forms when water collects in the bottom of a poorly drained depression. The chance of seeing a black bear in the Big Thicket region is extremely small.

Howard Peacock, The Big Thicket of Texas: America's Ecological Wonder (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).

Upright growths called “knees” rise from cypress roots and serve an unknown purpose for the tree. Q - Are there bears here? Some of these units are in the heart of the old bear hunters' thicket. Most of the snakes you may see are non-venomous; only a few species are dangerous.

Big Thicket Association Records, University Archives and Special Collections, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. The Big Thicket of Southeast Texas is difficult to define geographically. This traditional Big Thicket–the bear hunters' thicket–is about forty miles long and twenty miles across at its widest.

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But primarily the thicket was the meathouse of the mound-building Caddos, who occupied the fertile rolling hills to the north, and the cannibalistic Atakapas, who bounded the thicket on the Gulf Coast and on the Trinity bottoms.


The Big Thicket of southeast Texas was the region’s last stronghold for bears.

Early conservationists joined the association, which hoped to preserve 400,000 acres as a national forest. No thank you, I am not interested in joining. Birds that prefer dense thicket environments are more likely to be found on the Kirby Nature Trail. They ran hogs and cattle on a relatively free range and hunted small game, deer, and bear. Snakes and other predators generally stay away from humans.

A - A few lone bears have wandered into east Texas from Louisiana, but there are no established populations of black bears here. Reptiles often warm themselves in the sun.

The time of the glaciers established varieties of soils and vegetation in the thicket that remained after the glaciers retreated, and produced a unique biological crossroads of at least eight different kinds of plant communities. Three groups of American Indians are historically associated with the early history of the thicket. The first man to lay a personal claim to the area was Lorenzo de Zavala, whose 1829 Mexican land grant included the Big Thicket.

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What’s your theory? Francis E. Abernethy, ed., Tales from the Big Thicket (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966). It is a thickly wooded area that begins in the southern parts of Polk and Tyler counties, where the creeks flow out of the red dirt hills. But the natives, the ones whose roots are generations deep in the thicket soil, are Southerners by sympathy and migration; they are conservative politically and socially, and they are Protestant fundamentalist in religion. The western boundary of the thicket was marked by big open pine stands along the spoil banks of the Trinity River and by Batson Prairie on the southwest. Font size: The Black population within its boundaries is small. The woods of the thicket grew, and ten thousand years ago the thicket dwellers included mastodons, elephants, the American horse, Taylor's bison, camels, tapirs, and giant sloths, beavers, and armadillos.

Many of those who went to war or the shipyards never returned to the thicket country. The federal government established the Big Thicket National Preserve in twelve different units in Polk and Tyler counties and the counties to their south. The lumber industry brought a new economy in the 1880s, cut the virgin pine, and opened up more land to farm and graze. Senator Ralph Yarborough was its most powerful proponent in Congress.

In the historical beginning only the Caddo and the Atakapas moved through the thicket with any regularity. This traditional Big Thicket–the bear hunters' thicket–is about forty miles long and twenty miles across at its widest.

Visit our NPSpecies page for a complete list of mammals and other animals found in the preserve. Sundew plants are small and may be difficult to see at first, but they often carpet the ground in large patches in the right areas. After the war the increasing number of paved roads and cars and power lines funneled in massive doses of the outside world. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. The history of the Big Thicket goes back to the time when it was covered with water. Eleven species of bats may be seen flying overhead at dusk, consuming the plentiful moths (over 1600 species), beetles, and mosquitos.

You are at far greater risk of getting a disease from a tick or mosquito than of being attacked by a predator. Historically, however, black bears were common in this area. It is flat land, grey clay and sand, part of the Pine Island Bayou drainage system. The abundant rainfall and the long growing season, around 246 days, ensure that vegetation and all the animal life that depends on it thrive.

The Tonkawas, Lipans, and Wichitas met in peace at the medicinal spring around what is now called Sour Lake. This area was once famous for its black bear populations, but these were hunted heavily for over 100 years until they were extirpated from southeast Texas in the 1950’s.

The thicket did not lend itself to plantation farming and the slaves and field hands that went with it. What’s the charge for entering the preserve, hiking a trail, or going backcountry camping? Historically, however, black bears were common in this area. Before the incursion of the lumber and oil industries, this heart of the thicket was characterized by dense vegetation and by large numbers of deer, bear, panthers, and wolves, as well as the common varieties of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. It is a thickly wooded area that begins in the southern parts of Polk and Tyler counties, where the creeks flow out of the red dirt hills. In the early 1960s conservationists again began their drive to save parts of the thicket for a state park. And now the Big Thicket bear hunters are as extinct as the Big Thicket bears they once hunted. There are a few Cajuns on the southwestern edge, in the Batson Prairie area. Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, Big Thicket Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). Beaver and river otter are sometimes seen in the rivers and streams. The old people and old families, however, who have always known that they lived in the Big Thicket, define it as a much smaller area.

Debris from surrounding vegetation steeps into the water, causing the water to lose oxygen and become more acidic. They are the Atakapas, the Caddos, and the Alabama-Coushattas. Parks and V. L. Cory of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

A Pete A. Y. Gunter, “R. They were led by Lance Rosier, a longtime thicket guide and naturalist, and Dempsie Henley, mayor of Liberty, who on October 4, 1964, founded what became the Big Thicket Association.

Beaver and river otter are sometimes seen in the rivers and streams. Their day ended around 8,000 years ago. The preserve now consists of twelve protected units scattered through Hardin, Liberty, Polk, Tyler, and Jasper counties. These activities are allowed in the preserve by permit. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.

By 1966 the Big Thicket Association had decided to push for national-park status.

You can find the most common carnivorous plants, pitcher plants and sundews, on the Sundew Trail and Pitcher Plant Trail most of the year. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is flat land, grey clay and sand, part of the Pine Island Bayou drainage system.

An array of rodents scurry in the understory while gray, fox, and flying squirrels move through the trees overhead. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006).


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