Bastrop State Park

About this property

Bastrop State Park is a 2,054-acre (831 ha) state park in Bastrop County, Texas, United States managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The park was established in 1933 and consists of stands of loblolly pines mixed with post oak and junipers. The Spanish travel route known as El Camino Real traversed through the area and aided in the early colonization of Texas in the 1700s. The city of Bastrop, Texas, established in 1832, depended on the natural resources of the area for regional growth; Bastrop's timber harvest from pines fueled construction in Austin, San Antonio, and northern Mexico. Long before the park's construction began, citizens of Bastrop and Smithville recognized that the land was worth preserving and kept it as an informal recreational area supervised by a local hunting and fishing organization. The land had also served unsuccessfully as a private resort area. In the early 1930s, during the peak of the Great Depression, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a public works organization known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to put young men to work and preserve the country's natural resources, create public recreational areas, and boost the economy. In 1933, with the help of the National Park Service (NPS) and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), the CCC began the development of Bastrop State Park. When the CCC expressed interest in transforming the local pine forest area, several residents of Bastrop and Smithville donated about 2,100 acres (850 hectares) of land to the state government. Companies 1805 and 1811 of the CCC built many of the park facilities between 1933 and 1939 using native stone to blend with the landscape. The facilities were designed by architect Arthur Fehr and were considered a showcase of park architecture when built. Following the principles of the NPS, Fehr wanted the park's facilities to have harmony with its surrounding landscape of hills and forests, and used native materials for construction. The stone cabins at Bastrop State Park are intentionally blended and appear to come out of the ground like a natural outcrop. This same non-intrusive design was used for the park's dams, bridges, culverts, and fences. These architectural features served as a role model for later park development by the CCC across the entire US. By using the location's natural materials, the CCC was also able to keep construction costs down and reduced the need for importing materials from other areas. Among the CCC's main duties in the early phases of the state park's construction was seeding, transplanting, and clearing tangles of brush and fallen timber. They also constructed twelve stone and timber cabins, several utility buildings, a lake, and several landscaping structures. Both CCC companies stayed at the park until 1939 before moving to other state parks to continue their preservation efforts. Two other Depression-era groups, the National Youth Administration (NYA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), helped improve Bastrop State Park's facilities. The NYA built and used a maintenance building to construct furniture for the CCC to use for several Texas state parks, including Bastrop's. Moreover, the WPA built a swimming pool and the original nine-hole golf course in two separate projects with the supervision of the TPWD. In land, labor, and material, Bastrop State Park cost about US$1,500,000 (approximately US$34,247,076 in 2022) once completed.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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