BASTROP, Texas -- First there was drought, then an historic fire, and now rain. It was enough this week to turn a lake into muck and roads into brittle at Bastrop State Park.
Ranger Roger Dolle cannot recall a more difficult time.
“It puts a pit in your stomach,” Dolle said. “It’s like what’s next? Here we go again, this too?”
Last September, 96 percent of the park’s 6,600 anchors burned. It left the ground without the vegetation needed to hold water.
Though this week saw just a few inches of rain, it had nowhere to go. It washed away topsoil and collected in pools several feet deep. In one part of the park, the water carried large pine logs for hundreds of feet.
Yet there was a silver lining on Thursday. Thanks to the rain, the fairways on the park’s golf course were green and open.
So far, there is no estimate on the cost of the storm. What is known is that it pushed back the clock on when sections of the park can reopen, perhaps delaying the return of visitors.
