On a two-lane blacktop west of San Marcos, Texas sits an old-style roadside park. Today it has three covered picnic tables made of concrete and is surrounded on three sides by a high chain link fence.

Back when I first discovered this site, about 40 years ago, I don’t recall the tables being covered. I know in those days the fence was much lower and there was a metal stile to climb over. This park overlooks the Boy Scout Camp El Rancho Cima. That fact accounts for my first visit to the park as we used it as a rendezvous for the parents driving us boys to camp.

The hold this site has over me has to do with its topography. Before my first visit to this park I had never seen anything like the hills that fell away from both sides of this road. Being born and raised on the Texas Gulf Coast (can we say flat) had not prepared me for my first visit to the Texas Hill Country. I don’t care how many times you may see photos of hills and mountains, it just doesn’t carry that visceral “whoa” that being there has.

Even to this day, if I am within 100 miles of this particular spot I will make it a point to stop by and sit a spell. Rain, shine, cold, heat it doesn’t matter, every time I stop by here it is like visiting an old friend again.

Leon Hale, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle, shares my love of this park and has mentioned it o a number of occasions in his column. On May 16, 2003 he wrote the following:

DEVIL'S BACKBONE -- On the road again. This time headed west, my favorite direction.

I'm having my lunch out of a paper sack -- roast turkey sandwich on whole wheat, with mayo, lettuce, onion and tomato -- here in a roadside park where I've been stopping at least once a year for decades. Ever since our highway people provided this little park on State 32.

Something about stopping here has always made me feel good. The scenery is nice but it doesn't generate extravagant adjectives like majestic, or magnificent, or awe-inspiring.

What you see from your picnic table is just good plain vanilla scenery of the Texas Hill Country. Canyons and ridges and sweeping slopes covered with cedar and scrub oak. I don't know, maybe you need to be a native to love it. A thick haze, looks like smoke, hangs above these hills right now but they sure look fine to me.

The Devil's Backbone is the name given to a rocky ridge near Wimberly, a nice hilly and curvy drive of maybe 20 minutes northwest of San Marcos. I'm told this little park sits at the highest point on the ridge, about 1,275 feet. That ain't the rocky mountains but when you've just come from sea level it seems pretty elevated.

By LEON HALE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

Location: Comal County, Texas; 29° 55' 54"N, 98° 10' 22"W

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