Vito - the heavy rain and flooding is not originating in the Austin area. No...it starts 75-100 miles west in what is referred to as Texas' Hill Country - land west of Kerrville, along the Guadalupe, Medina, Sabinal and Frio rivers. This is ranch land with little underbrush, lots of Mesquite, Oak and Pecan trees, and very few residents. In fact, the Hill Country is the world's largest producer of pecans.
Hill Country towns are 20+ miles apart, many with populations of 500 or fewer people even today. Many of those small towns were founded by German, Polish and Czech immigrants during the 1840s-1890s. Perhaps this spartan environment explains why this thinly populated area contributed an out-sized percentage of our military heroes, including Admiral Chester Nimitz (Commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet throughout WW II), and Texas A&M graduate MG James Rudder (a graduate of the original class of Army Rangers who, as a Lt. Col. in charge of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, led the successful assault on Pointe du Hoc during the Normandy invasion).
The Hill Country is semi-arid, with annual rainfall of less than 20". Consequently, those towns have no need for sewer or similar infrastructure, and their counties couldn't justify building it for "once every 50 year" flood control, never mind paying for it if they did build it.
Rivers in those areas are spring-fed, rarely more than 3' in depth and have shallow banks often 1/2 mile wide. The area's soil is a chalky/sandy mix that does not support vegetation undergrowth. Consequently, Hill Country rainfall doesn't soak in, but instead runs off into the rivers. During the very infrequent heavy rains, the run-off quickly turns into floods that make their way, unimpeded, into the rivers that run through the Austin, New Braunfels and San Antonio area.
I have personal knowledge of this area. A great uncle once lived, and is buried in Medina (population 1,500), which is 20 miles south of Kerrville and 15 miles north of Bandera (self-proclaimed Cowboy Capital of the World). Many of the Hill Country's little towns sprouted up during the 1860s - 1880s cattle drives, when longhorn herds were driven to Nebraska, Wyoming and similar places. Much of the cattle drive activity along the Goodnight-Loving Trail and Chisolm Trail originated in this part of the Hill Country, and those cattle drives were the inspiration for author/screenwriter Larry McMurtry's novel and mini-series Lonesome Dove. In fact, Lonesome Dove actor Tommy Lee Jones was born and still lives on a ranch in San Saba, population 500, which is about 100 miles north of Kerrville on SH 16. [So, Jones' Capt. Call accent isn't fake. It's real, so real that Jones once mused whether he earned his pay for this part.]
McMurtry wrote many novels and screen plays that were situated in the Hill Country, and he is widely acknowledged as one of Texas' best historians about "Texas' old west."
Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was an American writer noted for his novels set on the frontier, in contemporary small towns, and in increasingly urbanized and industrial areas of Texas. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the epic Lonesome Dove (1985) and an Academy Award for cowriting the screenplay for...
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