Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Mysterious Unknown Past Of Fort Worth's Tandy Hills

That is not the Emerald City of Oz in the distance, reached via Yellow Brick Road through the Enchanted Forest in the foreground.

No, instead of an Emerald City, that is the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth, also known as Dirty Ol' Town, by some.  And that is the Tandy Hills Forest, with no Yellow Brick Road.

But there is a Sanitary Sewer Line Access Road, also known as Tandy Highway.

I parked in a new location on the top of Mount Tandy today. I did not want to go to my usual top of the mountain location because there were too many pickup trucks and people working on the Fort Worth Space Needle.

The route I walked into the Tandy Hills Natural Area today was via the faint remains of a vehicle entry that terminates at a gate that must be circumvented to enter the Natural Area. The area outside this gate has been used as a very unnatural dumping zone.

I got past the broken tile and giant chunks of cement and headed down the mountain. Eventually the trail came to a creek bed. This creek bed had two very large cements culverts exposed.

Apparently, at one point in time this was a road, with culverts allowing the creek to pass without washing out the road.

Last week I was on the Tandy Hills and a couple of Hill newbies asked me who made all the trails. I confessed that I had no idea. I've never been able to get an answer to that question.

What used to be on the Tandy Hills? You see signs of civilizations past. A cement slab here, a fallen picket fence there, a rusted out hulk of a car, or two, large pipes, cables and other signs of past human activity.

Anyway. in addition to unsolved mysteries, I am ready for warm weather to return.

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