Doing some exploring today in the south College Station/Wellborn area and noticed something very interesting. I was with my girlfriend and we went down Batts Ferry Road off of Koppe Bridge and it dead ends there at the river. If you look off to the left hand side there is a patch of trees about 50 yards out and I can see headstones out there. I could maybe spot 4 or 5 headstones and being the adventurous/mischievous person I am, I decided to get a quick peek at the headstones. Only a couple of them were actually legible and it stated the year of death was 1907. Anyone know any other information on these headstones? I just think it's pretty interesting how they are just randomly put there. A couple of them had broken off and could not be read at all. Also one of the headstones had writing real low on the stone as if it was half buried, but I didn't want to dig up the ground in that area at all. Makes me wonder if more are buried just below the ground? I'm sure that area has flooded many times over and deposited a lot of silt there to hid some of the tombstones. Just wondering if anyone knows the history of that area or anything about the tombstones? Thanks for the help!

There was an article in Sunday's Eagle about a forgotten cemetery off of Elmo Weedon Road (I believe that is the other side of the county from where you were). I believe it mentions some resources for info about old cemeteries (no time to reread it now).

http://www.theeagle.com/local/Restoring--preserving-history

Probably the Minter Springs Cemetery
The article mentioned above is very good.http://www.texasresearchramblers.org./cemeterypages/mintersprings/mintersprings.html

This is the only thing I could find on it:
http://texasresearchramblers.org/cemeterypages/battsferry/battsferry.html

How is it tresspassing? I thought cemetaries were public access.

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How is it tresspassing? I thought cemetaries were public access.

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I have several friends with very old family cemetaries on their land. They are not open to the public.

And you know for sure this one counts as that?

Wasn't the Minter Springs one, but I'm pretty positive it was the Batts Ferry Cemetery. Except when I clicked on the name and it brought up a picture of the tombstone it showed it to be laying on the ground, but the one I saw was not broken and was erected. I was told by another source that some of these were slave graves? Probably just a rumor. Also, those mounds that you talked about make sense as if it was an Indian burial ground. The area has been trashed with hundreds of beer cans and thousands of shotgun shells. Also, if you go over the mounds someone has made a dirt bike track. It would be a shame if those really are Indian burial sites and they are being run over by a dirt bike. When did the ferry stop running? Also, another interesting thing I saw out there, there were two pretty big signs that were on opposite sides of the river and they faced the river. They read "Warning" at the top of them but the rest was so badly faded out it was not legible. I wonder if this was a warning to flooding in the area? Just seemed odd that the signs were facing the river and not the road.

The warnings are to not anchor or dredge in that area due to a pipeline(s) under the river that go to the pump station you passed on the way to the edge of the river.

Cause you never know when somebody gonna sail a steamboat up the Brazos like the olden days.

EDIT: There was/is? an FAA navigation beacon in the building on the right-it was behind a big board fence to stop the bullets fired at it. There used to be some US Gov't no tresspassing signs there, but with a 4 wheeler you could drive right up to it from the road.



[This message has been edited by Aggiefan54 (edited 3/8/2010 11:34p).]

I'm talking about the mounds on the opposite side of the road of the 'warning signs.' Left if you are looking at the river from the road. The warning signs you are talking about at one time said U.S. Govt Property.

andrew, I'm not trying to be an a#$. Just keep in mind that some people may not be very understanding of a curious person on their land. It's been years since I have been down that way. I agree that the garbage in the area is nasty and unacceptable.

Aggiefan, thanks. I never could figure out what that was all about.

awesome12-no hard feelings...I'm a little confused as to what mounds you are talking about though. If I drive up the road and stop at the dead end facing the river the warning signs are to the left of me. So the mounds would be on the right or left side of the road?

Also that building is still there...and the wooden wall is also. I figured it might be to stop the bullets.

I always thought the wood wall was counterproductive-it made a good spot to tack your targets up.

There is another old river crossing where Hopes Creek Rd off Koppe Bridge dead ends at the river. People used to 4 wheel down there (maybe they still do) but the trail from the end of the road down toward the river is really steep and a couple of rigs have been turned over. Last time I checked a few years ago, dirt had been mounded up to stop vehicles going closer to the river.

It shows up real well on Googe Earth.

Andrew, go to google maps. You'll see a grass 'road' that goes to the left well before the entrance to the govt stuff to the right. Follow that grass road. Before it gets to the next fence line, you can see two places just off the grass road that just don't look like the rest of the area. I have no way to confirm or deny what I've been told, but that is the location of the mounds I was talking about.

Cemeteries on private property ARE public access:

§ 711.041. Access to Cemetery
(a) Any person who wishes to visit a cemetery or private burial grounds
for which no public ingress or egress is available shall have the right
to reasonable ingress and egress for the purpose of visiting the
cemetery or private burial grounds. This right of access extends only to
visitation during reasonable hours and only for purposes usually
associated with cemetery visits.

(b) The owner or owners of the lands surrounding the cemetery or private
burial grounds may designate the routes of reasonable ingress and
egress.
Added by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 634, § 22, eff. Sept. 1, 1993.

Drank a lot of beer there in the late 70s/early 80s. Also, pistol target practice on things in the river.BTW , I always policed my brass and cans.

We used to take folks out there at night. Any newbies were led across the fence to Rachel's grave. Never knew who she was, but it scared the dickens out of people. I think going to a cemetery at night would not come under the Texas law listed above. Pretty sure it belongs to Jake Cole, but it used to be Arhopolos' land.

It's the Batts Ferry cemetery....if you go to the link above someone gave you about cemetaries go to Cemeteries and it will list Batts Ferry cemetery with a photo of one headstone...

Very interesting thread. I remember going to the Batts Ferry area once and the dead end of I think Hope's Creek to 4wheel in the early 2000s. Both areas have been blocked off with to prohibit access now, as they should. There is a very interesting newly built house where Hope's Creek dead ends now too.

Are there any old pics from the ferry in use?

There are also a couple old forgotten cemetaries down Old Reliance Rd, around Andert.

This thread is very interesting. It's surprising how many of you are that familiar with the area in question.

It's not far from where I live. That unpaved road the OP mentioned is practically paved with spent shotgun shells. There are a ton of them out there.

I can see it now, all these cars parked off the end of Batts Ferry Rd with people out wandering around due to this thread.

If you do Google Street view that area, you'll see a car parked at the end of the road. I guess it wasn't a very secret place to begin with.

If there is interest...

There are two other places of interest in our area

1. is the old Native American Burial ground near Hearne

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txrober2/INDIANBURIALGROUNDSMAP.htm

2. FORT TENOXTITLÁN (The old Spanish fort and cemetery across the river in Robertson County)

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/FF/qbf49.html

I've spent a number of afternoons and evenings at the end of that road with friends. Corps Block is sometimes held out there, lots of people call it "the tree". The dirt berms to the RIGHT of the road have been partially knocked back down.... people are mudding/4wheeling/shooting by the FAA beacon again. Someone, the county i guess, installed a few barriers to prevent vehicles from driving down closer to the river. My father looked up the land ownership for the area a while back, I'll look around for that info.

If I head out there today, I'll take pictures.

This thread made me think of something else. Does anyone know who's buried at the corner of Marion Pugh and Luther West? It's not even big enough to be considered a cemetery really.

The little cemetery at Marion Pugh and Luther St. were originally on the A&M Campus. They moved the graves over to that site when Duncan Dining Hall was built. There is one A&M president, can't remember which one, and the others were staff or faculty at A&M buried there. Last I heard the university was trying to contact the relatives to see if the graves could be moved to the new College Station Cemetery Aggie Field of Honor.

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lots of people call it "the tree".

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that's how it was when I was in school.

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lots of people call it "the tree".

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that's how it was when I was in school.

There was a huge cottonwood tree at the end of Batts Ferry Rd. It was hollow on the inside and had been shot so many times it had a big hole on the side. One day somebeody set it on fire (on the inside!) and the fire went up through the center like a chimney. Thatwas pretty much the end of the tree-it's gone now.

I have a friend that drove her Lexus into the Brazos one night on batts ferry rd a few months ago. That's why the barricades were put up.