Mission Tejas short on traffic, big on solitude

Seated on wooden benches, the Boy Scouts passed an ancient red clay pottery shard among their troop and felt the indentations adorning the piece's edge. John Tatum, a Mission Tejas park ranger, explained that Caddo women decorated their pots by pinching the edges like a pie crust and scratching it with their fingernails.

"It's like shaking hands with that lady, isn't it?" he asked the boys.

Tatum works as a park ranger and interpreter at Mission Tejas State Park in Weches, a tiny town at the northern edge of Davy Crockett National Forest. A retired science teacher who worked in Kennard and Cleburne, Tatum enjoys teaching park visitors about the area's history.

"I realized what I was born to do was be a teacher," he said. "Here I can teach what I think the children need to learn."

Teaching visitors about Texas' past, from the ancient tribes that migrated here, to the Spanish explorers and Anglo settlers who made the region their home, is the park's purpose. A wooden chapel commemorating Mission Tejas, the first Spanish mission in Texas, was built on the property in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and a three-room log home built by the Rice family in the 1830s was moved to the property in 1974. Sharing staff and resources, Caddoan Mounds State Historic Site, six miles east, features burial and ceremonial mounds built by the Caddo over hundreds of years.

Small in comparison to many state parks, Tejas offers hiking trails, a one-acre fishing pond and 15 campsites. Between four and eight people staff Mission Tejas, and all scrub toilets and mow the grass.

Because the park does not facilitate swimming, boating or biking, it receives less traffic, and therefore, less attention, than larger parks. Tatum said that's part of the park's draw — solitude where the sun dapples through the thick pines.

"This park is for people who like a nice, quiet place to get away," he said.

Being quiet has always meant a small staff and few funds for development and repairs. Recent cuts that have devastated some parks and prolonged the repair of others have barely affected Mission Tejas, whose staff is used to a tight budget and has little to cut, Tatum said.

"Where the hurt's gonna come in is when we go to develop," he said.

The outskirts of the park include the original El Camino Real, the King's Road, that ran from Natchitoches, La., to San Antonio. He occasionally guides tours down the trail, explaining its historical significance, and would like to open the trail to visitors with information boards along the path.

The roof covering the Rice log home needs repairing, and Tatum realizes that is not a high priority for a quiet park deep behind the Piney Woods.

Six miles east, the visitor's center housing information and artifacts concerning the Caddoan mounds can only stay open Thursday to Sunday. Its sparse book shelf needs new inventory, and burned-out bulbs in the track lighting await funds and staff from Austin to change the special lights.

"If I'm not here, it's not open," said Kay Seth, the lone clerk and interpreter at the mounds site. "We've been being cut back for the last five years, so we're to the bone already."