PARKS AND RECREATION
The broader issue revolving around Cape’s Dam has once again floated back into the San Marcos news, and the controversy is still hotter than a black inner tube drifting down the San Marcos River on a summer day. The city of San Marcos is set to consider proposals from companies to provide the city with a “feasibility study” for a budgeted amount of $670,000. San Marcos Parks and Recreation Director Jamie Lee Case repeatedly reminded board members in a recent meeting that it might not be the final total.
Since 2013, the city has attempted to amass solid, creditable information on Cape’s Dam after previous studies on the dam were challenged by members of the community. City councils and various boards have listened to and read reports from individual citizens, organized groups, official entities and authorities with scientific studies on whether to keep the dam or remove it.
Over the years, the issue has caused tension throughout the commu- nity with residents entrenched on either side of the discussion.
“I have never seen an issue that was more divisive than this one,” Tom Goynes once wrote.
Goynes was talking about the dam’s impact on the canoeing and kayaking communities, but it has been just as acrimonious among other quarters of the citizenry.
Thompson Dam and Island came into the possession of the city of San Marcos on Jan. 15, 2013, when the city council approved a Planned Development District that included “20 acres of dedicated parkland along the San Marcos River, which includes Cape’s Dam and the mill race.” The actual mill site and what’s left of the structure on the other side of the river belong to Texas Parks and Wildlife. Between the acquisition and the fall of 2014, the city contracted with Thomas Hardy, who was Chief Science Officer of the Meadows Center and a professor at Texas State University, to do a study of the issues. The city’s timeline for the Cape’s Dam project on their website says Hardy’s research and recommendation to remove the dam was presented to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Oct. 23, 2014, although Hardy’s study is dated Oct. 12, 2015, a year later.
It is not easy for the layman to understand.
“Simulations were carried out on a 64 node parallel processing architecture and each 30day simulation required approximately 23 hours of computational time to reach convergence of modeling results,” the study stated.
However, the conclusions are written in much plainer terms. Hardy’s study is clearly focused on ecological effects, especially on the endangered Texas Wild Rice and the Fountain Darter fish. He concludes “the most ecologically beneficial conditions for the San Marcos River is removal of Cape’s Dam.” He does address recreation as a secondary concern and concludes that “[r]emoval will result in a safe and sustainable recreation corridor.”
Not everyone agreed. In 2015, while Hardy was working on his study, the dam was further damaged by two major floods. The first was the Memorial Day flood in late May. The All Saint’s Flood hit in October 2015. The dam received more damage, which extended clean up and some repairs into January 2016.
On Feb. 22, 2016, a city council workshop was formally presented with Hardy’s research. The council directed staff to bring an action item to them for removal of the dam at their March 15 meeting. The city council subsequently voted for removal of the dam.
The dam removal was to occur under the U. S. Department of Fish and Wildlife’s National Fish Passage Program, which translated into the federal government footing much of the bill for the dam removal. But, the outcry from members of the community over the potential removal of the dam was so great, an additional meeting was called. On June 21, 2016, the city hosted a meeting for the “stakeholders.” They consisted of U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Texas Historical Commission, Army Corps of Engineers, city of San Marcos, Hays County and the Hays County Historical Commission. The Texas Historical Commission argued for the historical preservation of the dam or some part of it, and USFWS informed the city that they would withdraw participation if any part of the dam remained.
On Aug. 16, 2016, the USFWS presented information on the removal process and the permitting required to the city council. The council determined “the best course of action [was] to suspend the USFWS permit process and further investigate removal, and repair and replacement options.”
In 2017, a portion of the dam was gifted to the San Marcos River Foundation, which is vocal about their stance for removal of the dam.
“We were gifted a little over 31 acres in 2017 by the Woods Apartments owners, and that was done with the understanding that we would protect and preserve that property,” said Virginia Parker, San Marcos River Foundation executive director. She added that a survey showed SMRF owned a portion of the dam. “Anything that is done to that dam needs the San Marcos River Foundation’s cooperation, whether it’s being rebuilt or removed, and we’ve made it clear to [San Marcos City] Council and the [Hays] County Commissioners Court that we will not allow access to our property for the rebuilding of the dam.”
SMRF’s stance on dam removal centers upon the mill race, which Parker said “diverts water away from the natural river channel,” which already has decreased volume and flow rate due to drought. She also pointed to the silt that backs up behind the dam as another reason for removal because it has a negative impact on the health of the river and its species.
“There’s so much silt backed up behind the dam, it’s just not the best thing for the health of the river and the aquatic species in the river,” Parker said. “We don’t want the waters muddied, per se. I mean, that’s going to happen to a certain degree. It’s part of flooding. It’s part of heavy rain events, but if we can lessen that effect, it’s a good thing. … We don’t want turbidity in the water. We want a clear, clean, flowing river. Also, the Texas wild rice prefers clean flowing water. It’s not going to thrive in deep silt.”
Parker said the need for the water to go back to the main river channel has been evident in its behavior.
“Another concern is that there is water in the mill race seeping underneath Thompson’s Island — trying to get back to the natural river channel because of the topography of the area — and it’s eroding parts of Thompson’s Island,” Parker said. “That’s just a visible indicator that the water needs to be in the main river channel.”
Brian Olson, a local businessman, has been a vocal part of this debate as well and started the Save the SMTX River Facebook page. He also challenged the accuracy of the initial studies on Capes Dam. He went as far as to go take some of his own measurements, which he said refuted the claims in studies that were used in the applications made to governmental entities for the proposed dam removal. He also filed complaints with the Department of the Interior alleging that information on permits had been falsified. Olson said that due to policies within the Department of the Interior, he was not privy to what happened to the complaints after they were made.
Additionally, Olson’s argument for keeping the dam hinges on the mill race, but he is in favor of rebuilding the dam. Olson said that the mill race is now habitat for many aquatic species, and he believes it is federally protected habitat like much of the San Marcos River.
“So whether it’s amazing habitat, a little habitat or good habitat, it is still habitat, and you can’t legally just go and … decide to remove a third of a mile stretch of river of Federally Designated Critical Habitat,” Olson said. “There’s a lot of mitigation, which costs money to do that; you have to re-purpose or find a new place of similar habitat before you just remove habitat.”
Olson said the mill race is important for recreational purposes as well.
“My whole purpose and support in continuing that flow down the left channel is technically to provide a safe environment for people to swim and a safe route for young novice kayakers [to get back upstream],” Olson said, noting that the rate of flow is slower in the mill race than the main channel. “[The mill race is] something where you can put 20 kayaks; I have a picture of these wounded veterans because I go and get to know them, take pictures of them and just kind of show on Facebook that it’s being utilized as a passage; because it was the only way to get back upstream. So if you’re a kayaker, whether you’re advanced or a kid, and you go down where the waterfall is, you cannot kayak back up. And you’re not going to walk back up to Lions Club or the highway; You’re not going to carry a 20-foot boat and drag it.”
As for issues centered around historical significance, in 2017, the National Inventory of Dams released the information that there were 7,400 dams in Texas, and most of those were over 50 years of age and qualified them for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, which would include Cape’s Dam.
In 2017, the Heritage Association of San Marcos sent a letter asking city council to reconsider their removal decision. The letter stated the association did not “want to play into the politics of the issue.” Their argument was that the dam was part of the history of the growth and development of the city and, thus, had major “historical significance.” A pamphlet produced by the Texas Watersheds program of the Texas Parks and Wildlife documented eight dams that had been on the upper San Marcos River. The remaining seven sites were not mentioned.
On Oct. 4, 2018, the Hays County Historical Preservation Commission recommended the Cape’s Dam be approved as a local historical landmark, but the Planning and Zoning Commission failed to approve the move by a five to four vote. The argument rolled on into 2019, where designating the dam as a historical landmark came up again. The city council postponed a decision for six months while staff gathered more information. The big news of 2018, was the possibility of a partnership on the dam with Hays County. The Interlocal Agreement with Hays County was a done deal by 2021.
Kate Johnson, Hays County Historical Commission board chair wrote a Letter to the Editor that was published in the Daily Record on Feb. 6, 2019. The letter addressed an article published in the Daily Record by Jordan Buckley that stated that Cape’s Dam was built with slave labor.
“The Hays County Historical Commission realizes mistakes were made in the past and memorialized on historical markers. Even the Texas Historical Commission understands this and has tried to correct errors when discovered in the more than 16,000 historical markers across the state as funds and staffing allow,” the letter stated. “We look forward to presenting our research on Cape’s Dam to whoever is interested, when it is completed. There are still questions that need to be answered with accurate documentation.”
The historical marker was approved in 1994, based on an essay written by Katherine Thompson Rich for the marker application. It credits William A. Thompson of Caldwell County as having built the islands and the dam in the 1850s for a grist and sawmill with the use of “slave labor.”
Most of what was built in pre-Civil War Texas, as well as most of the American South, was built with slave labor. Texas was a major slave state and would secede from the Union along with the rest of the South in 1861.
The marker stood unquestioned until 2020. As a historian of Texas and American slavery, Joleene Snider was approached by a group who opposed the removal of the marker. Those who wanted to replace the marker were arguing slave labor could not have been used to build Thompson’s Dam because the structure hadn’t been built until 1869. In articles written at the time, they cited a document dated 1867 in the Hays County Courthouse referring to an agreement between Thompson and several other men to build a dam on the river. One of their members argued that Thompson wasn’t even in Texas until 1860, when he first appeared in the census in Caldwell County. He does appear in the 1850 census in Louisiana. But where was he between 1850 and 1860?
Turns out, Thompson was in Texas by 1851 and buying a large amount of land in Caldwell County, just over the Hays County line and near the San Marcos River. His note to buy the Caldwell County land was financed in part by William McGehee, one of the founders of Hays County and San Marcos. And, Thompson did own 25 slaves according to the Slave Schedule of the 1860 U.S. Census.
Dudley Dobie, Sr., a cousin to J. Frank Dobie, grew up in San Marcos and did a Master’s Degree at the University of Texas under Professor Walter Prescott Webb in the early 1930s. Dobie’s thesis recorded not one, but two interviews with descendants of early settlers who mentioned the first mill operation being on the San Marcos River under the ownership of Dr. W.A. Thompson in the 1850s. That ended the argument and talk of Thompson’s not being in San Marcos and slaves not being used to dredge out the mill race and other work on the river. The marker still stands and contains tribute to the slaves who did the manual labor.
What brought the dam issue to a head again was the Nov. 9, 2024, death of 17-year-old Ross Webb, Jr., while he was at the dam attempting to catch suckermouth bass, or Plecostomus, an invasive species encroaching on native species of fish. Webb was part of a caving group that included his father and several other men. Webb “got caught in some rebar wire that was jutting from the concrete in the dam,” according to a family friend.
After Webb’s death, one board member at San Marcos Parks and Recreations’ monthly meeting in January said Thompson’s Dam was a “swim at your own risk water feature,” and the director said signs stating that fact had been posted there.
The $670,000 Feasibility Study is a minor fee compared to what fixing the dam problem will likely cost in another five or six years versus what the costs would be now. Paul Snider, a retired general contractor, said, “Double it.” That money, however much it will ultimately be, will likely have to come from the citizens of this community and county, as the previous federal grants are no longer in place.
Parker, with SMRF, pointed to safety as a good reason for the city of San Marcos to take quick and decisive action.
“We are hopeful that the city [of San Marcos] can make some decisions sooner rather than later,” Parker said. “We know this study is going to take some time, and we are concerned about the safety of the dam.”
When asked for comment, the city of San Marcos directed the Daily Record to a website that has the list of actions taken toward resolving the issue over the years. The website can be found at this link sanmarcostx. gov/939/Capes-Dam.
Editor’s Note: Joleene Snider, who co-authored this article along with Daily Record Managing Editor Shannon West, previously published an article on Cape’s Dam for the Caldwell/Hays Examiner detailing the history of slave labor in the building of Cape’s Dam. Her research for the story was also used for portions of this article.
