Sitting on the eastern edge of historic Mineral Wells, Texas is Mineral wells state park. The 3,282.5 acre park was founded in July of 1981 and is a gem of science and nature.
One of the more unusual attractions at this park is a rather peculiar rock feature called Penitentiary Hollow. An escarpment of conglomerate stone (looks like cement or glued together gravel) on the edge of a hill that due to weathering and extreme fracturing of the cliff face has left marooned boulders which creates an effect that resembles a series of small canyons. The nature of the “canyons” has made it popular spot with rock climbers.
The park has over 31 miles (50 km) of hiking trails, 25 miles (40 km) of which are open to bicycles and horses. There are campsites by the lake, as well as up on the hills overlooking it.
HISTORY AND STATS BRIEFING
Part of the park used to be a portion of Fort Wolters (call me captain redundancy), a military base dating back before WWII. Sometimes air-force sometimes army over the years, in WWII it was the base movie star Audie Murphey did his basic training at as an infantryman. However it’s final role was as United States Army Primary Helicopter School. The base was deactivated in 1973 and turned into an industrial park for the city of mineral wells. The closest thing to military use it sees now is the Texas Army National Guard operates a training facility there. As you will see in pictures below portions of the trail system borders the old base.
Penitentiary Hollow And Surrounding Trails
Above Penitentiary Hollow is a nice observation area and the start to the trails on this side of the lake. It begins with stairs down to the base of Penitentiary Hollow and branches out all over. The trail borders the lake scrambling over rocks branching back up to camping areas and off shooting onto several fishing piers. All the following pictures until you get to the section of this blog titled “Across The Spillway” are of penitentiary hollow and the surrounding trails. They definitely don’t adequately convey the scope, scale, and atmosphere of the area though.
Let’s Science This Biatch Up!
The park is positioned towards the southern end of the Western Cross Timbers ecoregion. What the Cross Timbers region is, is a natural boundary zone between the dessert and plains of the west and the forest of the eastern united states. It marks a very literal edge of the habitat of multiple fauna and flora.
Geology rocks
Geologically speaking the conglomerate stone I mentioned earlier is specifically sandstone of inconsistent sized particles all from a river delta emptying into a shallow inland sea during the Pennsylvanian era. To simplify things, these rocks were part of sand and gravel bars before mineral rich water and time cemented them together. Depending on the fluvial band (layer deposited by a river) some layers are more fine grained while some larger just like any river bed today.
Don’t have any plants? Perhaps you haven’t botany.
For those that didn’t leave because of that pun the sheer variety of plant life in the park is quite phenomenal. From succulents like the Christmas Cholla and Lace Hedgehog Cactus to annoyances like Eastern Poison Ivy and Fragrant Sumac to beautiful flowers like the Button Bush and Pearl Milkweed to trees of many sizes like the American Elms pictured below. For those that like plants the variety I have seen is in the hundreds if not thousands of different species. Admittedly most I can’t identify off the top of my head. Should also note I doubt I have seen anywhere near the amount of plant-life there is. My wife not being a big fan of being drug through the underbrush just to document some errant moss, mold, or fungus.
Zoology, a topic so broad I can’t come up with a joke.
They jump, skitter, crawl, run, etc. Some of them are labeled creepy. Some are tasty. I like pretty much all of them. Except mosquitos. Those little winged jerks can drop dead and I am more than okay helping them do that. Murderous intent towards certain members of the insect branch of the kingdom of animalia aside… I saw so many different birds, encountered multiple deer, tracks of raccoons, armadillos, opossums, turkeys, etc. photographed a few things. My favorite encounter though hands down was when I found an adorable ring neck snake snoozing in some moss in a crevice.
Your going to see a lot of green blue-grey splotches on the rocks below, for the unfamiliar this is mostly going to be Lichens, Lichens are composite organisms, two things living in a close enough symbiotic relationship they seem to be one. In this case a fungus and an alga.
I digress… TO THE PICS!!!!
Touch it! Touch the moss…. actually maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t know if oils from your skin might hurt it…BUT IT’S SOOO SOFT!
Let us make one thing perfectly clear. My humor is just off color enough to make jokes about wood being in cracks… but it didn’t seem like it was a good fit here.
That vine in the bottom left with the five leaves clustered in groups is called Virginia Creeper. I have heard it confused with poison ivy many times. It is not. It is actually a member of the grape family and other then the small hard fruit, which have enough oxalic acid in them to possibly cause a person kidney damage if eaten, they’re 100% harmless.
Never Too Old To Climb Trees
Midway through my forties and I am in ways still just a big kid. I saw the view below and my first thought was “Ooooh Imma climb that tree.” So I did. The view was nice as you’ll see in the pics that follow.
Fun fact: I once had a woman declare my toe shoes witchcraft… okay…
It was at this point I remembered how old I am that now I was going to have to climb back down. Riiiiigggghhhhtt…
The view is nice maybe I’ll just stay up here…
Welp made it back down the tree, dignity relatively intact… would have been easier without 30lbs of camera equipment on my back.
I See The Problem. This Things Cracked
Totally not a cave but it feels kinda like one. This gap between 2 boulders is large enough to easily maneuver through its slightly winding space but only just for a 6 foot tall 200lb slightly pudgy middle-aged man with a big back pack full of camera equipment. As a plus no spiders that I saw.
So much to explore see and do, and this is just the side of the lake you enter the park upon…
Across The Spillway
The tone of the park has a subtle but distinctly different vibe Once you cross the spillway to the far side of the lake, which has the longer trail, more campsites, pavilion, and RV hookups. The spillway itself flows over the road that you cross and the level of lake is about the height of the window on a lifted jeep. So crossing to the far side of the park is a bit of an experience in and of itself. The pictures and footage below of the spillway where taken during the fall of 2019 after all the vegetation had died off.
Remnants from it’s time as an army base? I forgot to look into it while there. There is a foundation or retaining wall and stairs down to the lake edge here. There most likely was a dock at this spot.
Cool place to view the lake though…
In the words of Ruby Rod… Supergreen!
Have I mentioned biodiversity? Because if not there is a good amount of it here…
Lest we forget we’re in Texas… Stinking cactus. Not a recommended form of natural toilet paper. The needles of cactus are actually the plant’s leaves. The soft squishy stalk of the plant has all the chlorophyll and does the photosynthesis thing while the leaves (the needles if you weren’t fallowing along well) act as a deterrent to keep all but the toughest weirdos from eating them. As a weirdo I can assure you it works pretty well.
I like the layering here. #JUSTNERDYGEOLOGYTHINGS …also excuse my thumb I got a little exited.
The wife indicated that she would appreciate it if I didn’t examine EVERY or indeed MOST of the individual rocks… So I took high definition pictures so I could look at them later.
Amenities
The park has; 6 fishing piers. A boat ramp. Swimming area. Multiple showers. Something like 11 bathrooms. All sorts of camping, including campsites for people with horses. Horse and bike trails as well as foot traffic. Picnic tables for day use. An amphitheater. Rock climbing. A Pavilion or two for big groups. Bird Blinds. And probably much more that I have forgotten.
Wildlife
It may be hard to see but there is a Texas Spiny Lizard on that rock retaining wall (this is just outside the park store) Think I will see how close he’ll let me get.
Not bad. I hope you’re ready for your close-up little dude.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this my dude but there’s a blue fronted dancer on your nose. (A type of damselfly often thought to be a dragonfly.)
Another random critter encounter. This fart was atop one of the highest points in the park in 103 degree temps about 1/2 a mile from water and not doing well. Normally I let nature take it’s own course, on this occasion I was feeling way to sympathetic to his little struggle…
So I hiked him down to the lake so he might survive his migration.
I set him at the edge but he was so spooked he didn’t move for quite a bit.
After standing off at a distance a bit he became more lively. But as I tried to creep closer to get a pic he pulled all parts into his shell again. Clearly he was stressed and tired (totally understand my dude) so I just left.
Deer? Yup saw plenty. They quite clearly saw me too. I am totally not sneaky.
Moving on… As a mighty naturalist, I’d like to catch and give you a close up view of the lizard below. However he is the reincarnation of Speedy Gonzalez , better known as the 6 lined racerunner, he can run at 18 mph that’s way faster than the average man, that according to google runs a pathetic speed of about 6mph, (though I think I personally can run faster than that honestly). Considering this little show-off’s size… That’d be like a 6ft human (like myself) running about 165mph. …I would save so much on gas… however my speed is somewhere between 6mph and definitely not 18mph. So basically it is telephoto zoom and a middle-aged man running around like a loon in the forest.
Military Presence
Seems like potentially life changing advice. Remember: If you hear live ordinance fire, scatter.
No idea… perhaps a… range finder… I’m sorry. I should be ashamed for such a terrible joke. Maybe I will be one day.
Wait I got a worse joke…. Boobshrooms! One is always slightly bigger.
