As waters recede, Lake Travis relics revealed

While waters receding because of the drought revealed this month whole vehicles submerged in Lake Travis, the episode was not the first time strange and sometimes grisly artifacts have poked their heads out of the banks of the Colorado River during severe dry spells.

The river was dammed in a series of massive projects in the first half of the last century to control flooding and provide steady water supplies for Central Texas. As a consequence, the lakes that formed swallowed up whole bits of history.

The drought "reveals things that haven't been seen in a long time," said Brian Block, executive director of Keep Austin Beautiful, which runs an annual cleanup of Lake Travis.

In August 2006, during the last drought that gripped Central Texas, an Austin man riding a watercraft on Lake Travis found a skeleton that archaeologists later estimated to be a female at least 700 years old.

The man, David Houston, had pulled onto the sloped southern bank, admiring a nearby house, when he saw a jawbone, teeth and a forearm in the clay soil less than six feet away. The site had been uncovered when the lake fell 16 feet below its August average to 649 feet above sea level.

Lake Travis has now fallen to 638 feet, down from a July average of 669.

Lake Buchanan, now at 997 feet, down from its July average of 1,014 feet, has yielded its own curiosities. The foundations of the buildings of the 19th century town of Bluffton, which was a stagecoach stop between Burnet and Llano, have reappeared. Originally formed in 1852, the town sported a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, a hotel and saloons, according to the Handbook of Texas. When Buchanan Dam, which originally was to be called Bluffton Dam, was completed in 1937, the lake inundated the town.

Features of the site — last exposed in early 2007 during the previous drought — have again revealed themselves, including the foundations of the cotton gin, the stone rubble from the chimneys and foundations of the old hotel.

Besides the vehicles police recovered Thursday, at least two of which had been reported stolen and one at least as long ago as 1988, the lakes have offered up untoward relics.

In 2006, about a month after the discovery of the skeleton on Lake Travis, a concrete-filled barrel was found on the shore of Lake Buchanan in Burnet County. Inside was the body of a man who it was eventually determined had been killed by a blow to the head in 1990.

Police have not solved the crime, but Sheriff W.T. Smith said his office has conducted recent interviews.

Roger Wade, a spokesman for the Travis County sheriff's office, said there were at least five victims whose bodies haven't been recovered from accidents on the Highland Lakes over the past 10 years. He said there are no plans to send divers down to search for the bodies.

"The water is still treacherous, you still can't see, and there are lots of obstacles down there," he said.

But with the low lake levels, some scuba divers are able to get to sites they might not normally be able to reach.

The treetops of the old pecan orchards at Windy Point Park, normally at least 110 feet below the surface of Lake Travis, are now about 75 feet below, said Nicco Martinez, who runs Royal Scuba in Austin.

Visibility has suffered, however.

"There's less clarity because you have a lot less water volume but still the same amount of gunk," he said.

Asher Price, Austin Statesman