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Memories Of Camp Logan


The G-Team

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I tried doing a search on the forums without any luck so I'll ask here. In the southern part of memorial park right next to the bayou are a couple of old foundations (looks like there were bldgs there once with basements). I assume these are vintage WWI bldgs when camp logan was there, but wanted to know if anybody knew for sure.

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Which side of the bayou are they on? There were a couple of nasty apartment buildings along the bayou that used to flood all the time that finally got torn down a few years ago.

These would be on the north side of the bayou south-southeast of the maintenance bldgs for memorial park. As a matter of fact, I guess they could be really old abandoned maintenance bldgs., but I'd like to imagine they were something more interesting.

If I remember correctly, it seems like it was foundations for 2 or three little buildings and they might've all been connected. They were way too high up (deep drop off a cliff down into the bayou) to flood.

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I'm not totally sure, but from what I've heard, the foundations

near the bayou are from camp logan.. I think barracks, or '

whatever... They had a hospital, etc, but seems it was more

towards the area of the golf course.

MK

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  • 1 year later...

Over the past few years of internet collecting, I've scrounged up quite a few

pictures of Camp Logan. I haven't seen much listed on it, so I thought I would

throw a few on. Here are 15 of them.. I also have a detailed map of the camp

that was drawn by a map maker soldier who was there.

The writing you see on the pictures is backwards, but the image itself is

the right way. It's only the writing that is backwards.

Sorry if these dupe any others might have already posted..

I get these from various sites.. Many came from the library of congress,

but some came from other sites.

I've got more, but I don't want to bog you all down at one time..

I'm on cable now, so pretty zippy, but I realize it can take a while

for a dial up to load the page.. So I better not get too carried away..

MKhttp://home.comcast.net/~disk100/pc_drill.jpg

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For those who aren't familiar with Camp Logan, it was a WWI training site on what is now Memorial Park.

At one point, more than 30,000 men trained there. It was also the site of a riot in 1917 between police and black soldiers that resulted in the declaration of martial law in Houston.

Here's a couple of short articles I found:

http://www.hal-pc.org/~lfa/BB17.html

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online...s/CC/qcc26.html

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For those who aren't familiar with Camp Logan, it was a WWI training site on what is now Memorial Park.

At one point, more than 30,000 men trained there. It was also the site of a riot in 1917 between police and black soldiers that resulted in the declaration of martial law in Houston.

Here's a couple of short articles I found:

http://www.hal-pc.org/~lfa/BB17.html

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online...s/CC/qcc26.html

Great photos.....

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Isuredid, I got your mail about the junction, but when I replied it said your box was full.

That is near the junction, but not totally sure exactly where. The pix is not cropped.

Check this site.. Thats where I got that picture and map.

http://www.jimgill.net/gill/wwipages/index.html

You can check the map sections, and maybe get a clue.. Also lots

more pix that I haven't posted yet..

Also has all his letter from the camp, which are a pretty interesting read.

Note that there is a pix of a water tower. That is on the map, and also near

the junction. There may be others taken near that area.

MK

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Over the past few years of internet collecting, I've scrounged up quite a few

pictures of Camp Logan. I haven't seen much listed on it, so I thought I would

throw a few on. Here are 15 of them.. I also have a detailed map of the camp

that was drawn by a map maker soldier who was there.

The writing you see on the pictures is backwards, but the image itself is

the right way. It's only the writing that is backwards.

Sorry if these dupe any others might have already posted..

I get these from various sites.. Many came from the library of congress,

but some came from other sites.

I've got more, but I don't want to bog you all down at one time..

I'm on cable now, so pretty zippy, but I realize it can take a while

for a dial up to load the page.. So I better not get too carried away..

MK

miller2.jpg

Here is a "Then and Now" photo of the area where the soldier is lying on the RR tracks:

Eureka_Junction_Soldier_Location.jpg

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For those who aren't familiar with Camp Logan, it was a WWI training site on what is now Memorial Park. At one point, more than 30,000 men trained there. It was also the site of a riot in 1917 between police and black soldiers that resulted in the declaration of martial law in Houston.

What you say is correct, but at the risk of being labeled "terminally anal", Camp Logan wasn't the site of the actual rioting. The riots happened in two places, both several miles outside the camp, when a crowd of black soldiers started moving toward downtown. Here's how one local history website describes it.

"The acts of violence took place in two locations along Buffalo Bayou. The first was the suburban residential community of Brunner, located on the north side of Buffalo Bayou and centered at the intersection of Washington Avenue and the modern Shepherd Drive. The second scene of rioting took place on the south side of Buffalo Bayou along San Felipe Road, now known as West Dallas Avenue, in a residential area of the Fourth Ward known as the San Felipe District."

You can read the whole story of the riots, and check out a map showing the route the rioting soldiers took and how the events progressed at http://www.hal-pc.org/~lfa/BB55.html

Oh yes. My thanks to nm5k for posting this incredible set of photos. They're great. It's like looking backward in time.

Edited by FilioScotia
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The track location looks pretty close. I think picture #11 where all the

soldiers are on horseback may well be at the entrance to what is now

picnic lane. Not totally sure, but the way the ditch on the side of the road

looks, it sure likes like the road in front of the ballball place, etc.

I haven't been out there in quite a while, but the south side of the street

has the large parking lot lining it, with the open area across the street

where people often play football, etc.. I'm not sure if the ditch you see

in the picture is the north or south side, but to this day, the north side

has a definite "ditch" on the side of the road, and the east may too,

but I always remember the north side as standing out more.

So I'm kinda leaning to that being the north side of the road,

looking east, but just speculation.

yea, know what you mean about looking back in time.

I like old pictures.. Have 100's and 100's and 100's of them

on my hard drive. I just now looked in just one folder alone and

had 2300 pictures in it.. What I like is many of the old pictures have

quite high quality, even compared to todays B/W standards.

IE: Some of Brady's civil war pix are amazing quality for the

mid 1800's. The first picture ever taken was in 1839..Of course,

I have it on my hard drive.. :) It's a self poitrait of the picture

taker.. I also collect lots of the large city panaramic photo's.

It's weird to look at an old picture and know that everyone in

it is long gone.. But except for some old sound clips from the

late 1800's, the old pictures are the next best thing to climbing

into a time machine.

MK

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The track location looks pretty close.

The Washington Road used to cross Eureka Junction at street level until the 1930s when they added the underpass. That crossing behind the guy on the tracks is Eureka Junction crossing before the underpass was built. The photo I took shows the same scene, but a track has been added and the place where those warning barricades are in the old photo, are now the top of the bridge of the RR tracks over the underpass. The track on the right is the old Houston & Texas Central (Southern Pacific) which runs along 290. The track on the left, I think, is the MKT track and wasn't added until the turn of the century. That is the link to Stella, or the Stella cutoff, or the Stella Link which runs through Memorial Park. This would be the area marked Eureka Pines on the Camp Logan map. Here is another view of the same location from an automobile's perspective:

Eureka_RR_Crossing_1930.jpg

Edited by isuredid
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This is an interesting thread, and the images are fascinating. On one of the park's bike trails south of Memorial, you can see several old building foundations in the middle of the woods. I have often wondered if these were remnants of some of the Camp Logan buildings. Does anyone know anything about these?

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This is an interesting thread, and the images are fascinating. On one of the park's bike trails south of Memorial, you can see several old building foundations in the middle of the woods. I have often wondered if these were remnants of some of the Camp Logan buildings. Does anyone know anything about these?

I'm pretty sure most do date from Camp Logan. What I like about the map, is I can actually see

fairly close what parts of the park they actually camped in. I never knew for sure until I saw

that map. They had them lined up on the straight entrance to the park, and also back a bit

to the east. But it looks like the bulk of the camp was north of what is now memorial.

All the training grounds, barracks, etc... Most of that is golf course now I guess.

MK

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Here is a topo map of the same area a few years later:

Eureka_Junction_Topo_Map_1922.jpg

That is some pretty impressive research. Where did you find the map?

I compared it with a KeyMap, and it appears that that cluster of black rectangles in the lower center of the map (which I assume are the barracks) would cover the present day streets of Terrace, East Cowan, and West Cowan, which are just to the north of Memorial Dr. and just outside of the present day park. So it would seem that the barracks of Camp Logan were not actually in Memorial Park.

Other interesting features of that map are the Shepherd bridge in the lower right corner (I think there was also a dam there), and opposite the bayou from the two southernmost-extending streets of the Military Addition is present day Bayou Bend.

Question: do those tributaries, or "fingers," of the bayou still exist? It seems like if they did at least a few of them would cross Memorial, and I don't recall any bridges along there.

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Question: do those tributaries, or "fingers," of the bayou still exist? It seems like if they did at least a few of them would cross Memorial, and I don't recall any bridges along there.

When the present day Memorial Drive was built, it was constructed more as a dam than a bridge. This cut off many of the tributaries that you see in the earlier maps. Some of the tributaries were filled in, and others were used for drainage, with culverts going under Memorial to drain into the bayou. One of the most noticable is on the grounds of Park Memorial Condominiums, where Memorial Drive is several feet higher than the former creek on the north side of the road. I used to live in a building that sat on the hill of this former creek. During Allison, Buffalo Bayou flooded across Memorial and reclaimed the creekbed, rising up the hill until it flooded the unit below mine with 8 inches of water. I t also flooded Bayou On The Bend Apartments on the other side of Memorial into the second floor. This was its last flood. They were later demolished, to be replaced by the new much more flood resistant structure.

Edited by RedScare
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When the present day Memorial Drive was built, it was constructed more as a dam than a bridge. This cut off many of the tributaries that you see in the earlier maps. Some of the tributaries were filled in, and others were used for drainage, with culverts going under Memorial to drain into the bayou. One of the most noticable is on the grounds of Park Memorial Condominiums, where Memorial Drive is several feet higher than the former creek on the north side of the road. I used to live in a building that sat on the hill of this former creek. During Allison, Buffalo Bayou flooded across Memorial and reclaimed the creekbed, rising up the hill until it flooded the unit below mine with 8 inches of water. I t also flooded Bayou On The Bend Apartments on the other side of Memorial into the second floor. This was its last flood. They were later demolished, to be replaced by the new much more flood resistant structure.

People forget where the water courses used to be with all of the filled in gullies, but when something like Allison happens, the water remembers. Troon Road in River Oaks was originally a deep gully that was landscaped and paved. I imagine Tiel Way was too. I know the houses on Tiel Way flooded during Allison, but I don't know about Troon.

Edited by isuredid
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Yes, those tributaries still exist, especially the one that drains the golf course. It's very hard to tell when you are driving along Memorial, but if you ever run along the jogging trail if you look over you can easily see how deep the ravine is on the north side (towards the golf course) when you get to the bottom of that low spot on Memorial between the circle and Picnic Loop. The water flows underneath Memorial Drive through a big culvert and then along the east side of picnic loop, just inside the tree line. It's a HUGE gully on both sides of the road and the dropoff from the trail is very very steep for a few feet right at the very bottom. On the other side of Memorial at the same spot, the (relatively new) paved bicycle path on the south side of the road has a wooden bridge.

This is the spot where the running trail usually washes out, for obvious reasons, and lately there has been bright orange safety netting on the side of the trail. I have always thought that it would be pretty easy for someone to slip and fall a long way, so that netting is a good idea.

If you are a golfer, this is the large ravine that enters the golf course just east of the clubhouse (it is heavily landscaped here) and flows across the 9th fairway and forms the lateral hazard along the left side of the 1st fairway and the left side of the 9th fairway. You hit across it (or an arm of it, at least) on Hole #2, then it forms the VERY deep creek/hazard that flows across Hole #7 (the long par 3) in front of the tee box. It is heavily wooded between the cart path and the jogging trail, but the small wooden bridge that you cross in your cart is not far at all from the jogging trail and the culvert underneath Memorial Drive, you just can't usually see it (or think to look) when you're playing golf.

As far as what's on the upstream side of the park, I can't really say. I am sure that in the past it went further up towards Washington Ave, but nowadays it just looks like it starts at the ditch across the street from the golf course.

Edited by cottonmather0
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That is some pretty impressive research. Where did you find the map?

I compared it with a KeyMap, and it appears that that cluster of black rectangles in the lower center of the map (which I assume are the barracks) would cover the present day streets of Terrace, East Cowan, and West Cowan, which are just to the north of Memorial Dr. and just outside of the present day park. So it would seem that the barracks of Camp Logan were not actually in Memorial Park.

Other interesting features of that map are the Shepherd bridge in the lower right corner (I think there was also a dam there), and opposite the bayou from the two southernmost-extending streets of the Military Addition is present day Bayou Bend.

Question: do those tributaries, or "fingers," of the bayou still exist? It seems like if they did at least a few of them would cross Memorial, and I don't recall any bridges along there.

>I compared it with a KeyMap, and it appears that that cluster of black rectangles in the lower center of the map (which I assume are the barracks) would cover the present day streets of >Terrace, East Cowan, and West Cowan, which are just to the north of Memorial Dr. and just outside of the present day park. So it would seem that the barracks of Camp Logan were not >actually in Memorial Park.

Are you going by the color topo map above? I think that was in 1922 when Camp Logan was gone. None of the barracks

are in that picture that I can see. Many of the barracks were inside what is now the park. Both north, and south of

Memorial.

Here is the drawing of the camp with the pieces put together. North is up.

logan1.jpg

MK

Edited by nm5k
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>I compared it with a KeyMap, and it appears that that cluster of black rectangles in the lower center of the map (which I assume are the barracks) would cover the present day streets of >Terrace, East Cowan, and West Cowan, which are just to the north of Memorial Dr. and just outside of the present day park. So it would seem that the barracks of Camp Logan were not >actually in Memorial Park.

Are you going by the color topo map above? I think that was in 1922 when Camp Logan was gone. None of the barracks

are in that picture that I can see. Many of the barracks were inside what is now the park. Both north, and south of

Memorial.

Here is the drawing of the camp with the pieces put together. North is up.

logan1.JPG

MK

Yes, I was going by the topo map - thank you for setting me straight. I see where the barracks were now. But then what are all those black rectangles in the lower center area of the topo map? A few of them are also on your map in the same geographical location, though not as many.

Niche and RedScare - good info.

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Yes, I was going by the topo map - thank you for setting me straight. I see where the barracks were now. But then what are all those black rectangles in the lower center area of the topo map? A few of them are also on your map in the same geographical location, though not as many.

Niche and RedScare - good info.

They are all buildings, houses, but I'm not sure what would have been there in 1922.

The camp hospital seems to be in that area, but not sure what happened to the buildings

after the war was over. Looks like they built more in that area.

I don't think it was actually a park until 1925, which would be three years after that

topo map was drawn.

MK

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I found it interesting that the soldier who took all those photos mentioned, in one of his letters home, catching horned toads in the Memorial Park area. We used to find horned toads when we went dewberry picking in SW Houston in the 60s. I wonder when horned toads disappeared from the Houston area and where is their closest habitant now.

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I found it interesting that the soldier who took all those photos mentioned, in one of his letters home, catching horned toads in the Memorial Park area. We used to find horned toads when we went dewberry picking in SW Houston in the 60s. I wonder when horned toads disappeared from the Houston area and where is their closest habitant now.

Dunno. Thats a pretty good question. I remember when I lived in Dallas as a young kid, I saw

them all the time. They ran around the backyard, and I used to catch loads of em..

I've lived here since 1969, and I can't remember if I've ever seen one here or not..

Maybe one or two a long time ago, but they are rare for sure.

I often wonder how the areas north of here are holding up as far as those.

IE: Does Dallas still have em? I know they used to have loads of them.

One thing interesting...This past weekend I took a drive out west to a friend

of mines property. He has 8 acres near Cistern Tx, which is in Fayette<sp?> county.

When we were there, my friend mentioned that his son found one there recently.

So, I guess there are still a few out in the boonies.

I remember in Oklahoma they used to have quite a few there also, and ditto for

many sections of AR.

They were quite common around Roff, OK, where my grandmother used to live.

That is near Ada. Also it seems I used to see them in Hot Springs, AR at my

other grandparents. Not sure how they held up there.

I recently bought 5 acres on Lake Eufaula in OK, and I've been up there clearing

some downed trees, brush, etc, but haven't seen one there yet. But I haven't had

that place too long, so the jury is still out.. Lots of critters on that property though..

I wonder how pollution factors into all this vs clearing of habitat..

Note the absence of lightning bugs in this area.. I'm fairly sure they were natural

to this area, but you rarely see them now. Most sources claim air pollution is

the main reason for those dwindling away. The reason I question clearing of

habitat, is they had loads of them in out our residential area of Dallas in the 50's..

The houses, etc didn't seem to bother them then.. So I wonder if it is something

with the air quality.

Quite a few lightning bugs up at Lake Eufaula..I saw them as early as April this

year, when it was still on the cool side.

MK

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I compared it with a KeyMap, and it appears that that cluster of black rectangles in the lower center of the map (which I assume are the barracks) would cover the present day streets of Terrace, East Cowan, and West Cowan, which are just to the north of Memorial Dr. and just outside of the present day park. So it would seem that the barracks of Camp Logan were not actually in Memorial Park.

The area around W. Cowen, E. Cowen, and Crestwood was the location of the Army Base hospital.

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  • 7 months later...
Here is a "Then and Now" photo of the area where the soldier is lying on the RR tracks:

Eureka_Junction_Soldier_Location.jpg

I hate to say this, but that is not where the soldier laid on the R/R tracks. If you look at the old picture where the guy is on the tracks,the tracks on the right side of the picture curve toward the right. The tracks on the left side of the picture curve out toward the left. Only one area in Camp Logan had the tracks like that, on the north side of where Old Katy Road crossed Washington Road.

Over the past few years of internet collecting, I've scrounged up quite a few

pictures of Camp Logan. I haven't seen much listed on it, so I thought I would

throw a few on. Here are 15 of them.. I also have a detailed map of the camp

that was drawn by a map maker soldier who was there.

The writing you see on the pictures is backwards, but the image itself is

the right way. It's only the writing that is backwards.

Sorry if these dupe any others might have already posted..

I get these from various sites.. Many came from the library of congress,

but some came from other sites.

I've got more, but I don't want to bog you all down at one time..

I'm on cable now, so pretty zippy, but I realize it can take a while

for a dial up to load the page.. So I better not get too carried away..

MK

n069907.jpg

n068647.jpg

n068719.jpg

n069642.jpg

n069906.jpg

n069911.jpg

n069908.jpg

n069879.jpg

n069791.jpg

n069814.jpg

n069878.jpg

pc_lloan.jpg

miller2.jpg

trombone.jpg

pc_drill.jpg

I have accumulated over 30 pictures/postcards of Camp Logan.

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