Lost Roadside Park

[Michelle C]

Do any of you remember a roadside park located on old Katy Road (I-10)? It was located on the south side of the highway some place between Bingle Rd. and Silber. If my memory serves me correctly it was closer to Wirt Road. When you were east bound you could drive off to the south side of Katy Road and enter the roadside park. Once in the park there were picnic tables and plenty of trees. The terrain was varied with hills and gullies. It was a fun place to ride a bicycle. If four wheelers had been around then, it would have been a great place to ride them. We used to go to church in Spring Branch and would pass the park going to and from church, sometimes my mom would pack a picnic lunch and we would stop there on the way back from church and eat. I do not know how long the park had been there but I knew it from the mid to late fifties. From Google Earth and Historical Aerials I have found a couple of possible places. One is just east of Bingle and the other is just east of Wirt road.   

[ArchFan]

I visited that park a few times as a child and loved it, especially the topography.  I remember being fascinated by how the park road abruptly plunged down to a low-water crossing, with clear water, no less!   Also by the huge acorns from the live oaks.   As I recall, it was a roadside park provided by the state highway department along old Hwy 90 ... and was ultimately gobbled up by the construction and successive expansions of I-10.  There still seems to be a bit of it that provides a bit of a buffer between the south frontage road and the nice neighborhood across the remains of the creek.

 

The tributaries of Buffalo Bayou (and the others) provided many such charming spots before we "culvertized" and filled in most of them.

 

 

 

[ArchFan]

Oh, and I'm guessing my memories are from about 1960 or perhaps a year or 2 earlier.  Looking on Google Maps, I see that both Briar Branch and Spring Branch Creeks run through the area you mentioned, but the former seems more likely to be the one that the park centered on.  If you travel eastbound on the south frontage road of I-10 (or just use Google Maps Street View), you can start to reconstruct how things were laid out.

 

The former Las Alamedas Restaurant (I-10 and Old Voss Road) is situated on the north bank of Briar Branch Creek.  Before it was built, there was a miniature golf place right there, which exploited the steep ravine to make playing there interesting.  Going east along the frontage road to "new" Voss Road, there is now a concrete "sound barrier" wall that I think separates Briar Branch -- and what is left of the roadside park -- from the freeway.

 

There's still a fair amount of land -- from Voss to the Shell station -- that is undeveloped and looks like it would still make a nice park!

[tomv]

Yes I remember that park very well. The elevation was definitely the most memorable part. Growing up in flat Houston, it made an impact on me as a kid.

 

I also have fond memories of the Western Skies motel that was close by. My family stayed there one summer while we were waiting for our house in the Memorial area to be finished. It was so cool to live in a motel. I spent a lot of time at the pool of course. I'm sure it was not quite such a fun experience for my parents. I wish they were still around so I could ask them about it. 

 

 

[Michelle C]

It never ceases to amaze me when you get a few thoughts from a few different people a picture will start to evolve. I think you are dead on with the location of the old roadside park, it is consistent with what I remember. If I remember correctly you had to enter someplace east of Bingle perhaps one or two hundred yards east of Bingle. I also remember that it was operated by the state highway department. It is always nice to hear other peoples memory of it because each little piece of info jogs a bit of my memory as well. For years I have had fond memories of this little park and often wondered what was laying on top of it. Now we have a pretty good idea.

[IronTiger]

There's still a Western Skies Motel at Old Spanish Trail, but it was demolished over a decade ago (kept the name, though!), but I can't find where the WSM on the Katy Highway would've been.

[Michelle C]

There's still a Western Skies Motel at Old Spanish Trail, but it was demolished over a decade ago (kept the name, though!), but I can't find where the WSM on the Katy Highway would've been.

 

The Western Skies motel on Katy Freeway was located at 7809 Katy Road. That location is just east of Antoine. The feeder probably occupies part of the old Western Skies property.

 

[IronTiger]

Hmm...I think I know where it was thanks to Google Earth. There's a self storage facility at 7825 Katy Freeway, just east of Antoine, on the SOUTH side. This was not exempt from the Katy Freeway widening--a part of the facility was torn down, with the buildings rebuilt. To the west of it was 7855 Katy Freeway, Wellesley Inn & Suites, which was built in the late 1990s (1998) but torn down less than a decade later for the highway widening. To the west is 7777 Katy Freeway, Alexan Silber, which was 7787 Katy Freeway, a large Holiday Inn (torn down about the same time).

In 1995, the self storage facility was intact, there was a vacant lot, and then a creek to the west. The vacant lot had remains of a "T" shaped structure. In 1989, the self storage facility seemed to be recently built with the vacant lot seemingly recently cleared. In 1978, an unidentified object takes the place of the self storage facility and what would be Wellesley Inn and has the T shaped building. This was likely the motel. The same structures appear in 1953 but it's washed out (also hard to tell). After the building was demolished, what wasn't taken by frontage road became a retention pond.

Also, for what it's worth, the two Voss segments never connected, and if they did, it was brief. In 1953, the north Voss segment was clear cut but not built, and only the south segment connected to Katy Road (not a freeway). Bingle did. By 1978, Voss had already curved to go under the Katy Freeway to connect to Bingle. The original south segment of Voss connected between the frontage road and the main south segment of Voss, but didn't go under. The north side of Voss crossed the railroad but also dead-ended at the frontage road. If you were looking north at Voss, near the former Las Alamedas, directly across the freeway was the other side of Voss, but the widening obliterated that so they connect even less.

[NenaE]

post moved.

[mollusk]

Speaking of lost roadside parks on the Katy, further out in Brookshire there used to be a real nice one located in a little bosque in the median, complete with a small stream.

[little frau]

Right, we used to stop there when we'd be hauling a car, just to check the trailer load.  There was always someone stopped there, even large 18 wheelers.  it was a nice little place although it didn't have restrooms or any conveniences.   We never understood why it was closed.  The exit/entrance to/from it are still there on both east/west sides but you can't go far.  The roadbed between entrance and exit on both sides have been removed.

[sevfiv]

Yeah, the OST location was at 2806 OST, next the present day Equinox.

 

And hmph, that brochure looks familiar! Credit and more information at the link below:

http://arch-ive.org/archive/western-skies-motel/

 

 

There's still a Western Skies Motel at Old Spanish Trail, but it was demolished over a decade ago (kept the name, though!), but I can't find where the WSM on the Katy Highway would've been.

 

 

Yes I remember that park very well. The elevation was definitely the most memorable part. Growing up in flat Houston, it made an impact on me as a kid.

 

I also have fond memories of the Western Skies motel that was close by. My family stayed there one summer while we were waiting for our house in the Memorial area to be finished. It was so cool to live in a motel. I spent a lot of time at the pool of course. I'm sure it was not quite such a fun experience for my parents. I wish they were still around so I could ask them about it. 

 

[JLWM8609]

Right, we used to stop there when we'd be hauling a car, just to check the trailer load.  There was always someone stopped there, even large 18 wheelers.  it was a nice little place although it didn't have restrooms or any conveniences.   We never understood why it was closed.  The exit/entrance to/from it are still there on both east/west sides but you can't go far.  The roadbed between entrance and exit on both sides have been removed.

 

I think part of the reason for its closure were its antiquated left side entrance and exit ramps. I remember having to enter I-10 from one of those ramps from the rest area and merging into the left lane full of lifted pickups doing 80 mph.

[Purpledevil]

Please excuse the topic swerve from the road side park, but IronTiger mentioned 7777 Katy Freeway as "Alexan Silber". What is that? Any oldtimer here in Houston knows that famous address as Courtesy Chevrolet, which also met its demise to the widening of 10.

[IronTiger]

Alexan Silber is a large, dense upscale apartment building that replaced the leftover land from a large 1970s-era Holiday Inn that was demolished in the widening. Actually, I read that the Holiday Inn wasn't actually too much in harms way (parking lot clipped, but the majority of the building was safe) but torn down in a land swap.

EDIT: Yes, the land also covers the old car dealership, which I clearly see on the map now.

[IronTiger]

FWIW, I never figured out where this thing was, and even in the 2002 shot, I don't see the left-hand exit. This is because

a) the HOV lane is there, although the HOV lane was installed at some point after '78

even if the HOV lane wasn't there, there should be inner shoulders there anyway, and I see no place where the left-hand enter/exit COULD come up. Do you have an approximate location?

[mollusk]

IronT, if you're referring to posts 10, 11, and 13, it was another roadside park on the west side of Brookshire.  10 still divides there; the Water Feature is listed as Kellner Creek if you zoom in.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7806644,-95.9566609,14z

 

IIRC, it was closed not because of the left hand entrances (inside curves with dodgy sightlines no less, and yeah, they were pretty... um... exciting), but because it was no longer out in the boonies and therefore really wasn't serving much of a purpose other than as a lightly supervised (*ahem*) meet and greet site, with all the possible clutching-of-the-pearls-inspiring activities that entails.

[IronTiger]

It looks like it was closed between 2006 and 2009 with the pavement being torn out in 2010.