Civil War Battlefield Recovering After Hurricanes

The bronze likeness of Confederate Lt. Dick Dowling has survived two hurricanes in the last five years, as against the odds as the few dozen rebel Texas soldiers he led to victory against a huge Union force almost 150 years ago.

But the double whammy of 2005's Hurricane Rita and last year's Ike left the Sabine Pass Battleground Park in shambles. Trees were toppled and ripped out. Historical markers were snapped off and creature comforts for visitors were swept away in one of Texas' few Civil War battlefield sites.

The 57-acre park on the coastal Texas-Louisiana border is considered one of the nation's most threatened Civil War battlefields by the Civil War Preservation Trust. Now after a healthy dose of tender loving care from the man who alone oversees park maintenance, and a $600,000 rebuilding program directed by the Texas Historical Commission, the battlefield site is on track to reopen near the end of summer.

For the nearby tiny town of Sabine Pass, where new mobile homes dot the coastal landscape amid the remains of broken structures mangled by the two storms, the park's reopening would mark another step in recovery.

"I think it would mean a great deal," said Kellie Brown, who works at Tammie's Diner, a mobile food truck that just opened in May, giving folks here now two places to eat outside of home. "That's been here long before we were and it's part of why we're here."

The park is adjacent to offshore oil supply yards still scarred by debris and a few blocks from town, where the Sabine Pass school, the biggest building around, was among the few places relatively unscathed by Ike. Crews are repaving the main street, which should go to Galveston about 70 miles to the southwest but in reality has been wiped out west of town for years by recurring storms.

The park, which opened in 1974, draws history buffs, families on picnics and fishermen. Typically, a couple hundred anglers on weekends line the concrete walkway on the riverbank.