Begining in 1898 several farsighted sportsmen, mostly from Dallas Texas, traveled East together on the Texas & Pacific Railroad looking for land. They left the blackland prairie that was producing the fortunes of so many Texans at the time and crossed the post oak savanna. They were looking for big woods where they could establish a club devoted to squirrel hunting, duck hunting and fishing. Approximately 80 miles from Dallas they passed into the great eastern deciduous forest that spreads across the South in many forms. They bought land between the T&P tracks and the North bank of the Sabine River from 1898 through 1902. They incorporated it as the Little Sandy Hunting and Fishing Club. It was named for Little Sandy Creek which flows clear and cool from springs in the Eocene sand outcrops of eastern Wood County. Little Sandy Creek was an important stop for T&P steam engines when their boilers needed water. The stop's name of Angler, Texas has faded from use but remains an appropos footnote. Perhaps club members chose this spot because they had the opportunity to get off and inspect the area during a stop for water. We are all fortunate that they did so because the 3,802 acres of bottomland hardwoods, oxbow lakes and planera swamps that they acquired have come down to us after a century of careful stewardship. At Little Sandy National Wildlife Refuge we can see something impossibly rare today in Texas; the woods like they looked to begin with and enough of them to get wonderfully lost in (just listen for distant trains to find North). It has been agreed upon as the best remnant of old growth bottomland hardwood in Texas by everyone who knows about such things.

Since 1986 Little Sandy has been a part of the national wildlife refuge system. For more information on this place please visit the Friends of the Sabine.
 
 

Some might say that the old growth forest like that at Little Sandy is deep. They are right in more ways than the obvious one. On the very surface it is beautiful. Even the citified recognize this. Those with more woods experience might wonder why does it look subtly different. Several answers of increasing complexity are possible. The understory that usually blocks your way and sight has retreated at Little Sandy. You are free to walk through the forest without tangling impediment of branches. See more open woods. Trees have straight boles that are branchless to 30 or 40 feet and they are not all living. Some visitors remark on the disturbing sight of of what they regard as too many dead trees standing. They are unused to mature woods where trees are allowed to grow old and die rather than be harvested.  Wildlife, especially birds, may seem subtly more abundant. About 80% of our breeding birds are dependantly associated with bottomland hardwoods and they are especially reliant on deep tracts like Little Sandy for avoidance of the brown cowbird which parasitizes their nests and shows preference for the forest boundary. Perhaps the birds sound better there too because of the acoustics of the canopy top/open understory structure.

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