History & Culture

The Big Thicket

In 1936 the regional study, "Biological Survey of the East Texas Big Thicket Area," was completed by H.B. Parks and V.L. Cory. This report played a significant role in the future protection of the Big Thicket. It was the first effort by concerned people to document and begin a protection scheme of this unique landscape. At the time of the report, it was stated that the Big Thicket area was over one million acres in size.

Fire Regime

"The earth, born in fire, baptized by lightning, since before life's beginning has been and is, a fire plant." E. V. Komarek

Fire is a powerful element of our planet. Fire has swept across North America for tens of thousands of years from the Great Plains to the pine barrens of the Northeast to the piney woods of Southeast Texas. The regime of fire has been witnessed by many cultures and recorded in their histories. More recently, humankind has influenced these regions and others for many decades effectively stopping the fire process in these natural systems. Yet, fire has been part of the natural world and has caused species living in some areas to tolerate, indeed, require the presence of fire to grow. Whatever the historic cause of fire, American Indians burning vegetation, lightning strikes, small volcanic eruptions, ecosystems have evolved through a long selection process, a process that requires the essential element of fire.

Today, the National Park Service and other land agencies, have successfully introduced prescribed fire to the environment. Prescribed fire is, if you will, like a prescription medication. Medication assists your body during times of illness, and prescribed fire makes the environment healthier. Prescribed fire was introduced to Big Thicket National Preserve several years ago and continues to be effective today. Fire Managers take care in planning a prescribed fire. Atmospheric conditions, fuel types, topography, and the amount of moisture in the fuel to be burned, to name a few, are all carefully considered and measured against the conditions wanted in the outcome of a prescribed fire.

Areas in Big Thicket National Preserve selected for prescribed fire have been affected by human actions like stock grazing, lumbering, and other forms of vegetation manipulation including long-term fire suppression. The intent is to slowly bring fire back into the natural process and assist with the dynamics of vegetation using low intensity fire. Over the course of decades of prescribed fire, the achieved outcomes should be healthier pine and hardwood stands, grasses, and other small herbaceous plants on the forest floor, and more animals living in a dynamic and healthy environment.

The role of fire in our natural environment is interpreted at Big Thicket National Preserve. When you visit the Preserve Visitor Center, an interactive interpretive exhibit addresses both prescribed and wildland fire. The Discovery Station fire exhibit will challenge your knowledge about this important resource management effort.

Human and most all naturally caused wildland fires are suppressed throughout the United States. Federal land agencies, like the National Park Service, combine their efforts to suppress destructive wildland fires regularly. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho, is the headquarters for all Fire Mangers in Federal land agencies. The NIFC web site has current data addressing wildland fires in the United States. If you live in the "interface" (those border areas of wildland and housing development), there are several things you can do to protect your property, both landscape and home, from wildland fire. This protection scheme is refereed to as defendable space requiring a weekend of hard work and generally good, sound common sense as you build structures and landscape your property.

Our Partners

No park service unit operates in isolation. It takes cooperators, private and not-for-profit, local government, and both State and Federal, providing assistance and support for the many operational and research efforts required to manage a unit of the National Park Service. The organizations listed here have been important to the continued operations of Big Thicket. Visit their web sites and read about the work they are doing to conserve and protect environmental systems.

Big Thicket Association

Western National Parks Association

Kountze, Texas, Economical Development Corporation

Rice University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

National Parks and Conservation Association

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

USGS Biological Resources Division

The Conservation Fund

USGS Water Resources Division

The Nature Conservancy of Texas

Lamar University, Geology

Lamar University, Biology

Golden Triangle Audubon

Centennial Initiative 2016

Centennial Vision

On August 25, 2006- the 90th anniversary of the National Park Service - Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne launched the National Park Centennial Initiative to prepare national parks for another century of conservation, preservation and enjoyment. Since then the National Park Service asked citizens, park partners, experts and other stakeholders what they envisioned for a second century of national parks.

A nationwide series of more than 40 listening sessions produced more than 6,000 comments that helped to shape five centennial goals. The goals and vision were presented to President Bush and to the American people on May 31st in a report called The Future of America's National Parks.

Every national park staff took their lead from this report and created local centennial strategies to describe their vision and desired accomplishments by 2016. This is just the first year, and there are many great things to come as the National Park Service prepares to celebrate 100 years!

To keep up with the Centennial Initiative and to experience the interactive version of The Future of America's National Parks and special features please visit the centennial website at www.nps.gov/2016.

Big Thicket Biological Crossroads

People have called the Big Thicket an American ark and the biological crossroads of North America. The preserve was established to protect the remnant of its complex biological diversity. What is extraordinary is not the rarity or abundance of its life forms, but how many species coexist here. Once vast, this combination of pine and cypress forest, hardwood forest, meadow, and blackwater swamp is but a remnant. With such varied habitats, "Big Thicket" is a misnomer, but it seems appropriate. An exhausted settler wrote in 1835: "This day passed through the thickest woods I ever saw. It...surpasses any country for brush."

Major North American biological influences bump up against each other here: south eastern swamps, eastern forests, central plains, and southwest deserts. Bogs sit near arid sandhills. Eastern bluebirds nest near roadrunners. There are 85 tree species, more than 60 shrubs, and nearly 1,000 other flowering plants, including 26 ferns and allies, 20 orchids, and four of North America's five types of insect-eating plants. Nearly 186 kinds of birds live here or migrate through. Fifty reptile species include a small, rarely seen population of alligators. Amphibious frogs and toads abound.

Although Alabama-Coushatta Indians hunted the Big Thicket, they did not generally penetrate its deepest reaches, and the area was settled by whites relatively late. In the 1850s economic exploitation began with the cutting of pine and cypress. Sawmills followed, using railroads to move out large volumes of wood. Ancient forests were felled and replanted with non-native slash pine. Oil strikes around 1900 brought further forest encroachment. Nearby rice farmers flooded some forests; others were cleared for housing developments.

Designation of Big Thicket as a national preserve created a different management concept for the National Park Service. Preserve status prevents further timber harvesting but allows oil and gas exploration, hunting, and trapping to continue. In 2001 the American Bird Conservancy designated Big Thicket National Preserve a Globally Important Bird Area. The preserve is composed of 12 units comprising 97,500 acres. It was designated an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations in 1981. The protected area will provide a standard for measuring human impact on the environment.

Bookstore

A wonderfully eclectic selection of publications, visitor convenience items, video tapes, and computer software is sold at the Big Thicket National Preserve Visitor Center Bookstore. These items are made available through the not-for-profit cooperating association, Western National Parks Association, in Arizona.

Items purchased at our bookstore ultimately benefit the Preserve and our visitors. A percentage of all sales come back to the Preserve so that we can further assist our visitors through publications development and other services.

Please call us if you would like to purchase an item before your visit or a gift for someone. Contact us at 409-951-6725 and we can provide you with information about the many items we offer. Purchases can be made via phone by using a credit card. There is a charge for shipping.