Ten Minutes From Home...My Town Friday ShootOut

The Concho River

 The Concho River rises in three branches known as the North Concho, the Middle Concho, and the South Concho. The North Concho, the main branch and a perennial stream, originates two miles north of the Glasscock county line in southern Howard County (at 31°07' N, 101°24' W) and flows southeast for eighty-eight miles across Glasscock, Sterling, Coke, and Tom Green counties to its confluence with the South and Middle Concho rivers, a mile north of Goodfellow Air Force Base in central Tom Green County.

 The river is named for Spanish concha, "shell." When Hernán Martín and Diego del Castillo explored the area in 1650, they found large quantities of mussel shells that yielded freshwater pearls. Their report was so enthusiastic that Diego de Guadalajara returned to the area four years later; unfortunately, the yield proved to be only about one decent pearl per 100 mussels, and any notion of systematic harvesting was abandoned. Although the river was first called Río de las Nueces because of the many pecans found in the area, the name Concho became the most widely used by the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the best-known Indian pictographs in Texas are found on bluffs along the Concho a mile west of Paint Rock. The river attracted many early Indian tribes, but the Comanches controlled it by the mid-1800s. In 1862 or 1863 John S. Chisum established a ranch on the Concho near its confluence with the Colorado. Fort Concho, a military installation designed to protect travelers and settlers from Indian attack, was established in 1867 at the confluence of the North Concho and the combined Middle and South branches, which offered a steady supply of water.

I really enjoyed this ShootOut Theme, as it gave me a chance to explore a part of San Angelo that I had not had the chance to photograph in the three years I have lived here.  I'm usually all about the photos, and not so much about commentary on Friday ShootOut, but I found the History of the Concho River very interesting and thought you might, too.

This series of photographs were taken at the Middle Concho which runs through the Heart of San Angelo near Old Fort Concho, Concho Street and Old Town San Angelo.

The River divides the city and the only way to get from one side of town to the other is by crossing one of the bridges.

Along the banks of the Middle Concho are River Walks, the Park and the San Angelo Art Museum area where some of these photos were taken including the '9-11 Memorial'.

I had no idea the Memorial was there, as I didn't live in San Angelo in 2001. 

I'm always struck by the fact that everywhere you go you can find SomeOne, SomePlace, SomeCommunity and SomeCountry that was directly affected by the Tragedy of 9~11.

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