Balmorhea State Park
This small park in west Texas was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The park is the site of San Solomon Springs, one of a small number of such water features in the West Texas Desert. The CCC built an enormous swimming pool around the spring.
The pool of today is little changed from the original.
Water temperature ranges from 72 to 76 degrees. The pool covers 1.3 acres with depths from 3 to 25 feet. The sides and walkways are concrete, but the bottom of the pool is natural rock and gravel.
The spring outputs more than 15 million gallons of water per day, which flows through the pool and into a canal that passes through the park and travels to a regional lake. This photo shows the exit gates for the pool; the canal starts under Bob’s feet.
Wildlife love the pool! If you look carefully at the first photo you will see a group of ducks happily floating. The pool also contains lots of desert pupfish, an endangered species that grow to 2 inches long. The ducks love them also!
When the pool was built, it destroyed the natural habitat surrounding the springs: a cienega, or desert wetland. So the park created cienegas to restore the habitat.
Birds and other wildlife frequent the cienegas. We were lucky to see a vermilion flycatcher, though he was too far away to photograph.
The highlight of this park is definitely the pool and the crystal clear spring water. It also features an old style motel (built by the CCC) and a campground. The campground just opened after a major remodel, and is one of the nicest small state park campgrounds we’ve seen.
The park is a good stopover, though due to size there aren’t any trails. We enjoyed strolling through this oasis in the desert and were astonished by the swimming pool. We passed on taking a swim, since the weather was breezy with temperatures in the 60s. Maybe next time!
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