- Geologists and other scholars have proposed a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene to denote a period defined by human alteration of the Earth’s ecosystems and climate. In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy released a preliminary report and set of resolutions, suggesting the start date for the Anthropocene would be “optimally placed in the mid-20th century, coinciding with the array of geological proxy signals preserved within recently accumulated strata and resulting from the ‘Great Acceleration’ of population growth, industrialization and globalization.” A product of Houston’s wartime and midcentury economic growth, the development of the Brownwood subdivision was a result of the “great acceleration” and coincides with the suggested beginning of the Anthropocene, making it a prime southern space to explore local manifestations of the new global epoch. For the Working Group’s report and resolutions, see “Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene,’” Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy,” May 21, 2019, http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/. For a thorough history of the subdivision, see Laura Bernal, “Brownwood: Baytown’s Most Historic Neighborhood” (master’s thesis, University of Houston, 2020).
- As originally conceived by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in 2000, the Anthropocene, while neutrally denoting a geological epoch, was also meant to highlight the damage humans have done to natural systems through industrial society. To introduce the term, the authors emphasized the greenhouse effect from the use of fossil fuels, rising species extinction rates, damage to the ozone layer, the increased presence of toxins in the environment, and the destruction of wetlands as prime markers of humans’ impact on the Earth. They concluded that “develop[ing] a world-wide, accepted strategy leading to sustainability of ecosystems against human-induced stresses will be one of the great future tasks of mankind.” Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The Anthropocene,” IGPB Newsletter 41, May 2000, 17–18.
- Scholars have suggested other terms to denote this new geological epoch, including Jason W. Moore’s “Capitalocene,” Donna J. Haraway’s “Chthulucene,” and Anna L. Tsing’s (and other’s) “Plantationocene.” Jason W. Moore, ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016); Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Gregg Mitman, “Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing,” Edge Effects, June 18, 2019. While Brownwood’s historical entanglements with oil extraction and processing make it a site deeply implicated in the relations that Moore uses to explore the idea of the Capitalocene, I prefer to interpret the space as representing the Anthropocene because the peninsula’s history as both a subdivision and a nature center has focused on anthropocentric uses and values; even in its current form as a nature center, the site privileges human uses and relies on human interaction and maintenance.
- Baytown Sun (Baytown, TX), September 8, 1996, 4; Bernal, “Brownwood,” 159. Jean Shepard said the most notable aspect of the neighborhood in those years was its sense of “cohesiveness” derived from shared struggle. Jean Shepard, “Brownwood Subdivision Reunion Part 1,” Sterling Municipal Library, March 6, 2014, YouTube video, 0:6:30–0:7:15,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJvIBAYHQpI.
- “Deluge Washed Out One Neighborhood,” New York Times, March 31, 1985, 22.https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/31/us/deluge-washed-out-one-neighborhood.html.
- Charles Lockwood, “From Subdivision to Sanctuary,” Planning 62, no. 10 (October 1996): 13; Trevia Wooster Beverly, “An Application for an Official Texas Historical Marker for Wooster,” 7; “Wooster Cemetery,” Baytown, Harris Co. Cemeteries of TX, accessed April 18, 2022, http://www.cemeteries-of-tx.com/Etx/Harris/cemetery/wooster.htm. Carol McCullah recalled the “old graveyard” as one of her favorite places in the subdivision, and she noted the exposed caskets following Hurricane Carla. Carol McCullah, “Brownwood Subdivision Reunion Part 1,” Sterling Municipal Library, March 6, 2014, YouTube video, 1:20:55–1:21:20. Another resident, W. C. Smith, recalled that he “discovered” the cemetery while playing on the beach near where he lived at Mapleton Avenue and Bayshore Drive, suggesting that, in the early 1970s, the cemetery was not a well-marked site. Smith said the cemetery was “about to go under water” when he found it. W. C. Smith, “Brownwood Subdivision Reunion Part 1,” Sterling Municipal Library, March 6, 2014, YouTube video, 0:02:30–0:03:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJvIBAYHQpI.
- An archaeological survey of the area in 1994 determined that the demolition of the subdivision—specifically the process of burying the demolished houses—had resulted in “radical alteration of the landscape.” Roger G. Moore, An Archaeological Survey of a French Ltd., Wetlands Replacement Project, City of Baytown, Harris County, Texas (Houston: Moore Archeological Consulting, 1994), 6–7; T. D. Garcia, “Subsidence and Surface Faulting at San Jacinto Monument, Goose Creek Oil Field, and Baytown, Texas,” Field Trip Guidebook on Environmental Impact of Clays along the Upper Texas Coast (Houston, TX: Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1991), A39, http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1991LPICo.773A..33G/A000036.000.html.
- Alan Weisman, The World without Us (New York: Picador, 2007); Paul S. Sutter, “The World with Us: The State of American Environmental History,” Journal of American History 100, no. 1 (June 2013): 99; “Karen M.,” 2013, Tripadvisor.com; Larry Albert, “Houston Wet,” (master’s thesis, Rice University, 1997), 22.
- In being so explicitly shaped by both natural and cultural processes, the Baytown Nature Center is a prime example of a “hybrid landscape,” a term environmental historians use to discuss the inseparability of humans and nature as agents of historical change. Richard White, “From Wilderness to Hybrid Landscapes: The Cultural Turn in Environmental History,” Historian 66 (Fall 2004): 557–64; Sutter, “World with Us,” 94–119. Scholars also use the term “layered landscape” to describe places “where human and natural histories intertwine over time.” Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick, eds., Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2.
- W. C. Smith lived on the eastern border of the subdivision in the 1980s and 1990s (and thus not in the condemned section) and routinely encountered both illegal dumpers and intoxicated people. He called the subdivision, during that period, “an unsupervised four hundred acres.” Smith, “Brownwood Subdivision Reunion Part 1,” 0:04:00–0:05:15. The crime reports from the BaytownSun during the same period corroborate Smith’s recollections.
- “Superfund Site: French, Ltd. Crosby, TX Redevelopment,” accessed April 18, 2022, https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.redevelop&id=0602498; “French Limited Wetlands Mitigation: Final Site Restoration Plan,” (Crouch Environmental Services, 1994), in Freshwater Conservation Branch Project Files, 1984–2000, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Resources Protection Division, box 2008/038-3, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (hereafter box 2008/038-3). The search for a suitable restoration site took about five years, from a preliminary search in 1989 to the final agreement with the city of Baytown in 1994. FLTG Incorporated (Crosby, Texas)-Natural Resource Mitigation Preliminary Wetlands Site Selection Assessment, October 4, 1989, box 2008/038-3; French Limited Wetlands Mitigation-Site Selection Study (Visuals), January 27, 1994, box 2008/038-3; Baytown Sun, March 25, 1994, 1.
- “Superfund Site: French, Ltd. Crosby, TX Redevelopment”; “Brownwood Marsh Restoration Project,” Crouch Environmental Services, accessed April 18, 2022, https://crouchenvironmental.com/projects/brownwood-marsh-restoration-project/; American Institute of Architects, Regional Urban Design Assistance Team, “Baytown R/UDAT,” 1990, 58–62.
- Alan Holland, “Nature and Our Sense of Lost,” in Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture, ed. Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 69, 67.
- Baytown Sun, June 11, 1997, 4. The nature center also serves the practical purpose of flood mitigation by protecting Baytown from storm surges, perhaps adding to its role in healing the community, since it now functions to protect others from the fate that befell the subdivision’s residents.
- “Baytown Nature Center Bird Survey,” Houston Audubon, accessed April 18, 2022, https://houstonaudubon.org/birding/bird-surveys/baytown-nature-center.html.
- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015).
- “Fishing Consumption Bans and Advisories,” Houston/Galveston Area, Texas Parks and Wildlife, accessed April 18, 2022, https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories; Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Dioxin and PCBs can cause a variety of serious health hazards ranging from neurological disorders to cancer to damage to reproductive systems. Birds and mammals that eat PCB- or dioxin-contaminated fish and shellfish tend to have a higher concentration of the toxins, which are stored in fatty tissues and accumulate over time. For the effects of dioxins, see Sally S. White and Linda S. Birnbaum, “An Overview of the Effects of Dioxins and Dioxin-line Compounds on Vertebrates, as Documented in Human and Ecological Epidemiology,” Journal of Environmental Science and Health 27, no. 4 (October 2009): 197–211.
- T. Lindsay Baker, More Ghost Town of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 22; Richard B. Mahoney, Roger G. Moore, and Sue Winton Moss, Cultural Resource Investigations and Archeological Inventory of the Baytown Nature Center Park, City of Baytown, Harris County, Texas (Moore Archeological Consulting, 1999), 29–32, 37–38; “Brownwood Feb 2014 Drone Aerial – RAW,” Steve Rowell, April 7, 2014, Vimeo video, 5:04, https://vimeo.com/91347993.
- “Trustees Settle Natural Resource Damage Claims Arising from Hazardous Substances Releases at Greens Bayou Site, Harris County, Texas,” US Department of the Interior, last modified September 25, 2020, https://www.doi.gov/node/17082; Christopher James, “Baytown booming – 5 Years Down the Road,” Baytown–West Chambers County Economic Development Foundation, August 20, 2017, http://baytownedf.org/news-media/article/baytown-booming-5-years-down-the-road.
