A trip to the Texas Hill Country called for us to visit Concan, Texas, and stay at one of the cabins of Neal's Lodges. This is a great place for birding. They have about a mile of frontage on the Frio River. It is a place folks have been going to since 1926. Years before that the Lipan Apaches found a liking to the place. Tom Neal built the first cabins and managed the place. Vida Thrift Neal was the cook and storekeeper. It was only open in the summer. Some folks would bring their maids and butlers and nannies and stay the entire summer.Cabins grew to 21 by 1953. Floods would hit and try to wipe them out. The Frio is known for huge flash floods. In 2002 they had what the locals called the FIVE HUNDRED YEAR flood. It took giant cypress trees and moved boulders, relocating the river at places. Now the spring water of the river is so low that tubes won't even float all the time with their riders.That will change with rains.
Today, Neal's Lodges is owned and run by Mary Anna and Rodger Roosa and John and Carol Graves. Mary Anna and John are two of the Neal's nine grandchildren. People come from all over the United States, and even foreign countries, to bird there in the spring. An old classmate of mine at Ouachita Baptist College put the place on the birding map. She was June Osborne. Her husband, Harold, was a long-time teacher at Baylor University. June wrote several birding books and traveled the world with groups of bird lovers. She died two years ago. She spent each April at Neal's Lodges. Ann and I had the privilege of birding and having fellowship with June and Harold the spring before she died.
We were almost sure our cabin was an original. It did have modern amenities, but it was really old! Got a good price though. What is the town like at Concan? It hasn't been built yet. The store at Neal's is it. A bank is down the highway. Leakey, Texas isn't very far. There are now 61 cabins. It is open year-round. Hunters flock there in the Fall. You can get a place for two or twenty! Texas Highways once featured on it's cover the "swimming hole" on the Frio. It was called "the best little swimming hole in Texas". We just looked and left the splashing to those younger folks there. Neal's Lodges, a chunk of Texas history.