http://www.birdinghighisland.com/about.htm

Today High Island is a small town of about 450 people on the Upper Texas Coast between Galveston and the Louisiana border. It’s usually a quiet town, but each year from March through to May, thousands of enthusiastic visitors from all over the world pour into the area to enjoy the huge numbers of migrating birds that pass through on their way north to their breeding grounds.

Winnie Burkett of the Houston Audubon Society has kindly allowed us to reproduce the excerpts below from their High Island brochure. For the complete brochure, including maps of the reserves, drop into their kiosk in Boy Scout Woods.

THE HISTORY OF HIGH ISLAND
High Island was undoubtedly used by Indians for thousand of years. No archeological sites have been excavated on the island, but shell middens, pieces of black pottery and arrow points dating from as far back as 1200 A.D. have been found on Bolivar Peninsula and around Galveston Bay. These indicate the presence of hunter-gatherers who roamed the region collecting shellfish and hunting the abundant wildlife. Indians may have also visited the mineral springs that were a result of the minerals associated with the salt dome mixing with ground water, which used to exist on the “Island.”

According to the legend, the pirate Jean Lafitte and his crew sometimes had parties in the big grove of oak trees that covered the island when they cruised the coast in the early 1800’s. There are rumors that the pirates buried some of their treasure here. Although many have searched, no one has ever reported finding any trace of the pirates or their treasure.

One of the early settlers of High Island was Martin Dunman, who arrived in 1845. He had received a league of land (three square miles) that included part of High Island for his part in the Texas Revolution. Reportedly there was at least one house on High Island, which has been built by Charles Cronea, one of Lafitte’s cabin boys when Dunman arrived with his wife and two sons. A historical marker, erected in Cronea’s honor, can be found in the High Island cemetery.

The “Island’s” mineral springs played an important role in the local economy in the late 1800’s. The railroad ran excursions to the community so that people could visit the springs and the beach.

The town had a large, ornate hotel called The Seaview erected in 1895 by W.T. Cade. Built on the east side of the island, The Seaview faces the Gulf of Mexico. The hotel had a large ballroom and a mule drawn rail car that carried visitors to and from the beach several times a day. High Island’s time as a resort was ended by the 1900 hurricane. However, the hotel survived the hurricane and was a very active location for many years. It was abandoned during World War II and burned in 1947. Some hotel outbuildings still survive in a tangled lot surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.

HIGH ISLAND’S UNIQUE GEOLOGY
High Island is the surface expression of a salt dome at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. A thick layer of ancient salt exists throughout southeast Texas about 30,000 feet below the surface. At some location, like High Island, a column of salt was squeezed upward toward the surface. This “dome,” therefore, is a salt cylinder some six miles tall and about a mile in diameter. As the salt dome rose, it brought massive amounts of salt and smaller amounts of other minerals close to the surface of the earth, where they sometimes mixed with ground water. The movement of the salt shattered and tipped overlying rock layers, and oil and gas in the rocks then traveled along the cracks in the rocks and “pooled” around the edges of the dome.

Oil exploration began on High Island in 1901, soon after the Spindletop discovery on a similar salt structure in the Beaumont area. Commercial production began in 1922. Exploration and production continue today and oil, natural gas and sulfur have all been extracted from sediments bent up by the dome. Most production has been found along the west, north and east sides of the “Island.”

Today High Island rises 32 feet above the surrounding marshes, providing soil conditions favorable to trees and shrubs. It forms a unique and important island of habitat for migrating birds.

BIRD MIGRATION
Many species of birds, called neotropical migrants, nest in North America and spend the winter in Latin America.  Twice each year these birds migrate the long distances between wintering grounds and spring nesting locations.
 
Each spring millions of birds that wintered in Central and South America are driven north by the urge to establish breeding territories and select mates.  They first push north to the Yucatan Peninsula and the adjacent Mexican coast. Beginning in early March, migrants reach the tip of the peninsula and if the weather conditions are favorable, just after sunset, migrants leave Mexico and head north across the Gulf of Mexico.
 
The trip across the Gulf is 600 miles and with good weather takes about 18 hours. Arriving on the Texas coast midday, some of these birds stop on the coast; but most of the migrating birds will fly inland until nightfall.
 

我重新开一个wave，只加我确定身份的人，如果有谁丢了，给我wave一下身份就好了。

如果不走那么远，也可以去Sabine pass,这是一个古战场，有很多never been touch的古迹，当然和中国的不能比，但是在美国这地方，也算难得了

http://www.visitsabinepassbattleground.com/index.aspx?page=14

在，啥事儿？

如果我漏了的，大家伙儿可以确定身份的自己加吧

你们打算什么时候去？