So, when I left off, I had us standing, somewhat mystified, in front of a statue of a mermaid...holding a pig...or rather, a mer-pig. That is, with a fishtail.
His name was Ralph... and he’s famous.
Okay...to explain Ralph...I’m going to have to explain the mermaids. And why the landlocked town of San Marcos...many an hour’s drive from the sea...loves them.
To understand San Marcos, and its mermaids, you have to go back a ways. Maybe a few million years or so. Give or take. And you have to talk about...water.
Here’s the thing. Look at a map of San Marcos and you’ll see that there’s a lot of water to be found in San Marcos. There’s what called The San Macros River. Plus there are a bunch of lakes. But where, you might ask, does all that water come from? There is some that comes in from the north, yes. But not nearly enough to account for the size of the River or the number of the lakes.
About the photos: Two today. First, my own real-life mermaid, Martha, standing in front of the pool at our hotel in San Marcos.
Answer: San Marcos is home to the second largest cluster of natural springs in the state of Texas.(1) To be precise, the San Marcos Springs are one of the places where the gigantic Edwards Aquifer elects to rise to the surface. And when I say the Edwards Aquifer is large, I mean, it is huge.(2) It is, essentially, a vast underground freshwater sea that covers a significant fraction of the center of Texas, and containing millions upon millions of gallons of water. Just how much water there is, I gather, a subject of some debate, and how much of it can be actually recovered is similarly up for grabs...but, generally, we can say there’s a whole lot of water involved, and a bunch of it is here, in San Marcos, and it is bubbling out of the ground at the San Marcos Springs.
Now, as a result, because of that lovely clear water, San Marcos has been the site of human habitation for a very long time, indeed. According to Wikipedia, “paleo-Indians” were probably living there almost 20,000 years ago.(3) And, a bit more recently, it’s been the site of farms and farming communities, and now the city of San Marcos.
In the late 1840s, a stream leading from the springs was dammed. This created a new lake (submerging the springs themselves, but they’re still pumping out water). The lake, christened “Spring Lake” then became a noted tourist attraction, drawing in such visitors as Robert E. Lee; the industrialist and robber baron, Jay Gould; and philanthropist Helen Miller Shepard. (4)
In 1924, the property was purchased by A.B. Rogers.(5) Now, Rogers, in turn, seems to have been a rather remarkable figure. Specifically, according to an article about the Springs in Texas Highways Magazine, he was an“embalmer ...who ran a furniture and coffin store in downtown San Marcos.”(6)
No. I’m not making that up.
Anyway, Rogers then built the hotel on the property, which seems to have done pretty well. Then, in 1946, he added glass bottomed boats, so visitors could cruise the lake and see the wonders below.
But, the big news came about twenty-five years later. In 1950, Roger’s son, Paul Rogers, then took over the operation. He turned it into a full-scale, aquatic theme park--Aquarena Springs. It was a Texas-based, vest-pocket precursor of Disneyland crossed with a Lilliputian fresh-water Seaworld, complete with rides (including a sky gondola), a “Wild West” village (with gunfights regularly scheduled), and, a submarine theater, which lowered its guests into the Spring Lake, where they could watch...
Wait for it.
Mermaids.(7)
In actual fact, they were young actresses and swimmers...many of them recruited locally, and including Paul Roger’s daughter, Shirley Rogers...who would perform underwater, doing everything from various routines to, well, eating. Yes, the young women having submarine picnics were a draw.
I wonder how much the city of San Marcos was shaped by all this. For the town itself, as whole, the park was a major source of revenue. And, for the women and girls of the community...well, think about it. Entire generations of them had their first job...their first taste of money and independence...as mermaids. Their pay was good, and, what was more, they had the status of a marine celebrity...viewed with amazement and wonder by guests from all over the world.
But... more about that later.
Right now, I realize I haven’t gotten to Ralph...the wonderful diving pig. And I’m afraid I’ve run out of time and space. So, stay tuned.
More to come.
Second, an AI-generated mermaid. You’ll recall that Adobe’s AI function wouldn’t produce one, apparently because it thought “mermaids” were somehow pornographic. (Come again?) Well, after much fiddling about, I finally got it to do this one. I reproduce it here as a trophy of my battle against automated censorship. (Not a big triumph, but I’ll take what I can get.)
Footnotes:
1. See “San Marcos Springs,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marcos_Springs
2. For more on the massive Edwards Aquifer, see the following websites: The Edwards Aquifer, https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/index.html; and the Wikipedia Edwards Aquifer entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_Aquifer.
3. See “History” on the following Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marcos_Springs
4. See “early settlements” on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadows_Center_for_Water_and_the_Environment
5. The exact date of the purchase seems to be under debate. I’ve also seen 1926. But the 1924 seems more reasonable to me, and I’ll go with it.
6. “The Magical Days of Aquarena Springs in San Marcos : Aquamaids were once the superstars of today’s ‘Mermaid Capital of Texas,’” Pam LeBlanc, Texas Highways, July 29, 2021, https://texashighways.com/culture/history/the-magical-days-of-aquarena-springs-in-san-marcos/
7. Well, at the time, they were supposed to be referred to as “Aquamaids.”But, mermaids they were called, and mermaids they remain in popular imagining to this very day. For the mermaids vs. Aquamaids controversy, I rely on Ms. LeBlanc’s article in Texas Highways.
Copyright©2024 Michael Jay Tucker
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