The Lost Pines & Bastrop State Park

Something strange happens to the landscape east of Bastrop: the oaks and prairie give way to a dense stand of loblolly pine, a forest that seems to belong 100 miles to the east in the Piney Woods of East Texas. These are the Lost Pines — an isolated island of pine left behind, botanists believe, from a wetter Ice-Age climate, now the westernmost natural stand of loblolly in the country. This drive links the story of that stranded forest to the empresario the town was named for, Baron de Bastrop, and to the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps crews who hand-built one of Texas's finest state parks in stone and timber among the trees. It runs from the courthouse square out to Bastrop State Park and back — a short drive that ties a rare forest, a founding figure, and a New Deal work camp into one story.