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Raiding Comanches soundly defeated at Plum Creek
August 12, 1840
On this day in 1840, Gen. Felix Huston, Col. Edward Burleson, and others, including Ben McCulloch, fought a running battle with a large party of Comanche Indians. The battle of Plum Creek occurred as a result of the Council House Fight, in which a number of Comanche leaders were killed. Chief Buffalo Hump led a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The Comanches swept down the valley, plundering, stealing horses, and killing settlers, and sacked the town of Linnville. The Texans' volunteer army caught up with the Indians on Plum Creek, near present-day Lockhart, on August 11 and soundly defeated them the next day.
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Eccentric ornithologist and editor dies
August 12, 1985
On this day in 1985, Edgar Bryan Kincaid, Jr., died in Austin. Released by wealth from regular work, Kincaid had spent ten years, beginning in 1963, editing Harry C. Oberholser's Bird Life of Texas. He reduced the massive three-million-word manuscript by two-thirds and chopped a 572-page bibliography to thirty pages--thus making this classic work accessible. In his later years, Kincaid became quite reclusive, not wanting to see the highways and houses that intruded upon previously wild areas. He called himself Cassowary and his close friends by other bird names. His fear of burglars was realized when he was robbed in his own house at gunpoint, after which he developed a fever and died.
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Giant sinkhole appears at Boling Dome
August 12, 1983
On this day in 1983, a sinkhole approximately 250 feet in diameter and twenty-five feet deep, formed suddenly over the crest of the Boling Dome three miles north of Boling, collapsing the roadway. Boling Dome, an underground rock structure that contains petroleum, sulfur, and salt, is on the western bank of the San Bernard River almost entirely in Wharton County. It is oval in shape and ranges five miles east-west and three miles north-south, encompassing 5,500 acres. Oil production at the site began in 1925 and sulfur wells began producing in 1929. Over 8,000 wells had been drilled to mine the sulfur reserve, and 12,000 more for oil and gas, producing a highly porous zone that affects the integrity of the dome. In addition to the 1983 sinkhole, several others have occurred over the Boling Dome, a condition that is becoming common at other salt dome sites where sulfur and oil are produced.
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posted by Jeff - 8.12.2011 The Texas State Historical Association
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