Beauchamps Springs, TX

Beauchamps Springs, also known as Beauchampville, was on White Oak Bayou near Woodland Park on the north side of Houston. In 1838 efforts by the Houston Water Works Company to pipe water from a shallow artesian well in Beauchamps Springs two miles into Houston failed. According to various sources, the name may have attached to four separate springs, among them Riordan's Spring, which were described in 1838 as providing an "inexhaustible supply" of pure water. Beauchamps is thought to have been named for a man who camped in the forest at one of the springs with a group of Bidais Indians sometime before 1847. He acquired fifty acres at the site and hauled water for sale at seventy-five cents for a thirty-gallon barrel to Houston citizens compelled to use the noxious water of Buffalo Bayou before central water or sewage systems. He also laid out lots and sold properties; "two straight rows of houses were built in the pine forest before yet the timber had been cut from the main street, Beauchamp Street." During the Civil War a Confederate campsite was located at the springs. Sources suggest that the community of Beauchamps Springs later grew up near the springs. By the 1980s, after nearby highway development, little more than a trickle of water remained of the springs or of Beauchamps Creek, which formerly flowed from the springs.

bibliography : Gunnar Brune, Springs of Texas, Vol. 1 (Fort Worth: Branch-Smith, 1981). Andrew Forest Muir, "Railroads Come to Houston, 1857–1861," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 64 (July 1960). Edward Stiff, A New History of Texas (Cincinnati: George Conclin, 1847).