Three Histories Share One Bend of the Navasota

People may have occupied the ground where Jack's Creek meets the Navasota River during the Archaic period. Archaeological evidence points to that early use. It came long before the two later histories held inside today's Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site.

The second layer began in 1888, when Limestone County Confederate veterans started holding annual reunions there. They organized Joseph E. Johnston Camp No. 94 of the United Confederate Veterans in 1889 and sold camping lots to veterans and their families to help buy the land.

Attendance reached as high as 7,000. Special trains brought people from Dallas and Houston for speeches, music, food, tents, cottages, and dancing. Reunion families planted crepe myrtles and irises that still bloom on the grounds.

The land story is more complicated than the gatherings alone. Later purchases included property from Black families whose members had been enslaved or had settled in the area after emancipation. That history belongs beside the site's Confederate commemoration, not outside it.

The Mexia oil boom added a third layer in the 1920s. A pump house and water system supplied Pure Oil drilling rigs, leaving machinery and structures on the grounds. The reunion organization donated the property to Texas in 1983. The present 76-acre site combines trails and Navasota River access with the dance pavilion, Old Val Verde, old plantings, and oil-field remnants.