Phillip Surls, a local businessman who owns much of the property around the Cutoff, has argued he blocked access to the stream to protect his cattle and that the waterway is not public.
TRINIDAD – It was a cold morning in February 2022 when Bud Morton drove his black 2015 Chevrolet truck down the last mile of Farm to Market Road 1667 to the same launch point he’d used to get to his favorite fishing spot for more than 20 years.
There, on a creek called the Cutoff, he’d gotten to know all the different types of fish and their spawning schedules. He spent years visiting with alligator gar swimming alongside his boat and spiders catching a ride as he navigated his way through the waterway’s boxcar culverts and under wooden bridges.
But this time, when he pulled up, he saw two 5-foot-high, red pipe fences blocking the water’s edge. Signs hung from the fences: “NO TRESPASSING.”
Frustrated and bewildered, Morton took his Jonny boat and left.
“I was definitely mad,” Morton said. “As the week or two after that went on, more fences were built and more dirt brought in.”
The end of that single-lane state road was the community’s last remaining public boat launch to access the small streams that meander through southwestern Henderson County.
It was Phillip Surls, a wealthy local businessman, who installed the fences after he bought the property along each side of FM 1667 in late 2021. He wanted to keep his cattle off the road, his attorney has said.
Surls, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has been repeatedly told to remove the fence by the state, and he’s been scolded for digging up the creek by Henderson County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was fined by Texas Parks and Wildlife for killing thousands of mussels in doing this work.
But to no avail. Surls continues to argue that land surrounding the Cutoff is not public — that it belongs to him and he is well within his rights to restrict access.
His move to block his neighbors from the waterway has set off a series of legal battles over land and water public access issues that have played out for years.
In September, Surls scored a major victory when a district court ruled the Cutoff is not navigable, meaning it’s not a public waterway. And if it’s not a public waterway, then the public doesn’t need access to it.
The judge’s ruling was a blow to a group of community members who spent years fundraising to afford an attorney willing to take on this fight. Their resources barely covered a fifth of the legal fees they’ve accrued. But they plan to appeal the ruling.
Those locals, who formed a group called Save the Cutoff, say they’re being outgunned by someone with more money and political connections who took away their access to an important part of their community’s identity.
“What hurt my feelings the most? That was our little community paradise,” said Elden Reschke, a member of the group who can count the number of times he’s left East Texas on one hand. “And a rich man’s taking it away from us.”
The long fight to keep the Cutoff public
In the late 1800s, Dallas industrialists struggled to get boats up the Trinity River because its water levels were unreliable and often fraught with obstructions, like downed trees, or sharp turns that were hard to navigate. They advocated for major changes to the river’s geography. Over the course of decades, a new path for the Trinity was carved out, with the investment of millions of dollars and the installation of new levees.
Thus, the Cutoff was created — named because it was literally cut off from the Trinity River. And for the next century, locals would fight to keep it open to the public.
Today, the Cutoff is a 12-mile stream along the border of Henderson and Navarro counties. It starts at the Old Cedar Creek, and ends at Creslenn Ranch Lake. It runs through small wooded areas and ranch lands. Private lakes have formed along each side of the waterway.
In 1931, in a story that parallels Surls’, Adam Cone, a businessman from a nearby town, purchased land surrounding the Cutoff and tried to block the public from it. His actions prompted community outrage and resulted in the issue being taken up in a special session of that year’s Legislature.
Texas lawmakers passed a law that year, declaring the Cutoff public and demanding that Henderson County and the Texas Department of Transportation build roads so the community could continue to use it for fishing and hunting. However, that law was repealed in 1967, when the state consolidated several departments under one umbrella named Texas Parks and Wildlife.
In the 1950s, another local businessman, Clyde Alexander, established Creslenn Park, which was dozens of acres along the waterway with picnic tables, camping spots and docks. He promised the community it would be open to the public to reach the water for the next 50 years.
That park land is now owned by Surls.
But before it closed, it was a thriving community hot spot — a space to deep fry freshly caught catfish on the Fourth of July or cut a cake on birthdays.
Now, the picnic areas that were part of Creslenn Park have decayed. Skeletal remains of old boat docks stick out of the water.
Lee Nolan, 76, said he resents the fact that the community can’t use the park now as it once did, and that even fishing on the Cutoff has been taken away.
He said he grew up going to Cresslen Park. When he was a kid, he and his dad would go visit his great uncle who lived in one of the homes around the park where they’d play cards and dominos at the picnic tables.
As he grew older, he spent many evenings camping there with his friends. One night, the cries of a mountain lion frightened them so badly they hid in their sleeping bags, he recalled.
“It was a great place to grow up,” Nolan said. “Trinidad was a great town to grow up in. And Cresslen Park, or the Cutoff — as we affectionately called it — was entertainment for many, many years.”
Phillip Surls’ fight
Surls, 58, grew up in Henderson County and he still lives and runs a cattle operation and a construction company there.
Source: Jess Huff, The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: A welded metal fence with posted signs blocks access to the Cutoff. Joel Andrews for the Texas Tribune
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