A brief timeline of Hermann Park, Engine 982, and the miniature train

  This page is related to Image 8, Verse 1, and the casque in Houston, Texas.  To understand where the casque would have been buried in Hermann Park in 1981, it's crucial to understand how the area has changed and evolved.  All of the photos and maps displayed below show the area around the lake in the park.  Unless otherwise specified, north is at the top of each image.  Here's a link to the same area in Google Maps, if you want to open that in another window.  The proposed solution for this casque, based on the historical analysis below, is given on the Image 8 Verse 1 Solution page.

 

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1957 - 1958 - 1960 - 1962 - 1981 - 1982 - 1985 - 1989 - 2000 - 2007 - 2015

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1957 

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  A Southern Pacific steam engine numbered "982" is donated to the city of Houston and is briefly on display somewhere in the downtown area.  Later that year, the locomotive is moved to Hermann Park in a four-day operation called "Operation Choo Choo."  The aerial photo from 1957 (below) shows a large, white rectangle directly south of the lake, possibly being prepared as a "landing pad" for the locomotive (although it's not where the train was actually placed). 

  The Hermann Park miniature train ride had been operating for three years at this point, but it used rubber wheels and ran on the sidewalks and the grass, which is why this photo doesn't show any train bridge over the narrow inlet at the northwest corner of the lake.  The curving road at the bottom of the photo is Zoo Circle Drive and the zoo is just barely visible below that.

 

 

 

 

1958 

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  A historic photo of the locomotive shows it on display in a grassy area behind a chainlink fence.  When the original photo was posted on SmugMug, the notes said that the photo was taken in Sam Houston park, but that location is incorrect.  The photo was taken from the zoo, looking northeast across Zoo Circle Drive in the direction of the miniature train ride and the eastern shore of McGovern lake.  The trees behind the locomotive block the view of the lake but we can see the lights that were installed to illuminate the fishing piers. (Note that the red roof of the train building and the cars that are just visible in the background of this photo prove that the train was not positioned on the white rectangle of the 1957 aerial.  It was in the next patch of grass, just slightly off to the northeast.)

  1958 was also the year that the train bridge was added to the lagoon inlet and a loop of permanent steel tracks was installed in the park for the park's miniature train ride.

 

 

 

 

1960 (approx.)

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  A simplified visitor's map of Hermann Park from around 1960 shows two rectangles between the fishing lake and the zoo.  One rectangle is directly in line with the reflection pool and one is slightly off to the northeast.  (Note that north is in the lower left corner of this map.)  The unknown searcher who labeled this map in Photoshop (many decades ago) actually drew the "982 Train" line to the wrong rectangle.  The line should have pointed to the white rectangle closer to the miniature train route.

  This map includes the route of the new steel train tracks for the "Mini Train" and shows them crossing the narrow inlet on the new bridge that was built in 1958.

 

 

 

 

 

1962

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  The aerial photo shows Engine 982 where it was installed at the southeast corner of the lake.  (Compare this aerial view to the 1958 ground-level photo.)  The new bridge and tracks for the miniature train are visible at the northwest corner of the lake.  Note that the train route in this photo is the white loop, rather than the dark grey lines.  After going counter-clockwise around the broad loop northwest of the lake, the tracks run parallel to the shore for a little ways before making a sharp right onto the train bridge.  (To understand the route, compare the photo to the map above.) 

 

 

 

 

1962 to 1981

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  The locomotive and tender apparently stayed in that same spot at the southeast corner of the lake.  They were lined up in an east-west orientation with the front pointing to the west, and the whole thing was surrounded by a chainlink fence.  (At one time a Flickr user had an odd picture of Hare Krishna devotees chanting in front of the train engine.  Signposts visible in the photo confirmed that the front of the train was pointing west.  If anyone ever rediscovers the image, we'll try to post a copy of it here.) 

  The original Miller Outdoor Theatre building, dating from 1922, was torn down and replaced in 1968.  The stone columns from the original theatre were repurposed to form the Mecom Rockwell Colonnade at the northern tip of Hermann Park. The new theatre (which is still in use) has a distinctive V-shaped, shell-type roof made of weathering steel.  The enormous and heavy roof is anchored by two huge universal joints fixed in tilted blocks of concrete at either end of the awning. The design of the new theatre won an Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1969.

  In 1972 a bronze sculpture called the "Atropos Key" was installed in the park near the Miller Outdoor Theatre.

 

  In 1976, as part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations, a "Friendship Pavilion" was given to the City of Houston by its sister city, Taipei, Taiwan.  The pavilion was installed in Hermann Park in 1978.  In Hermann Park: A Brief History, Barrie Scardino describes how the installation was done with little thought about long-term management:

"As Hermann Park became more and more a neighborhood of public institutions, it ceased to be a pleasant outdoor recreational space. With essentially the abandonment of the original plans, there were no guidelines about what could be put in the park or optimal locations for a given project. For example, a charming red lacquered Chinese Teahouse was plopped down in an isolated area at the end of Crawford Street on the Hermann Drive side of the park."

 

 

 

1981

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  At the time Preiss visited Hermann Park to bury the casque in 1980 or 1981, Zoo Circle Drive had closed and the zoo had extended out northwards to end in the new, circular Visitor Services building.  Engine 982 was still in the same place beside the zoo entrance and the parking lot.  A fountain had been added in the western half of the lake.  (The shadow of the fountain is more visible than the fountain itself in this picture.)  The tracks of the miniature train are not as clearly visible in the 1981 picture as they are in the 1962 shot, but they still follow the same route, including the bridge crossing and the loop.  (The dark lines within the loop are also still visible.)  The Miller Outdoor Theatre is just barely visible in the upper-right corner of the photo.

 

 

  The map below shows the lake, the steam locomotive, and the miniature train route as they existed in 1981.  Miller Outdoor Theater is the purple shape just barely visible in the upper right corner.  The Atropos Key (an outdoor sculpture with sharp points) is at the top of the hill just north of that.  The circle at the bottom is the Visitor Services building and there is a parking lot to the west of that. 

 

  This is the arrangement of features that Byron Preiss saw when he visited the park and, crucially, it is the arrangement of features that he used in designing his puzzle and choosing a burial spot for the casque.

 

 

 

 

1982

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  In the same year that The Secret was published, Hermann Park entirely drained McGovern lake and embarked on a major construction project to modify several features along the shoreline.  Those changes included:

• the installation of concrete fishing piers along the southern, eastern, and northwestern edges,
• the shifting of the fountain just slightly to the west,

  and – most crucially for our puzzle –

• the repositioning of Engine 982 and its tender on the eastern edge of the lake, behind the new concrete fishing piers.

 

 

  The Spring 1983 issue of Cite, a Houston architecture and design magazine, includes three articles detailing these changes:

• An article on the history of Hermann Park includes an amazing aerial photo taken in December of 1982 showing the completely drained lake, the new fishing piers, and the repositioned train.
• A design review of proposed changes for the park mentions "the full-sized locomotive and tender recently sited on the east shore of the lake" and describes them as "a dissonant innovation."
• A photographic review of Hermann Park includes a picture of the friendship pavilion and has several panoramas taken from inside the drained lake showing the locomotive in its new position on the eastern edge, pointing southwards.   

 

  The importance of these changes is hard to overstate.  In crafting his puzzle to use an enormous antique steam locomotive, Preiss must have thought he was choosing a semi-permanent landmark that wasn't likely to disappear.  But, by repositioning the fountain and train in the same year that the book was published, Hermann Park transformed a fairly easy puzzle into something that was all but impossible to solve!

 

 

 

1985

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  Sometime between 1982 and 1985 the park enclosed the locomotive inside a black iron fence and added a pedestrian bridge at the northwestern inlet (probably to keep people from crossing on the train bridge).  A home movie taken on March 9, 1985 shows us the park from the viewpoint of a passenger on the miniature train.  The map below shows the sight lines (red arrows) at important points in the movie. 

 

0:18	The train emerges from the the tunnel and begins its curve along the edge of the parking lot.  The camera is aimed toward the back of the train (southwards).
2:07	The train passes the Pioneer Memorial Obelisk and the camera momentarily zooms in on the statue of Sam Houston at the far end of the Reflection Pool.
2:21	As the train passes the inlet, the camera points southwards, showing us the train bridge, the pedestrian bridge, the fountain, and the Visitor Services building.
3:06	As the the train completes the curve and heads back to the east, we get a brief (but amazing) glimpse of a cluster of trees lined up with the fountain and the silver nose of the locomotive across the lake.  As explained on the Image 8 Solution page, this must be similar to what Preiss saw in 1981. It shows that it would have been very possible to line up the front of the train with the fountain and use that to pinpoint a group of trees.  Crucially though, this video can't be showing us the right cluster of trees because the locomotive has moved (and because the trees are outside the loop of the train tracks).
3:59	As the train passes the end of the railing, it gives us a sight line across the tip of the peninsula to the fountain.  This helps us confirm that the fountain was in a different place than in 1981.
4:09	You might need to slow down the video to even catch it, but just for a second or two the camera shows us a shot of Engine 982 on the east side of the lake.  Most of the black locomotive blends into the shadows, but the silver nose stands out as a very visible landmark.

 

 

 

1989

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  In the aerial photo for this year, the locomotive is in its new location on the east side of the lake and a small white dot shows the silver smokestack at the southern end.  The route of the miniature train has become steadily less visible since 1962 (probably because grass has grown in between the tracks) but the train bridge is still in the same place and the new pedestrian footbridge is visible just south of it.  Many of the same trees are still present where the train made its loop in 1962 and 1981.

 

 

Many of the features from this period can be identified in a 1989 home movie posted on YouTube.  The times shown in blue on the map below correspond to times in the video.

 

5:36	The train emerges from the trees (heading westwards) and the video shows the view southwards across the lake to the circular Visitor Services building at the zoo.  As the train continues westwards, the passenger zooms out and looks back over his shoulder, giving us a brief glimpse of Engine 982 in its new position on the eastern edge of the lake.  Note that the silver smokestack at the front (southern end) is the most visible part of the otherwise black locomotive.
6:08	The train passes the northern end of the inlet.  The video still points southwards and shows the train bridge, the pedestrian bridge, the fountain, and the Visitor Services building.
6:39	The video cuts out and doesn't show the curve at the western edge of the loop, which might lead to a moment of disorientation here.  At 6:38, the train is heading west.  At 6:40, the train has gone around the bend and is heading southeastwards, towards the Visitor Services building.
6:48	The train curves around a tree and heads straight for the fountain (eastwards).  The engineer can be heard in the background talking about "the fountain - the one and only fountain in Hermann Park - the fountain of youth."  The person filming the video takes a moment to zoom in on the Warwick Towers building at the northern tip of Hermann Park.
7:09	As the train begins to turn northeastwards, the video zooms back out from the Warwick Towers building and very briefly pans across the three remaining trees from the group of four in the Image 8 solution.  Then the camera turns to the right (south) side of the train and stays on that side all the way over the train bridge.

 

 

 

2000 (approx.)

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  Hermann Park undergoes a major renovation around this time.  The road between the lake and the Pioneer Memorial obelisk is closed to vehicles and the obelisk is moved 50 feet south to the middle of what becomes a path.  The area between the obelisk and the lake is developed into a lawn. 

 

  At the same time, the route of the miniature train is altered and expanded and the western and northwestern edges of the lake are dramatically reshaped to create more diverse terrain and better habitat for wildlife.  The slight rise that was the center of the 1981 train loop becomes an island surrounded by a meandering waterway that connects to the existing inlet.

 

  The photo below shows the northwest corner of the lake.  (Note that this image is zoomed in to show details and is not at the same resolution as the other maps on this page.)  The original train route that existed up to 2000 is shown in orange.  The new train route that began in 2000 is shown in red.  The only place where both routes overlap is on the bridge over the inlet.  The white circles and letters in this image identify the four trees that are crucial to the Image 8 solution.  Those trees were on the north side of the 1981 tracks, but they are on the south side of the modern tracks.

 

 

 

 

2007

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  Engine 982 was relocated to Minute Maid Park (a ballpark in Houston).  You can see a photo of the locomotive in its new home here and a close-up of the commemorative plaque on it here.

 

 

 

2015

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  The current picture show the Pioneer Memorial obelisk in its new position, at the intersection of the reflection pool avenue and the path.  The fountain and Engine 982 are both gone.  The edge of the lake has been reshaped and a boat rental place has been added.  New paths have been added and the tree canopy has been thinned.  Most significantly, new paths and a new water area have been added at the northwest corner of the lake.  But - significantly - because the original train loop went around a small hill, it appears that the new waterway was designed as a loop that also goes around the same area without entirely disturbing it.  That one choice on the part of the landscape designers may be what will make this puzzle still solvable even after 35 years.

 

 

 

To see how the history of this area relates to the hiding spot for the Houston casque,
visit the Image 8 Verse 1 Solution page.

 

 

 

Postscript: For a more detailed history of Hermann Park, going back all the way to the beginning, see Hermann Park: A Brief History by Barrie Scardino, and Big Park, Little Plans: A History of Hermann Park by Stephen Fox.