The Trailist: Hendrick Arnold Nature Park features shaded trails along the Medina River 

The San Antonio River Authority in September unveiled Hendrick Arnold Nature Park on a bend of the Medina River southwest of San Antonio. 

The 85-acre property is one of two new Bexar County parks the river authority opened last year, along with the 351-acre Truehart Ranch on the San Antonio River southeast of the city.

Kristen Hansen, the river authority’s deputy director of parks and recreation, said Hendrick Arnold is her favorite of the new parks. “It’s very peaceful, it’s an easy walk, and I like the grass trails because it’s more natural.” 

Hendrick Arnold Nature Park is named for a free Black man who worked as a spy on the Texas side during the Texas Revolution. Arnold’s grave is on a nearby property owned by the San Antonio Water System. 

The land was once part of the 1,500-acre Straus-Medina Ranch, which Joseph Straus Sr. — grandfather of the former Republican Texas House speaker Joe Straus III — purchased in 1945. They kept cattle on the property and later more than 1,000 thoroughbred horses.

In the late 1990s, the Strauses sold the land to Bexar Metropolitan Water District, a former water utility that in the late 2000s ended up collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and mismanagement. 

In 2012, the San Antonio Water System took over Bexar Met and all its former assets and service areas, including the Straus-Medina Ranch. The utility still owns most of the former ranch property but around six years ago parceled out the land for Hendrick Arnold Nature Park to the San Antonio River Authority. The park opened to the public last September with one trail, with river authority crews adding two more and an access trail since then.

The park currently features about 1.5 miles of mowed double-track trail, along with picnic areas, benches and interpretive signs. The river authority named two of the four trails on the property after Hendrick’s parents, Daniel and Rachel Arnold.

Hendrick Arnold has a lovely forest canopy, with massive live oaks near the entrance and other native species like hackberry, willow and pecan further in. My wife, Jess, and I enjoyed the shaded grass pathways and fields of grasses and wildflowers.

The only invasive species we noticed in abundance was bastard cabbage — the wild relative of cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and other Brassica plants — whose bright yellow flowers lined both sides of the path in many spots. Those flowers are actually pretty tasty, with a mix of bitter and sweet that’s almost exactly like broccoli. I like to use them on pizza, in pastas or in a salad. 

It took us about an hour to meander our way through the four trails, which would make for pleasant walking or trail running. Bikes are also allowed at the park.

The park’s master plan eventually calls for 7.5 miles of multi-use trails and 1.5 miles of equestrian trails, along with two canoe/kayak launches, 13 acres of “wilderness camping,” overlooks and an observation tower, a nature-themed playground and more parking areas. 

The park doesn’t yet have any paddling put-in points, though the river would be too low to float now during this extended drought. The Medina Trail connects to Daniel’s and Rachel’s trails and stops along the river’s bank. During our visit last week, the normally blue-green river was a series of puddles with stretches of gravel and mud in between.

Jess and I stood looking at one of these pools at the base of a cypress tree, noticing movement beneath the surface. The pond couldn’t have been more than 40 feet in diameter, but we could see two large spotted gar lolling in the shallows, along with what I think was a grass carp. We were amazed how they could find islands of water as refuge during dry times.

The river authority is also working on another park about eight miles downstream along the Medina River. Known as Mann’s Crossing — or the Catfish Farm — the land formerly belonged to the San Antonio Water System after a legal battle in the 1990s over a massive private water well that threatened the city’s water supply.

Hopefully, people will one day be able to easily canoe or kayak along the Medina River from Hendrick Arnold nearly 20 miles downstream to the City of San Antonio’s Medina River Natural Area and possibly beyond. That’s at least the goal laid out in the river authority’s master plan.

“The park sites have been selected to provide a comfortable kayak or canoe day trip between each park,” the master plan states. “Hendrick Arnold Nature Park will have full access to river, parking, and other support facilities. The park will become a key launch point for travelers on the Medina who wish to begin their journey outside of the urban environment.”

It’s a vision that could take many years to become a reality. Aside from the current drought, the Medina River tends to have frequent fallen trees blocking the entire river, requiring paddlers to move their boats around them. The river authority already has crews that remove logjams on its paddling trails on the San Antonio River, something Hansen said could be replicated on the Medina.

“We’ll have to do some of that, at least in the area that we’re owning,” Hansen said. “And then down the road, depending on what are the properties we acquire and what other partnerships we make with private [owners] or city or county, we’ll have a team that’s also going to have that role on the Medina to keep those snags at a minimum.”

I hope to eventually make the entire 20-mile journey, likely after Mann’s Crossing opens. A little rain would be helpful, too.