Richard Elmer "R.E." Jackson

Richard Elmer “R.E.” Jackson is often considered the “Father of the Big Thicket” due to his early and long-running effort to protect this area. As a Santa Fe railroad conductor, Jackson witnessed both the Thicket’s beauty and rapid destruction by oil and timber operations. In 1936, he founded the first conservation group, the East Texas Big Thicket Association (ETBTA), to organize and focus support for the Thicket’s protection. Through the Hardin County Co-operative Pasture and Game Reserve Group, he leased roughly 20,000 acres in Hardin and Polk counties as the possible nucleus of a future park, and gave talks and hosted tours to promote its protection. While the ETBTA faltered during WWII, Jackson’s followers regrouped as the Big Thicket Association in the 1960s, and successfully managed to create a National Preserve in 1974. Jackson’s views are summarized in a typescript archived at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, “Historical Data of the Big Thicket of East Texas, from Memory and Word of Mouth.”