At this place, approximately six miles due west of downtown, the Post Oak Road area north of the bayou was the site of farms that grew vegetables for shipment to the farmer's market on Preston Avenue. Because of the proximity of the farms to Houston, the produce was trucked to town in wagons and, later, trucks -- hence they were called 'truck farms.' Washington Road was the main road leading to the city markets. Memorial Drive was but a small country road extending west. It was not connected to the downtown area until the 1950's.

Memorial Park was the site of Camp Logan, a training camp for the U. S. Army during World War I. The heavily wooded site had been owned by the Reinermann family who did some logging in the area before 1900. In 1917, Camp Logan was hastily constructed in about four months. It served as a training facility throughout the war and was the site of a hospital for veterans for a short time after the war. Will Hogg purchased the property in the early 1920's at the same time that he was acquiring the land on the south side of the bayou which he ultimately developed as River Oaks. He sold the land to the city of Houston at cost with the stipulation that the area become a park dedicated to the veterans of the war.

The Houston Arboretum, in the southwest corner of Memorial Park, preserves the riparian woodland in a relatively-original natural state. Native trees and shrubs give you a sense of the extensive East Texas pine forests that grew thick and dense as far as the north side of Buffalo Bayou.

On the south side of Buffalo Bayou, opposite Memorial Park, is the River Oaks Country Club and the River Oaks neighborhood. Originally intended as the site of summer homes for wealthy Houstonians, Will Hogg and his associates purchased the land in the mid-1920's and created an up-scale, master-planned residential development in the wooded countryside beyond the city limits. The Hogg family, which included Will Hogg and siblings Mike Hogg and Ima Hogg, built their home on a bend in the bayou and called it Bayou Bend.

The beautifully landscaped grounds of Bayou Bend were willed to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts upon the death of Ima Hogg in the 1970's. They are an intregral part of the annual Azalea Trail held each spring. Bayou Bend can be located from the bayou by the suspension footbridge across the bayou at the end of Westcott St. where there is a parking area for visitors to the place.

Extensive commercial and residential development has occurred along the north bank of the bayou, just east of Memorial Park, in recent years. The Rainbow Lodge, a rustic restaurant in the motif of a hunting lodge, has been a favorite eating place for many years. The Left Bank, an exclusive condominium development, has recently been completed on a tract just before the last bend in the bayou before Shepherd Drive.

In the 1870's, Houston businessman D. P. Shepherd began to build a sawmill and grist mill complex at the present location of the Shepherd Drive bridge. He had a dam built across the bayou, but financial difficulties caused the venture to fail and the mills were never completed. The dam, however, created a small lake on the bayou that was a popular swimming hole even until the 1920's. The road to Shepherd's dam came up from the south at San Felipe Road (now West Dallas Avenue) and was called Shepherd's Dam Road. It connected with Brunner Avenue on the north side. When the development of the area both north and south of the bayou called for a major thoroghfare, the combined roadway was named Shepherd Drive.

Access to the Woodway to Shepherd Drive section of Buffalo Bayou can be made at the Woodway bridge. A small parking area on the south side of Woodway (west of Loop 610) provides a place to park and a place to get down to the bayou. This used to be the parking area for the Memorial Park archery range until the range was closed in the 1980's due to the development of the Riverway complex across the bayou. It seems that stray arrows were landing in the front yard of the Four Seasons Hotel and customers complained.

Parking for a take out at Shepherd Drive is poor. The best place is the Spencer Clements Park near Sandman Street, but there is no good place to load and unload boats. The best alternative is to continue on down to Eleanor Tinsley Park where parking and access are better.