The McKee Street exit from eastbound Interstate 10 has been opened as the gateway to Minute Maid Park. Just follow the signs to the grand ball park and its adjacent parking lots.

What you may miss, however, if you speed along too quickly is the former bustling neighborhood of Frost Town. The McKee Street thoroughfare is designed to zip  you quickly over Buffalo Bayou and past James Bute Park and the Reliant Energy substation. But, if you happen to stop for a moment at James Bute Park, you can venture along the south bank of the bayou to Raccoon Bend.

Raccoon Bend is formed as Buffalo Bayou makes a right hand turn about a half mile downstream from Main Street. A large sandbar is created on the south side of the bayou while a steep cut bank is found on the north side.

The name is not an offical name, but it is the common name given to the place by the children of Frost Town  during the 1930's and 1940's. Luz Vara, who was born on Spruce Street at Bramble Street in Frostown in 1937, recalls how she and her brothers had fun playing along the bayou near the bridge. As a community of Mexicans, many of whom were immigrants, they referred to Frost Town as El Barrio del Alacran -- the ward of the scorpion.

The brushy bank of the bayou, just upstream of the McKee Street bridge, was called Raccoon Bend, probably because the large trash dump, which was located in this section of the banks, attracted significant numbers of the mammalian scavenger and associated wildlife to earn the epithet.

Over the past two decades, the Frost Town site has been rehabilitated and cleaned up by Kirk Farris and his Art and Environmental Architecture organization (http://www.frosttownhistoricsite.org/frost.html)  in conjunction with the Harris County Parks Department. With the intention of developing the site into a historic, recreational and education district, Farris plans to improve Raccoon Bend and develop it into a canoe access and boat launch facility.

Farris has cut a ramp from the street level down to the terrace above the bayou. This sandbar extends westward toward the point of the bend for about forty yards. Although keeping the sandbar clear of brush and undergrowth is an ongoing job, he hopes to enlist volunteers to help him provide and maintain one more recreational access point to the string of bayou access areas being developed along Buffalo Bayou from Shepherd Drive to the Turning Basin.

With easy access from I-10 and with ample parking along McKee Street in James Bute Park, the canoe launch at Raccoon Bend can become a preferred destination for water recreation on Buffalo Bayou in the downtown district.