You probably never heard of the fig orchards of Galveston County. That’s because the Great Fig Bubble burst 100 years ago.

You see, people from up North, in places like New York, were persuaded to buy land down on the Gulf Coast of Texas back in the late 1800s to plant fig orchards and make their fortunes. (I guess figs were in big demand back then.) Figs do grow very well here.

Fashion changed, I guess. Apparently those Yankees lost interest in figs. Eventually much of that land was abandoned without even planting any fig trees.

Naturally the land got scarfed up by the locals. In Texas if you fence a piece of land and use it for 10 years, and nobody protests, you can claim it.

I learned all of this from Nana, my paternal grandmother, who inherited an old 1880s hotel with a little fig orchard, and then went on to plant more. 

Nana’s family already lived in Galveston County during the craze. They always did grow figs and preserve them in Mason jars to eat all year. My mama still does. 

Before I go, here’s another weird little factoid. In the Bible it says that a tax collector named Zacharias climbed up in a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. As a kid, I pictured him climbing one of the tall, big-leafed shade trees called sycamores that surrounded my grandparents’ yard.

But Nana, a long-time Sunday school teacher, explained that there is actually a type of fig tree called a sycamore fig. That is most likely what Zacharias climbed.

So who cares? Well, I did.

Knowing that made it more bearable to be the one who had to climb those nasty little fig trees during the harvest season in June (hot, sticky) to pick the figs that the grownups could not reach from the ground.

You see, the juice from bruised fig leaves and stems makes some people’s skin itch, and I don’t even like figs. But, you know, it seemed kind of cool to be climbing a tree that was mentioned in the Bible.

It’s all in how you look at it, I guess. Like so many other things.

I once took a business trip to Andrews, Texas. Never heard of it? Me neither, at the time.

Andrews is west of Midland and Odessa, near the New Mexico border, not too far from Carlesbad. That’s West Texas, not quite desert, but close enough. It is in the southern part of the Great Plains. It’s flat, it’s hot, and you can see for miles.

I was out in the oilfield, watching a workover crew replace an electrical subsurface pump in an oil well. But at the back of my mind, something kept nagging.

I finally realized it was all these little, tiny bushes, no more than two feet tall that I kept seeing everywhere. I had vaguely seen them for miles on the drive out to Andrews, and they were all around the rig area, outside the barbed-wire fence. Those little bushes looked somehow familiar, but I could not place why they looked familiar, or even exactly what they were.

Finally I gave up and asked a roustabout. He said, “Oh, those are oak trees.”

“Naaaaahhhh,” I said. “You’re kidding!” 

“Nope,” he said, “Come over here and take a look.” 

So we went over to the fence, and up close, sure enough, they were oaks. You could see the little tiny leaves, the typical oak colors and shapes, the bark, and all. “I didn’t know there were miniature oak trees!”

“Oh, they’re regular oaks,” he said. “They are just stunted because they don’t get much water. They are all over this part of the country.

“In fact, Andrews has the largest oak forest in the world. It’s just mostly made up of trees about two feet tall. Around the creeks, where there’s more water, they get up to regular size.”

And there you have it. The largest oak forest in the world is in West Texas.

You just have to look real close, or you’ll miss it.