Runaway Bay, Texas

Texas

A chupacabra turned up on the golf course here, and it took a state biologist to explain it.

roadsidenatural

In January of 2010, something dead was found on the golf course at Runaway Bay. The description that went around was vivid. A brown, earth-colored creature, hairless, with oversized canines. Elongated padded feet with inch-long toes, tipped with sharp curved claws. Long hind legs. People said chupacabra. A biologist from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department came out, took a look, and identified it as a hairless raccoon. The golf course itself had a better reputation than that story suggests. Eighteen holes, designed by Leon Howard, opened in 1969. Just over seven thousand yards, par seventy-two. Golf Digest listed it among its best places to play in the 2008 to 2009 edition. It closed in November of 2024. The town sits at the southern end of Lake Bridgeport, with somewhere around fifteen hundred people living in it.

Wayside reads this to you as you drive past, timed to arrive before the place does. Plan a route through here.

What this was written from
Upon investigation, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department identified the animal as a hairless raccoon.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

  • Ranchman's Ponder Steakhouse 33.9 mi A Pulitzer Prize winning novel got its name inside a small-town Texas steakhouse.
  • Argyle, Texas 40.2 mi An outlaw is rumored to have hidden sixty thousand dollars in stolen gold coins in a cave near here, and he died before he could dig it up.
  • DATCU Stadium 41.5 mi The students of North Texas voted to tax themselves about eight hundred forty dollars each to pay for this football stadium.
  • University of North Texas 42 mi A physics building in Denton holds four particle accelerators in about four thousand square feet of floor space.
  • Grapevine, Texas 48.7 mi For decades a sign outside town called Grapevine the Cantaloupe Capital of the World.
  • Grapevine Lake 49.5 mi Four bones found beside this Texas reservoir belonged to a bird that lived ninety-six million years ago.