Two lifelong local residents contacted the Houston Herald Monday and provided information about the 29-foot deep cistern discovered outside a truck bay at the Houston Rural Fire Department station.
The cistern was discovered when fire personnel dealt with what was thought to be a pothole in the pavement outside the facility on Walnut Street in downtown Houston.
Richard Best called in the morning and said he recalls actually fishing in the cistern in the 1950s with his friend Wade Hibbler, who now lives in Oklahoma.
The cistern was then located adjacent to the Southern Hotel, which was built in 1888 and leveled in the mid-1960s.
“The fish were kind of white, probably because they were way down there not getting any light,” Best said. “I’m not sure how they got there or who put them there and I don’t know if the cistern had been there before the hotel.”
Houston resident Bill Nichols stopped by the Herald office on Monday afternoon and confirmed the fishing story. He also said he did know where the fish came from.
“Me and Wade were best friends –– we were closer than brothers,” Nichols said. “We caught the fish in Brushy Creek during the summer and put them in the cistern, then we’d catch them in winter to have fresh fish. We fed them and they did really well in there.”
Nichols said the hotel owners knew about the fish project and that by the 1950s the facility used city water, so patrons weren’t drinking or bathing in contaminated water. But Nichols and company kept knowledge of the fish close to the vest.
“We kept a padlock on the concrete slab that covered it,” he said.
Nichols said he believed the cistern was bell-shaped, wider at the bottom than the top.
“It wasn’t very big around at the top, but as it went down, it spread out,” he said. “The upper part was obviously lined with rock, but I think it went down into a cave. But we didn’t dare go down there to check it out.”