Eleanor Tinsley Park, located across from Allen Parkway Village on Allen Parkway, provides paddlers easy access to the bayou and good parking. A paved trail leads down the deep banks to a boat ramp at the bayou. The park was named in honor of Eleanor Tinsley, a City of Houston Council Member At-Large from 1980 to 1990, who championed many proposals to improve the quality of every day life in the City.

A short distance upstream of Tinsley Park, on the crest of a low hill between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive, is an interesting sculture by noted English sculptor Henry Moore. Originally intended for Tranquility Park, the work entitled "Large Spindle Piece" was placed at its present site after the sculptor claimed that the Tranquility Park location was inappropriate for his creation.
 
Immediately across Memorial Drive is the Police Officers Memorial. Dedicated on Nov 19, 1992, the monument to police officers killed in the line of duty was designed by Texan Jesus Bautista Moroles who was born in Corpus Christi in 1950 and raised in Dallas. Shaped like a cross, the pink granite monument consists of 5 stepped pyramids, each 40 ft square at the base. Each pyramid has grassy levels and stairs in middle of each side. The central pyramid rises 12.5 ft from ground to apex. The names of fallen officers are etched on a granite stone just to the west of the larger memorial.

Across the bayou, on the north side, is Glenwood Cemetery. Established as a cemetery park in 1871 on the site of a former brickyard, many of Houston's rich and famous are buried there, including former governor Ross Sterling, former mayor Roy Hofheinz and billionnaire Howard Hughes.

Near the Sabine St. bridge, there is a side drainage that enters from the south bank. A small riparian plaza has been built at the base of the Heiner St. storm sewer in which fish, turtles and aquatic fowl are seen frequenting this pleasant oasis. For lack of a more formal name, we have called this place 'Turtle Plaza'. Stairs descend from Allen Parkway to the plaza as part of the hiking trail that continues under the bridge to the Civic Center area near Sam Houston Park and City Hall Annex.

On the roadway above, at the corner of Heiner St. and Allen Parkway is the site set aside for the reinterment of approximately 430 burials uncovered during the renovations of Allen Parkway Village in 1998.

Before you turn around to return to your put in at Tinsley Park, take a minute to view the exhibits in the Bayou Art Park that extends along the north side of the bayou on both sides of the Sabine St. bridge. My favorite piece is the alligator who lurking in the grass near the water's edge about 50 yards upstream of the bridge. If you venture up close, you will see that this alligator is very "tire-d."

This is only a short section of Buffalo Bayou, but it is full of local history. One could write a book about all that has happened here in the last 200 years -- and maybe we will!