Sheehan PROTESTOR 'S Guide to President Bush Ranch in Crawford : Houston Indymedia

More about Larry Mattlage later. To Cindy Sheehan, God bless you. We all have grieved, though most of us not for a relative killed in Iraq. We grieve with Cindy Sheehan. Since President Bush has no time for Cindy Sheehan, here is a sneak peek for her of where Bus should meet her.

PROTESTER'S APPROACH TO BUSH TEXAS RANCH LOCATION (MAPS)

Refer to the accompanying map and http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?t=2&s=15&x=99&y=545&z=14&w=1 .

The location of the ranch house is 1 km north of the "901 (meters)" elevation label on the Terraserver map. It is nestled in the northwest corner of McLennan county at the end of Mill Rd. (County Road 405-C), off Rainey Rd. (County Road 405).

The Terraserver map does not show Rainey Rd. and Mill Rd. For these and for labels to the roads shown, run a search for "Mill Rd. Crawford, Texas" on http://www.mapquest.com or http://www.mapmart.com, or click on this

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&address=Mill+Rd.&city=Crawford&state=TX&zipcode=&homesubmit=Get+Map

and pan south on Prairie Chapel Rd. until you get to Crawford. That will give you all the roads.

The aerial photo in this article shows details at Rainey and Mill Roads. Rainey Rd. goes east off of Prairie Chapel Rd. at a turn north of Camp Casey.

WELCOME, CINDY SHEEHAN!

The highest honor given by Bush is a tour of his famous ranch. If you are not a head of state and a warlord, don't expect an invite. However, you can enjoy this virtual tour and see what only Tony Blair and his ilk have seen, or even use it as the basis of your own tourist expedition. It will be far more informative than the vague Time Magazine article (January 12, 2004) story about the ranch.

In August 2002, people from around Texas converged on Crawford to protest the administration's plans for the war in Iraq. Like me, they tried to prevent the loss Cindy Sheehan is suffering. Thousands were expected, but Bush fled to California. Nevertheless, hundreds of protesters turned up in tiny Crawford.
http://www.informationwar.org/antiwar_activities/momentum_builds_anti-war_demo_texasaug252002.htm

OBSTACLES TO VISTING ARE NOTHING NEW
Refusing to pay the police department $300 to exercise First Amendment rights, they headed out to the ranch. The Crawford police "headed them off at the pass" by blocking the direct route of town! Also, posses of the state and local police set up two road blocks on the road to the ranch, Prairie Chapel Rd., complete with Secret Service agents and helicopters. The sheriff closed this public road on his own authority and with no notice, except that the protesters were coming. Officers stopped the caravan near Mattlage Rd. and refused to allow the protesters to park and proceed on foot, and went so far as to detour them down another road leading to a state police roadblock. The Crawford police chief, Donnie Tidmore, has been more protective of the president than of his own children (he was on the board of a private school, attended by his children, that hired a convicted child molester without any background check)! All of this points to the need for logistical information for protestors and tourists alike.
In October 2002, a caravan of protesters from the National Coalition for Jobs and Income Support was stopped near Rainey Rd. They proceeded on foot and reportedly got within 30 yards of the ranch entrance. That protest received widespread media attention. http://www.nationalcampaign.org/crawford.asp
Cindy Sheehan's brave, sad vigil is the biggest protest yet at the Crawford, Texas, ranch.
LARRY MATTLAGE -- BUSH NEIGHBOR -- LIKES GUNS, BUT NOT A BAD GUY
The aforementioned Mattlage Rd., which goes west off of Prairie Chapel Rd. (see web map link) is the location of Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey and also the ancestral home of the Mattlage's Larry Mattlage was in the news today for firing off a couple of shots from a shotgun as the protestors were near the end of his road. He said he it had to do with bird hunting. As for a possible warning to the protestors, he said, "You figure it out."
Larry Mattlage has expressed some reservations in the past about the Bushes as neighbors -- nothing personal or political. He just was used to the peace and quiet before the Bushes picked Crawford, perhaps to enhance their "down home" image. Mattlage once said that he missed the smell of the hog farm that was at Prairie Chapel Ranch before the Bushes bought it.
If there is any way the protestors can accommodate Larry Mattlage, they should try to do so. Cindy Sheehan should talk with Mr. Mattlage. President Bush could end his neighbors' discomfort by seeing Cindy Sheehan.

PRAIRIE CHAPEL RANCH" (FORMERLY KEN ENGELBRECHT'S HOG FARM) -- WHERE BUSH
PRACTICES (SELF-SERVING) CONSERVATION

The FAA, at the request of the Secret Service, set up an original no-flight zone for the ranch that listed the center as 31 deg 34 min 57 sec North and 97 deg 32 min 37 sec West, which is the location of the main ranch house to the nearest second (102 ft of latitude, 65 ft of longitude)! Later, they secretly moved this about 3000 ft (0.9 km) east-southeast.

Anyone can find the coordinates on a current satellite map.

See http://www.eaa.org/communications/eaanews/020924_texas.html for the FAA flight restriction, with the original close-but-not-precise coordinates. Air Force F16s can frequently be heard patrolling and will escort intruding aircraft to a nearby airport and into the hands of the SS, though the occasional ultralight plane slips through undetected.

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The beige main house is about 4400 ft (1341 m) NORTH of Rainey Rd. and is not to be confused with the gray "Governor's House" on the southern extension. The gray Governor's House is the one Larry Mattlage says you can see from his road, to the east.

The main house is about 1000 ft (305 m) south of the dense woods along Rainey Creek. Bush removed five large hog barns that were at the point where his drive (the old road, Mill Rd., shown on old topos and aerial photos) bends to the right. He extended the old road about 900 ft (274 m), removing the buildings at the hooked end of the old road and building a new house on a loop at the end of the extension. Another, small, old house remains, about halfway down the drive. It contains exercise equipment.

The ranch is bounded on the north by Rainey Creek, on the east by the Middle Bosque River, and on the west by a fenceline just west of Mill Rd. You can see the southern boundary as you take Prairie Chapel Rd. up from Crawford and start seeing NO STOPPING SIGNS. The land totals 1583 acres (641 hectares). Maps of the property show the streams and seven canyons branching from them, lined by dense growths of trees. Bush spends much of his time at the ranch clearing the water-hogging cedars from the canyons, as shown in the Time article. Much of the ranch is sparsely wooded pasture.

The lane to the house (Mill Rd.) goes south to Rainey Rd., which goes west to Prairie Chapel Rd., the road to Crawford, TX. Rainey Rd. is officially closed and is basically Bush's private road.

During construction George and Laura occupied an old ranch house on the southern extension of Rainey Rd. (on the east side of the extension), calling it the "Governor's House." This house is still used as a guest house for White House neoconservatives and other second-tier guests. Across from the Governor's House is a metal building housing the military aide (bearer of the nuclear weapons codes), doctor, nurse, and White House Communications Agency, which uses buried fiberoptic cables ( reportedly 24-strand, or very high capacity) and copper cables (25-pair) for secure communications on the property.

At the south end of Mill Road, on the other side of Rainey Road, there is a trailer camp that includes a Secret Service trailer and a secure (presumably TEMPEST protected) conference trailer where Bush gets national security briefings.

The nearest road to the north is West Middle Bosque Rd. (about 1.25 mi or 2 km). South, between this road and the Bush house, is a large woods on another property, owned by the Weisses. The houses on Middle Bosque are way back on the north side of the road. Rainey Creek and the Middle Bosque River are dry for most of their length, most of the time, though not always. A closeup view of the president's famous Texas White House and his favorite refuge (he says, and this Bushism we believe -- it is beautiful country) is at http://usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-04-13-bush-house.htm (click on the "graphic"). The April 4, 2001, print edition of "USA Today" shows the same thing. The January 12, 2004, issue of Time shows a view of the east end of the house, from the front.

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This is the dude ranch where the president hopes to escape from his "poor little rich boy" East Coast heritage by assuming his droll affectations of the Marlboro Man. Natalie Maines (of the Dixie Chicks) needn't be ashamed the president is from Texas -- he isn't. He was born and educated on the East Coast, and his ancestral mansion is in Maine. Texans endured the son-of-a-carpetbagger as governor and are aware of the charade. Some neighbors, like Larry Mattlage, liked the smell of the place better when it was a hog farm (I kid you not). The Bushes don't have many close friends around here, except for Ken Engelbrecht, the former owner of the ranch, now reduced to a kind of sharecropper (he runs 200 head of his own cattle on the ranch, which presumably provide the president mad-cow-free, range-fed beef, so he can say he still eats it).

Members of the Engelbrecht family still live just west on Prairie Chapel Rd., on the north side. The Westerfield family lives on the south side of that stretch of Prairie Chapel Rd. And of course, Larry Mattlage and his family live south, off a north-south stretch of Prairie Chapel.

The new main house is built like a motel but with the porch on the back instead of the front - click on the closeup graphic in http://usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-04-13-bush-house.htm

The style is that of an office factory, with narrow, high windows and doors at intervals. The house was designed by an "environmental architect." Bush should demand his money back unless he really intends to run a motel. Architect David Heymann would give it back if he has any loyalty to environmentalism. The house was built by a religious commune from nearby Elm Mott, TX (the FBI-decimated Branch Davidians were from Elk, also nearby), out of a yellowish-beige native limestone, supposedly so as not to mar the natural landscape (since it's his, not yours). A geothermal heating/cooling system saves energy, a cistern behind the house collects rainwater for watering the lawn (no acid rain out here), and Bush hugs the trees (his, not yours), cutting down mostly water-hungry cedars -- too many ironies here to get into. The house itself is supplied with city water from Crawford. Electric power is supplied to the five main buildings and over a dozen SS guard huts by underground lines, which are connected to the McLennan County Electric Cooperative (McGregor, TX) by an aerial distribution line east of the Rainey Rd. extension.

The roof is white metal. The long, low house faces south. It is about 170 ft (52 m) long. The house is mostly one room wide, like a motel. The eight rooms are spread over a central area and two wings that are angled forward (see graphic). The house totals 4300 square ft (400 sq m.) in three areas, which are, west to east: office/study wing, bedrooms (central area), kitchen/dining room, and living room (east wing, overlooking the lake). Two enclosed porches, "dogtrots," in Texan (for the "dogs of war"?), one between the center and each wing, add about 1100 sq ft (102 sq m). A long open porch on the back and west is about 8 ft (2.4 m) wide. It widens on the east end to cover the patio.
There is also a two-bedroom guest house (1400 sq ft, 130 sq m) for the twins, west of the main house. South of that is a garage/carport, 1400 sq ft (130 sq m).

The government (you) built an approximately 70 x 40 ft house for the SS, hidden by a grove of trees 100 yards (91 m) northwest of Bush's house. What goes around comes around as this place has gone from hogs to "pigs". Attached to one corner is a storage area, approximately 20 x 20 ft, possibly for armaments. The U.S. president is not a man of peace. There is a network of over a dozen small guard huts for SS sharpshooters, scattered over the ranch. Owners of the surrounding farms have given the Secret Service access to their property to patrol the perimeter of the Bush ranch.
Bush added a 10-acre (4-hectare) fishing lake east of the new ranch house. It is trapezoidal, with the base toward the west. Not shown is a swimming pool, built on the pleas of his unruly daughters and thus called the "whining pool."

Protesters heading for the Bush ranch are routinely harassed by a local posse. Individuals approaching the ranch by car have no problem, though they might be questioned by the Secret Service (SS) if they disobey the orange signs against stopping, standing, or parking near the ranch. However, caravans are obstructed by roadblocks of the Crawford and other city police forces, state police, and McLennan county sheriff, who have been known to detour protestors down deadend roads. This has occurred on Prairie Chapel Road, the road from Crawford. Other approaches, as shown on Terraserver, are from Valley Mills on the north and Coryell on the west. Since Valley Mills is in Bosque county and Coryell is in Coryell county, a good plan would be to use the network of roads in these neighboring counties to avoid the local possee. It would be wise to become familiar with nearby roads in all three counties.

Driving Directions

When Bush himself ventures out, it is often to get to the Texas State Technical College (TSTC) airport just north of Waco on Interstate 35, from which Air Force One took him on his secret Thanksgiving 2003 trip to Iraq for a turkey trot with the troops. Dignitaries arriving at the ranch often use this airport and back roads, avoiding Crawford. Anyone watching the TSTC airport at Thanksgiving could have discerned the secret mission as a government Suburban whisked Bush and Condi Rice out of the ranch and Air Force One took off.

Driving Directions from Gatesville, Texas (from west, recommended): 1: Start out going East on US-84/TX-36 BR/US-84 E toward S 14TH ST. Continue to follow US-84 E. 1.74 miles 2: Turn LEFT to take the TX-36 ramp. 0.03 miles 3: Stay straight to go onto ramp. 0.29 miles 4: Merge onto TX-36. 2.19 miles 5: Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto FM 929. 10.22 miles 6: Turn LEFT onto CR-262. 1.09 miles 7: CR-262 becomes CREEK 262. 0.07 miles 8: CREEK 262 becomes CORYELL CITY RD. 0.76 miles 9: Turn LEFT onto CANAAN CHURCH RD. 0.15 miles 10: Turn RIGHT onto PRAIRIE CHAPEL RD. 1.68 miles 11: Stay straight to go onto RAINEY RD. 0.81 miles. (PRAIRIE CHAPEL RD. turns right. Don't take it.) RANCH is on north side of RAINEY RD, at MILL RD.. Total distance is 19.04 miles. Don't expect to get all the way to Mill Rd., especially in a caravan.

Drivng Directions from Crawford, Texas (from east) 1: Start out going West on 5TH ST/FM 185 toward TX-317/LONE STAR PKWY/AVENUE G. 0.33 miles 2: Turn RIGHT onto N AVENUE B. 0.08 miles 3: Turn LEFT onto W 4TH ST. 0.07 miles 4: Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto PRAIRIE CHAPEL RD. 7.58 miles 5: Turn RIGHT onto RAINEY RD. 0.81 miles. RANCH is on north side of RAINEY RD, at MILL RD. Total distance is 8.88 miles. Don't expect to get all the way to Mill Rd., especially in a caravan.

Trails and drives crisscross the ranch. Bush uses these for his sunrise jogging and showing the place to his fellow war criminals. The maps show a canyon along Rainey Creek, about halfway from the house to the Middle Bosque River. Bush spends a lot of his famous long vacations clearing trees from canyons (a total of seven).