LeRoy Johnson at McGee Bend Reservoir (Lake Sam Rayburn) in 1956

Abstract

McGee Bend was one of some 40 reservoir and dam projects in Texas where salvage archaeological excavations were carried out as part of the nationwide River Basin Surveys program administered by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service between 1947 and 1968 (see Jelks 1965, 2006, 2014, 2017). In 1956, I rented an old vacant farmhouse for our McGee Bend field headquarters where our crew lived without indoor plumbing, and it was there that the photo of LeRoy Johnson bathing in a washtub was taken by one of our crew, Milburn Lathan (Figure 1).