This bluff rises 80 feet above the Colorado River at Wilbarger Bend. Josiah Wilbarger, an early Texas settler, and his family owned the land on the opposite side of the river during the 1800s. He was one of the few Texans who were scalped and survived. Wilbarger and his wife Margaret arrived at Matagorda on Dec. 26, 1827, and after teaching at Matagorda and La Grange and working as a surveyor, he settled in Stephen F. Austin's colony in a bend of the Colorado River 10 miles above the site of present Bastrop, on the land opposite this bluff. He received a league of land, about 4,428 acres, in January 1832. In August 1833, while serving with a surveying party near Pecan Springs, about four miles east of the site of present Austin, he was attacked by Native Americans, scalped, found alive the next day by Reuben Hornsby, and taken to the Hornsby home for treatment. He never fully recovered and died near Bastrop on April 11, 1844, leaving his wife and five children. Just east of this overlook stood McKinney's Mill, a lumber mill on the Colorado River that transported pine, cedar, and cottonwood lumber to communities along the river. The steep bluffs and canyons known as McKinney Roughs are remnants of ancient oyster beds and offshore reefs, harder ground than the surrounding sandy soils that eroded away to form the park's steep canyons.