WHEN WHITE ROCK LAKE WAS KING

It’s the early 1950s, bubblegum rock is topping the charts and White Rock Lake is the social spot where students from local high schools are most likely to be found.

“We did everything on the lake. We swam there. We took a lot of picnics down to the beach,” says Delores “Dee” Knight, who graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1954. “There was a lot of ‘parking’ that went on there at night,” she adds with a blush.

For 23 years, families from across Dallas flocked to White Rock Lake’s bucolic banks, sunning themselves on the sandy beach or cooling off with a swim — Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a more iconic scene.

It was kept as pristine as possible, intended as a water source for the city, not a swimming hole. But when Lake Lewisville was completed in 1929 as a larger reservoir, Dallas immediately made plans to turn its 1,015-acre lake into a recreational paradise. The Bath House opened in 1930, along with the bathing beach and boathouse. There on the eastern edge, a cement slab extended a hundred feet into the lake with 500 feet along the shore, making it the largest swimming pool in the city, according to “A History of Dallas Parks,” a manuscript kept in the city archives. Attendance often exceeded

100,000 per summer, even though sanitation always had been questionable. The water was chlorinated, first by boat and later through a pipeline. Historic images also show lake-goers wading in the spillway, under a pedestrian bridge that no longer exists, at the water’s southwest edge.

Despite periods of bleak economic conditions, families found affordable fun at the lake, which flourished with recreation from swimming to sailing to seaplanes.

The U.S. Army soon saw the value of the land, building its extensive Civilian Conservation Corps camps, which included two concession stands, camps, trails, picnic grounds and bathrooms, many of which are still in use today. Flush with funds from President Frank- es of WWII in 1942, the camps became a training facility for the Army, before German prisoners of war were brought to reside there in 1944-45.

After the war, Southern Methodist University bought the camp for student housing — imagine if those walls could talk. Their stories, of which few were recorded, ended when the basic wooden buildings were either sold off or torn down in the post-war boom years.

In addition to the Army, private businesses and clubs capitalized on the urban oasis, offering a wide swath of water activities, from cruises to waterskiing. Speed boating became popular and many prominent citizens built their own boat houses with a measly annual lease of $1, according to Sally Rodriguez’s book “Images of America: lin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Army Capt. Tom B. Martin oversaw construction beginning in July 1935, which brought an estimated 3,000 youth to live and work at the camp during its seven years in operation.

When America joined the allied forc-

White Rock Lake.”

By 1952, the city determined that the boathouses unfairly limited access to the shared recreational resource and they were torn down.

When a severe drought hit Texas in summer 1953, White Rock’s water again was needed to support the city and swimming was outlawed, a ban that has remained in place ever since.

Dee Knight can’t remember the reaction from friends upon news that their summertime playground would be shut down, “But it couldn’t have been good,” she notes. “It was the end of an era.”

Today, water sports are still enjoyed on the lake, albeit it in limited capacity — barges have been replaced by kayaks, speed boats by crew rowers.

Desegregation of parks and pools (story page 26) proved a “complex, difficult, dangerous struggle, with many roles played by many different agents of change,” according to Dallas archivist John Slate. Tension lingered throughout the 20th century and perhaps beyond. Still, the Dallas Park and Recreation Department efforts during integration launched Dallas into something of a sparkling period for public pools. Families from all neighborhoods — of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds — could spend summer days dunking themselves in an affordable, accessible public pool. It began with the pool at Fair Park in 1925, then Tietze Park in 1946 (the first community pool near our neighborhood, built at a cost of $40,000) then, following a temporary stall due to the Korean War, Samuell-Grand in 1953. In the late 1950s, the park department built at a rapid pace — the 1958 bond package provided funds for McCree pool in Lake Highlands, along with Kidd Springs, Red Bird, Bonnie View and Churchill. Bond packages in 1962 and ’64 did not provide for any new community pools, but dozens of junior pools and wading pools sprouted. Proof of Dallas’ love for its pool system is in the attendance record, which climbed to a high of 731,227 in 1957 according to park reports. Historic city records (which stretch only from 1921-58) show that the only year the city lost money on its pool system was in 1929 and 1930 following the stock market crash that plunged the country into the Great Depression. Even in 1943, when the entire pool system was closed down on July 2 amid a polio outbreak, the city still managed to make a profit of $2,956. In 1973, Dallas had 100 public pools.

By that time, the park department had started building the modern recreation buildings we see today, such as Lake Highlands North, known at its inception as Skyline. In 1984 the Dallas City Council announced plans to close six pools, including Griggs, the first area pool for black residents. Another 16 cut their hours. By 2000, the city was offering free days to entice more people into the pools. Then, it switched focus entirely, investing heavily in “spraygrounds.” With contraptions that shoot, spray and dump water in all different sorts of ways, they were cheaper to maintain because they don’t require lifeguards, and a 2003 voter-approved bond showed residents were in favor of the idea (see page 28). Today Lake Highlands North pool has the highest attendance of any pool in the city, councilman Adam McGough said when calling for improvement funds. Last year, 16,590 swam there, up from a low 748 in 2005. Strong attendance has historically saved Lake Highlands North pool from the city’s axe. In 1994, for example, when the city shuttered four of its 22 remaining pools, Lake Highlands North was never considered for the chopping block because it was the most popular pool with 20,254 swimmers according to city records. Nearby Tietze drew only 8,132 that year and was considered for closure.