Memorial Park Cultural Landscape Review

Because of pressure problems, the city continued to rely on water from both sources, but: “Increasing pollution of the stream through the 1890s created a difficulty. In 1893 people complained that tap water was no better than bayou water.” Even with the city aquifers, in 1901 City Hall and market burned, and water pressure was not sufficient to reach the roofs of these two structures, thus ensuring their complete loss in the fire. The struggle to provide clean, sufficient water continues to this day.

In addition to the dilemma of providing safe, potable drinking water for Houstonians, the problem of too much water created a series of crises in the city. The Hogg family was intimately familiar with flooding problems along Buffalo Bayou in the 1920s and 1930s. Their own home, Bayou Bend, had flooded in 1928 and 1935. Before the construction of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs northwest of the City of Houston, flooding had been a repetitive and devastating occurrence along Buffalo Bayou and in downtown Houston. The flood of 1935 was the final straw for Houstonians grown weary of the repeated loss of lives and damage to property. The largest flood occurred on December 6th of 1935 through December 8th, 1935. Rains fell throughout Harris County, which resulted in Buffalo Bayou reaching a flood height of “52 feet above normal” (http://www.hcfcd.org/flash/FloodHistory.html, accessed August 18, 2014). In downtown Houston, buildings were “under water up to three floors high” (ibid). To put this event into perspective, Aulbach (2012) notes that, “The gauge at Shepherd Drive registered 40,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) on December 9, 1935. This flood can be compared to the flood caused by Tropical Storm Allison in June, 2001, when the guage at Shepherd Drive read a mere 14,000 cfs on June 9” (Aulbach, 12-13).

This event was the impetus two years later, in 1937, for the creation of the Harris County Flood Control District by the Texas legislature. Nationally, congress passed the Flood Control Acts of August 11, 1938, which allowed for the appropriation of federal funds for the construction of the two reservoirs, acting in concert to reduce downstream flooding along Buffalo Bayou (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addicks_Reservoir, accessed 03/19/2015). The two reservoirs were completed in 1945 (Aulbach, 13).

Planned as large impoundment reservoirs that reduce the amount and speed with which water flows into Buffalo Bayou, these areas have successfully protected Houston for the last 70 years, except in the case of extreme weather events like Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Barker is the larger of the two reservoirs, covering 13,000 acres. “Protected from development and allowed to remain in a mostly natural state,” the reservoir is home to extensive wildlife within its boundaries (Aulbach, 12).

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