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 question- able. 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 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Army Capt. Tom B. Martin oversaw construc-

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: White Rock Lake.”

By 1952 the city determined that tion 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 forces of WWII in 1942, the camps became a training facility for the Army, before 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.