GONE SWIMMIN’

IT’S SUMMER IN DALLAS AND JUST ONE THING IS KNOWN TO LURE FOLKS FROM THEIR COMFY AIR-CONDITIONED LAIRS

STORY BY RACHEL STONE

PHOTOS BY DANNY FULGENCIO

The thermostat seems stuck at 103 and, no, it is not broken. It’s just summer in Texas, where an indiscriminate barefoot on concrete or fingers on a metal seatbelt buckle can singe the skin. Our world is a sauna; everything’s sticky. The urge to cannonball into the nearest pool, splash around and soak up its chilly reprieve is fierce.

Creeks

Since the early 1900s — when creeks served as our neighborhood swimming holes — citizens and city officials have sought to fulfill this aquatic yen.

Embarking on sizzling summer 2016, Oak Cliff residents are bolstered by the Dallas Park and Recreation Department’s updated Aquatics Master Plan, which promises a sunny future for local swimming.

Funded by its $31.8 million sale of Elgin B. Robertson Park at Lake Ray Hubbard last year, the park department anticipates major upgrades to nine of Dallas’ 17 existing public pools, including the one at Kidd Springs Park, which is expected to cost about $4.5 million.

It’s a remarkable feat, according to former city councilwoman Angela

Lake Cliff Park

Hunt, who points out that as recently as 2014, the city intended to shutter many of its pools.

“The plan at that time called for closing all neighborhood pools and replacing them with a small number of regional water parks. It was a one-sizefits-all plan that failed to take into account the varying popularity levels of neighborhood pools across the city,” Hunt wrote last year in an Advocate column.

Hunt credits neighborhood residents with speaking up and city officials for responding.

That passion for public pools has been evident throughout our city’s history and it’s no wonder — pools have made southern summers bearable, even downright enjoyable. Pools also reflect the tensions and transformations our city has experienced over the years.

The earliest Oak Cliff residents swam in spring-fed pools and our neighborhood’s creeks: Cedar Creek, Coombs Creek and Five-Mile Creek.

Oak Cliffers who grew up here in the ’50s and ’60s remember swimming in the creeks even up until the 1970s, when swimming in them was discouraged because of pollution.

“Five-Mile Creek was the summer playground,” says Mike Thomas, who grew up near Kiest Park. “It used to be right across the street from me. I had a lot of fun down there with the bird dog.”

Five-Mile Creek also was the playground upstream in the Glendale area and the old town of Lisbon, near the Veterans Administration Hospital.

That neighborhood got its own municipal pool, at Glendale Park, in 1953 and it’s still open.

Early swimmers at Lake Cliff Park, known in 1906 as Llewellyn Country Club, dipped in the 30-acre lake, fed by “numberless springs,” with clear water and lots of fish.

The amusement park at Lake Cliff, with its theater, skating rink, log ride, bowling alley and restaurant, drew big crowds in the early 20th century. It ultimately was a financial flop however, and the city bought it for $55,000 in 1914.

The pool at Lake Cliff was built in 1921 and by 1945, it had generated a total of $100,000 in net revenue for the city. The city estimated that around 80 percent of the population had swum in the pool that year.

It was a 310-square-foot all-concrete pool, 10 feet deep at the diving end with a 2.5 milliongallon capacity. It also had a sandy beach and bathhouses with showers and lockers.

The city renovated the pool in 1949, expanding its sandy beach and adding underwater lights for night swimming.

Several children drowned in the massive pool over the decades.

That, along with ever-increasing maintenance costs, inspired the city to close it in 1959.

Kidd Springs Park

When James Kidd, a former colonel in the Confederate States Army, settled in what is now Oak Cliff in 1878, the spring on his property was a “gushing fountain” in the side of the hill. The spring “raced away down the valley, making a creek,” according to a 1924 oral history from his son, Wilber M. Kidd.

E.P. Turner, for whom Turner House is named, bought the spring in 1895 and dammed it to make a lake for the Kidd Spring Boating and Fishing Club.

In 1911, Kidd Springs was opened to the public. A 1927 newspaper story described Kidd Springs as 25 acres with “hundreds of beautiful shade trees” and a two-acre lake. A main attraction in the ’20s was the giant “devil’s slide,” into the water. It also had a sandy beach and an orchestra pavilion.

The park operated as a private amusement park until 1947, when it became part of the City of Dallas park department. The same year, the city closed the Kidd Springs Park lake to swimming.

In 1951, the newspaper reported that the once-gushing spring had been “reduced to a trickle” and today, the exact source of the spring is unknown.

In 1959, the city opted to close the pool at Lake Cliff Park and build a new one at Kidd Springs. The previous summer, the city’s pool system had served about 900,000 swimmers. Admission to city pools cost 40 cents for adults, 25 cents for kids ages 1217, and 15 cents for younger children.

The pool at Kidd Springs Park cost about $74,000 to build and debuted on May 15, 1959.

This summer is expected to be the last for the Kidd Springs Park pool. Construction on the new pool and bathhouse could begin next May; the new pool is expected to open for the 2018 season.

Wading Pools

The big municipal pools drew bathers from all over, but Dallas also had neighborhood “wading pools.”

There were wading pools at parks adjacent to elementary schools in Oak Cliff, including Winnetka, Reagan, Lida Hooe and Rosemont.

Even though they were small and shallower than the big pools, these wading pools were free to use.

“We rode our bikes up there every day, or walked,” says lifelong Oak Cliff resident Jerri Locke, who learned

Martin Weiss Pool

The pool at Martin Weiss Park is the oldest operating pool in our neighborhood. It opened in July 1953, and it cost about $75,000 to build.

The city’s pools had drawn almost 574,000 swimmers the previous summer and the city was rushing to build more public pools. Another new pool, at Samuell-Grand Park, also opened that summer for a total of nine pools citywide.

Even though the Martin Weiss Park pool is older than Kidd Springs, it is not as well attended. The city’s aquatics master plan calls for building a new pool at Martin Weiss in a second phase, but that is so far unfunded.

to swim at the Rosemont pool. “The field always had stickers. We were always barefoot, so you had to watch out very carefully, and if it got really hot, the asphalt would bubble and we would stick our toes in it.”

In 2000, after a child contracted E. Coli swimming in a wading pool in Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cracked down on wading pools, unveiling strict rules for operation. While large pools have a filtration system, the city’s wading pools did not, making them a potential breeding ground for bacteria.

Unwilling to spend the $4 million needed to upgrade the wading pools to meet new sanitary regulations, the city park officials made plans to close all 26. They faced immediate backlash, especially in Oak Cliff, where city councilwoman Laura Miller made a valiant effort to keep Arcadia Park’s pool open, going as far as to sit in a dunk-tank to raise funds for its continued operation. Despite raising more than $100,000, t wading pool eventually was forced to close.

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