Page 7 - Heritiage Guide 2016

2016 HERITAGE: HISTORY OF BEAUTIFUL LAKE LIVINGSTON Page 7
Lake Livingston: The Great Deluge
By Wanda Bobinger
Cotton, timber and livestock had been staples of the Polk County economy from its beginning, but in the 1950s rumblings emerging from a much larger neighbor on the Gulf coast signaled that
big changes for the area were afoot. Half a century after the construction of the Houston ship channel and following the close of WWII, the city was rapidly emerging as the largest port and industrial center in the southern United States. A lack of water
for industry and population growth was seen as imminent and the capture of water from a proposed dam on the Trinity River as the most economically feasible solution to this problem. On Oct. 30, 1958 The City of Houston announced plans to present immediately to the State Board of Water Engineers a proposal for two Trinity River projects, The Lake Livingston Dam for a new water supply
and a lower smaller dam in Wallisville to act as a salt water barrier. Locally, the project, which was to affect four counties directly including Polk, San Jacinto, Trinity and Walker, was mired in controversy. Hundreds of land owners were not eager to lose rich bottom lands that had in many instances been in the same families since the earliest days of Texas. As is most often the case progress cannot be stopped so with plenty of
delays and legal hurdles a nal contract between the Trinity River Authority (TRA) and the City of Houston was approved by Houston voters in a bond election held on June 27, 1964. The dam and reservoir would be owned and operated by the TRA with 20 percent of the water sold at cost to the encompassing counties, the remainder owing to Harris County and Houston. More than any other event or circumstance, except possibly the Civil War, the completion of the Trinity River Dam and Lake Livingston
entire area.
Lake Livingston with a maximum length of 31 miles and width of nine miles is the second largest body of water fully contained in the state, after the Sam Rayburn Reservoir. The lake’s 450 miles of beautiful tree-lined shores and 85,000 surface acres of waters have transformed the area into a major destination for nature, shing and all sorts of water recreation. Thousands of people coming
and going have created a great bene t to area businesses and the development of resort communites have mitigated any reductions to the local tax base resulting from the loss of land. Property values around the lake were said by the local newspaper to have shot up by more than 50 percent not long after the creation of the lake
was announced. The surrounding land and forests became rich hunting grounds after the inundation forced hundreds of thousands of snakes, deer, raccoons and every other kind of bird and animal out of the ooded areas. The dam itself was originally expected to cost $40 million. Designed by Brown and Root (now KBR), it was completed by Forrest and Cotton, Inc for $83,996,957.
The Polk County Memorial Museum, located at 514 W Mill St, has a display this month featuring the history of Lake Livingston. (Photo by Albert Trevino)
Reservoir in 1969 brought about the greatest social and economic change to Polk County and the
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