Lake Somerville

Duane's take

Here's how the marker on Lake Somerville tells it, straight from the official record. Now, Yegua Creek had a reputation. In the forty-six years leading up to 1958, that creek flooded forty-three times.

Forty-three times it rose up and took what it wanted — lives, crops, livelihoods. You do the math on what that means for the folks living along those banks, and the number that comes back isn't just water damage. It's grief, stacked up season after season.

Something had to be done. So they planned a dam. Somerville Dam, right there on Yegua Creek in Burleson County.

And when it came time to break ground, they brought out somebody worth noticing. On September 22, 1962, the vice president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, turned the first shovel of earth. Not a ribbon, not a speech from a distance — a shovel, in the ground.

Then came the work. Years of it. The project was finished in 1967.

The dam went up, the water backed behind it, and what had flooded forty-three times in forty-six years was finally answered — not with hope, but with concrete and earth and the kind of patience it takes to tame a creek that never much cared for the calendar. That's Lake Somerville. Built on forty-three floods' worth of reason.

What the marker says

First shovel of earth for Somerville Dam was turned Sept. 22, 1962, by Lyndon Johnson, then vice president of United States. Dam was built to control flooding on Yegua Creek. In the 46 years prior to 1958, Yegua has flooded 43 times, costing lives, crops. Project was finished 1967.