DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, Texas has got lakes, plenty of 'em, but Lake Tawakoni — Hunt County, out on the Sabine River — sits in a category all its own. One of the largest lakes wholly within the state of Texas.
Let that settle in a moment. Not partly in Oklahoma, not straddling some survey line. Wholly within Texas.
That's a point of pride, and around here, points of pride don't go unspoken. The lake was completed in 1960, and when it filled, it covered thirty-six thousand seven hundred acres. Thirty-six thousand seven hundred.
That's not a lake so much as an inland argument about the size of ambition. Holding all that water in place is a dam — an iron bridge dam, they call it, stretching five and a half miles across the Sabine River. Five and a half miles of dam.
And then the shoreline, which winds and curls its way out to two hundred miles of edge. Two hundred miles. You could drive Houston to Dallas and still not trace the whole bank of this one lake.
The Sabine River Authority of Texas constructed it, owns it, and operates it under what they call the Iron Bridge Division. The money to build it came from the city of Dallas, under the terms of a water supply contract, and other towns buy the lake's water too. So in a very real sense, Tawakoni quenches a big piece of Texas thirst.
But here's where the story gets deeper than just engineering. When they went to work out here, the ground gave something up. Prehistoric animal bones came to light.
And not just old bones — remains of a Tawakoni Indian village were discovered here too. Layers of time sitting right beneath what is now thirty-six thousand acres of open water. Whatever those bones and those village remains might have told us, the lake now keeps its own counsel.
The living side of Tawakoni carries on at Wind Point Park, a public recreational resort right there on the water, open to anyone who wants to see what five and a half miles of dam hath wrought. Some lakes, they just hold water. This one holds a little bit of everything.
What the marker says
One of the largest lakes wholly within Texas. Completed 1960, it covers 36,700 acres. Impounded by 5.5-mile-long iron bridge dam on Sabine River, it has a shore line of 200 miles. Constructed and owned by the Sabine River Authority of Texas. Financed by city of Dallas under terms of a water supply contract. Other towns also buy lake's water. Prehistoric animal bones and remains of a Tawakoni Indian village were discovered here. Lake is operated under Iron Bridge Division, S. R. A. of Texas. It embraces Wind Point Park, a public recreational resort.