DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's got the story, and here's how I tell it — this one's about a lake that had no business existing, and a town determined to make it happen anyway. Welcome to the site of Lake Plainview, Hale County, Texas. Now, Plainview didn't come into this world shy.
Founded in the 1880s, this city had its eyes set on agricultural supremacy — not just for itself, mind you, but for its whole trade area. That's the kind of ambition that gets things done, and sometimes gets things undone too. The first move came in 1911, when civic leaders pioneered irrigated farming by boring the first of many deep water wells.
Think about that for a second — these folks looked out at the High Plains, decided the water was down there somewhere, and went after it. That first well was just the beginning. Then, in 1912, the Texas Land and Development Company stepped in and raised the stakes considerably.
They installed a demonstration well right near the Santa Fe Railway Depot, and what they built from it was something that would have made your jaw drop out here on the flat, dry Llano Estacado — a genuine lake. Lake Plainview, they called it, with a park to go along with it. And it wasn't just any lake.
This was called Texas' largest body of water fed by a well. Let that settle in. In a state with the Rio Grande and the Sabine and Caddo Lake, somebody looked at this pump-fed, man-made sheet of water and said — that right there is the biggest well-fed lake in all of Texas.
The public loved it. Came from all around. But here's the thing about ambition: it runs up against reality sooner or later.
The lake was expensive to maintain. A beautiful, popular, record-holding expensive problem sitting right next to the Santa Fe Railway Depot. And then came 1917.
Fire destroyed the pump house. No pump house, no pump. No pump, no lake.
Just like that, the park and the lake went back to nature — and the High Plains, as it turns out, is very good at reclaiming what you borrowed from it. The story could have ended there, swallowed up by grass and caliche and time. But it didn't.
In 1977, the area became a park once again. Same ground, same sky, different chapter. Some places just refuse to stay forgotten.
What the marker says
The City of Plainview, founded in the 1880s, sought agricultural supremacy for its trade area. Civic leaders pioneered irrigated farming in 1911 by boring the first of many deep water wells. In 1912, Texas Land & Development Co. installed a demonstration well near the Santa Fe Railway Depot and created Lake Plainview and a park at this site. Called Texas' largest body of water fed by a well, the lake was very popular with the public, but expensive to maintain. After fire destroyed the pump house in 1917, park and lake went back to nature. In 1977 the area again became a park. 1977