Posted: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:04 PM - 11,881 Readers
By: John Williams
Recreation was not on the Lower Colorado River Authority’s list of priorities in the 1930s when it was building the first of the dams that created a chain of lakes in the Central Texas Hill Country.
LCRA’s focus was on building dams that would generate electricity, provide a reliable water supply for the river basin and protect Austin and other downstream communities from the worst effects of Hill Country floods.
But as the lakes began to grow behind the dams, so did public interest in the lakes’ recreational opportunities.
By 1940, cities, counties and the state parks board were acquiring land near the lakes to build parks and the roads that would lead to them. Boat docks were being built on the lakes. And LCRA’s new general manager, Max Starcke, was receiving inquiries as to when the lakes would be open for boating, fishing and picnics.
The former mayor of Seguin, Starcke had come to LCRA in 1938 to organize its electric power program. As mayor of Seguin, he had transformed the town into a municipal showplace, with model electric and water utilities as well as parks and playgrounds.
Sensing a similar opportunity for LCRA, Starcke arranged to co-sponsor a study by the state parks board and the National Park Service of the recreational potential of the lakes and surrounding region.
The report, issued in 1941, described what it considered a third major region in Texas ripe for recreational development. It would join the Big Bend region and the Gulf Coast as recreation magnets for a state with a population of 6 million that, as the report estimated, would grow to more than8 million people by 1960.
The National Park Service considered the region to be “outstanding in its park and recreational possibilities,” the report said.
The region offered “a vast potential recreational domain,” given its central location in Texas, its unique geological features and vegetation and the four lakes created to date—Lake Buchanan, Inks Lake, the Marshall Ford Reservoir, later named Lake Travis, and Lake Austin. That created some 60,000 acres of water surface and more than 670 miles of shoreline.
The report envisioned a network of state and local parks along the lakes, supplemented by riding and hiking trails converted from old county and ranch roads that the lakes had rendered unusable for automobiles.
The parks and other recreational sites would play host to a wide variety of activities. In addition to boating, sailing, fishing, camping and picnicking, the report envisioned such activities as “campfire lectures”—popular park features at the time—“lawn bowling,” which had developed “widespread appeal among young and old alike”; outdoor concerts at amphitheaters, which the report predicted would be ideal for the region’s climate; and polo fields and horse racing tracks, if the state legalized betting.
The sites would be connected by a 200-mile highway loop that would include a stretch of road to run atop the still-to-be-completed Marshall Ford Dam, later renamed Mansfield Dam.
For all its enthusiasm about the region, the report noted it had “some objectionable features.” A federal program of cedar eradication had created “great scars of barrenness on the mountains” and “would soon nullify much of the region’s desirability as a recreational area” unless stopped.
And the report cautioned that Lake Buchanan and Marshall Ford Reservoir, “designed as water-storage and flood-control levels,” would result in fluctuating lake elevations that would expose “great stretches of their respective lake beds.”
“This fluctuation of water level precludes the possibility of any major recreational developments on either lake shore that would function properly or with much success,” the report warned, recommending Inks Lake and Lake Austin as the “most desirable for intensive recreational use,” given their relatively “constant level.”
To promote the recreational opportunities, the report suggested calling the region the “Highland Lakes,” given its Hill Country locale and the 700-foot drop in elevation between lakes Buchanan and Austin, which the report noted was greater than the drop in altitude of the entire Mississippi River.
The report concluded: “That seemed sufficient excuse to refer to them as the ‘Highland Lakes.’”
The region thus was given a marketable name. But soon, the United States would enter World War II, putting Central Texas and the rest of the nation on a war footing—and precluding for several years any promotion of the region as the state’s new “recreational domain.”
Even so, the first steps had been taken to promote what would become known as the Highland Lakes region.
“LCRA is proud of the many benefits its dams and lakes have provided through the decades,” current LCRA General Manager Tom Mason said. “In addition to the main benefits of electricity, a reliable water supply and protection from floods, the Highland Lakes and dams have added immeasurably to the beauty and quality of life of Central Texas.”
