Dallas Moprning News
Ray Sasser - Ourdoors
Lake names all over the map
Labels on Texas reservoirs are political, lyrical and sometimes obscure
10:41 PM CDT on Saturday, June 7, 2008
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Baby Boomers might recall the old Vietnam protest idea – what if Congress declared war and nobody came? What if Congress changed the name of a lake and nobody noticed? That seems to have happened near Commerce where the lake that opened as Cooper in 1994 was changed to Jim Chapman Lake in 1998.
Chapman is a retired congressman from nearby Sulphur Springs. Lakes all over Texas are named for national, state and local politicians. Sam Rayburn Reservoir, for instance, was originally tabbed McGee Bend Dam, for a bend in the Angelina River where the dam was located.
Not sure who McGee was, but he was probably a local politician. McGee's importance was trumped by the death of former House Speaker Sam Rayburn. In Central Texas, we've got Lake LBJ, named for a Texas politician who rose even higher than speaker of the house.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was both commander of the Allied forces in World War II and president, yet the Denison native never got a lake named for him – only a state park on Lake Texoma.
And speaking of Lake Texoma, its name is obviously a derivative of the states it separates. One wonders about negotiations between Texas and equally proud Oklahoma and why the lake wasn't named Oklatex? Maybe Oklahoma agreed to second billing in exchange for claiming the entire Red River channel as Oklahoma domain. Most boundary rivers are more or less equally divvyed up.
Texas lakes are frequently named for their location. Lake Grapevine, Lake Benbrook or Lake Arlington, for instance. Lewisville Lake sounds simple enough but it may have the most complicated background of all.
In the 1920s, Lake Dallas was built as a water supply lake near the village of Garza. The dam was named Garza Dam. As water needs grew, along with the need for flood control, the lake was expanded in 1955 with the construction of a new Corps of Engineers dam.
The new, bigger lake was first dubbed Garza-Little Elm, the Little Elm for the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. When the community of Garza decided to rename itself as the City of Lake Dallas, the whole thing got so confusing that the lake was eventually designated Lewisville Lake.
There are some great names for Texas lakes. Lake Casa Blanca, near Laredo, probably wasn't named for a Bogart movie or a ceiling fan. The Spanish name translates to white house, and there was probably an adobe hacienda nearby.
Amistad is another Spanish name, aptly so for a lake between the United States and Mexico on the Rio Grande. Amistad translates to friendship, though the modern version of China's great wall that's going up between the two countries would seem to indicate that things aren't quite as friendly as they once were. Besides, anyone who's fished at Amistad, a wide-open canyon lake, would swear the name translates to "Windy" instead of friendship.
My favorite lake name is Possum Kingdom, which is supposedly the name of a particular bend in the Brazos River. Local legend says a fur trader from Mineral Wells referred to the early trappers of northwest Palo Pinto County as "the boys of Possum Kingdom" and the whimsical name stuck.
Cooper Lake was a good enough name for a lake near the town of Cooper. It's home to one of Texas' best developed state parks, Cooper Lake State Park. The lake is still called Cooper Lake on every map that I've seen and all the TXDOT signs point the way to Cooper Lake. What is Texas Parks and Wildlife supposed to do, rename the park Cooper Lake SP at Jim Chapman Lake?
The Corps of Engineers, being a federal agency, seems to be the only ones taking this name change seriously and even the feds are wishy-washy, at least on their official headquarters sign. It says "Cooper Dam and" in big letters, followed by "Jim Chapman Lake" in smaller letters.
A friend who's fed up with politics anyway insists that an existing lake should never be renamed for a politician. If they want to change the name of something, it's the dam name that should change. Thus, the name could be Dam Jim Chapman or Dam LBJ, etc.
