Dalby Springs, Texas

One day about 60 years ago, I got in from school and, after putting my books away, went into the kitchen. My mother was already working on supper.

I noticed a fruit jar with what appeared to be red water sitting on the window sill. I asked my mother what was in the jar.

“That’s mineral water from Dalby Springs,” she said. “It’s good for you.”

I thought, It’s red. Water is supposed to be clear. I’m not drinking it.

My mother talked about Dalby Springs now and then. I think maybe she had relatives there, or near abouts there. Or maybe Dalby Springs was an interesting place because of the curative springs.

I didn’t visit Dalby Springs until 2002, when talking with and researching residents and landowners whose homes or farms or ranches would be flooded if Dallas-Fort Worth water districts got their way and had a 64,000-acre-foot lake dug and hacked and scoured into parts of Red River, Titus, Morris and Bowie counties in Northeast Texas. I had an idea of writing a magazine story on the people who lived in the area and how their ways of live would be destroyed by city folk who wanted thick green lawns and golf courses at the expense of people who did not like or trust cities.

Shirley Shumake was my guide to the area. Her brother Max founded Save Our Sulphur, named after the Sulphur River, which flows across several Texas and Arkansas counties before joining the Red River. Dams near Cooper and Texarkana already impound thousands of acre feet of the Sulphur River. The Dallas area gets much of Cooper Lake water, pumped through six-foot-tall concrete pipes stretching underground about 80 miles. Residents of the affected counties saw no reason their land should succumb to flooding just to satisfy the egos of people who seem to want more and more of what belongs to somebody else.

Shirley showed me around Dalby Springs, what there is to be seen these days. What most impressed me was the wall of a rent house owned by Dickie Dalby, great-great-great-grandson of Warren Dalby, the first settler in what was to become Dalby Springs.

A wall in a bedroom of the rent house was part of the original log cabin Warren Dalby built in 1842. History, right there to see and to touch. If I remember correctly, all of the Dalby cabin is preserved behind more modern walls.

I never wrote the magazine article, but here is a piece from The Handbook of Texas Online:

“Dalby Springs is a community eleven miles from DeKalb in southwestern Bowie County. It was named for the nearby Dalby Springs. Settlement in the area began in 1839 with the arrival of Warren Dalby and his family. In the 1850s the springs were discovered to have medicinal properties, and as word spread, people began to visit the area to drink from the springs. Buildings were erected to accommodate travelers, and in 1860 a post office was established there, with Joseph G. Dalby as postmaster. By 1884 the town had a church, a school, five mills, five gins, and a population estimated at 250. During the 1890s a newspaper called the Guest was published there. By 1900 the community's population had fallen to 186. It continued to be reported at about that level until the 1950s, when it fell to fifty. In 1984 Dalby Springs reported an estimated population of sixty and no rated businesses. In 1990 and in 2000 its population was estimated at 141.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnd03