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.”
