Concrete walls and rebar remnants found along the main channel of the Trinity River in Dallas County belong to an uncompleted river barge navigation project overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. First envisioned in the early 1900s, the plan called for a series of 37 locks and dams to render the Trinity River commercially navigable from Galveston Bay to Dallas. By the project’s abandonment in 1922, only seven structures had been constructed. Three of which were constructed in Dallas County along the main stem of the Trinity. The Dallas County projects were Lock Number 1 at McCommas Bluff, Lock Number 2 near present day Beltline Road and Lock 4 two miles south of Malloy Bridge Road. 

The lock and dams were standardized with chambers measuring approximately 50 feet wide by 140 feet long, designed to lift and lower river freight up the river’s gradient. Each Boule Gate that was used in the lock was 24 feet high, 30 feet long and weighed 60,000 pounds. One gate formed half of a door, one door on the upstream end and one door on the downstream end completed the lock which was designed to raise and lower boat traffic. The floodgates themselves were steel in construction with replaceable wooden timbers forming the spaces in between.  During times of high water, the floodgate system could be moved from vertical to horizontal, allowing for water and debris to pass easily over the structures. 

Ideas at rebirthing the construction of locks and dams on the Trinity came in the 1930s, 50s, 60s and 70s. These ideas were largely thwarted by leaps in technology with long haul trucks, the interstate highway system and efficiency in railroad lines. 

Lock and Dam #2 (Goat Island Preserve)

Constructed between 1909 and 1911, Lock and Dam #2 was positioned to create a navigable pool extending upstream to Lock #1 at McCommas Bluff.

Engineering Structure: This facility utilized a dam structure to create a head of water, and its lock chamber was originally equipped with wooden gates that required bracing with steel I-beams during high-velocity flood events.

Physical Remnants: The site still presents visible evidence of its construction, including the lower sections of the concrete lock walls. Notably, the centuries-old wooden foundation pilings remain partially exposed in the river mud, demonstrating the underlying timber crib structure used in the original U.S. Army Corps of Engineers foundation design. The dam no longer operates as a functional hydraulic structure, generating a notable drop and turbulent flow in the river channel visible upstream of Beltline Road.

Parson’s Slough and Bois d’ Arc Island

Parson’s Slough is a cutoff channel of the Trinity River in Dallas County. The slough is an ancient high-sinuosity meander of the Trinity River. Parson’s Slough is a critical landscape feature. The vast tract of land west of slough and east of the modern river channel is historically known as Bois d’ Arc Island.

Engineered Cutoff: The slough’s connection to the Trinity River was permanently severed in 1911 by the construction of a 20-foot high, 200-foot wide concrete dam just upstream of Lock and Dam Number 2. This engineering effort rerouted all water flow from the Trinity into the newly deepened main channel, effectively transforming Parson’s Slough into a slackwater zone. This cutoff downstream created a 14 mile stretch of the traditional stream bed routed for a more westerly course with all water in one channel of the Trinity. The old riverbed became known as Parson’s Slough and the 22,000 acre area surrounded by the new and old river formally became Bois d’ Arc Island.

The area is also defined by surrounding Levee District embankments originally authorized in 1917. These levees were constructed using adjacent soil, creating “borrow pit ponds” that have successfully transitioned into vital, isolated wetland habitats. Much of the area known as Bois d’ Arc island was cleared for farming in the early part of the twentieth century. The area sits roughly 350 feet above sea level and is the lowest part of the county. Closer to the present day river channel, the land is abbreviated by numerous smaller creeks and sloughs.

Groundwater Ecology: Today Parson’s Slough is largely fed by the infiltration and seepage of clean water from the perched Trinity Aquifer through old Ice Age gravel deposits, supplemented by rainfall and the drainage of nearby Hickory Creek. This unique, stable, high-moisture environment is central to the ecology of the area sustaining the largest stand of dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor) at its northern limit of distribution. 

Old sand and gravel borrow pits dot the bottoms here which hold standing live and dead timber, islands of grass and weeds, tangles of brush, patches of aquatic plants, and abundant wildlife. Surrounded by extensive stands of mature acorn bearing oaks, these wetlands are often ideal wood duck habitat.

After a successful career at Mossy Oak, Blake Hamilton created a consulting firm and later an investment and development firm called Nature’s Eye.  www.natureseye.com

Nature’s Eye has successfully improved and developed several properties into outdoor recreation and sportsmen’s destinations. Starting in 2021, Nature’s Eye began assembling properties along the Trinity River in Dallas County and improving them to create Cottonwood.

The attached videos give you a glimpse of that vision and experience.

In 2024, a partnership was created with five other like-minded sportsmen/conservationists, and properties were combined with adjoining land to create Cottonwood Sporting Club, LLC.    Cottonwood Sporting Club is extremely blessed to work with Blake Hamilton and Nature’s Eye to bring this new club to its full potential.

This is an epic to the historic, and still fresh in the minds of people, the mystic and fearsome Bois d’Arc Island — a strip of land in the southern part of Dallas County, a couple of miles wide, and eight or ten miles long. Its area, up to recent years, was estimated all the way from ten to twenty times its actual size, because of the density of its timber and foliage, the game which abounded there, and the easiness of getting totally and irretrievably lost on cloudy days, or at night.

The writer was “born and brung up” within hailing distance of this noted game preserve, and while he never killed any bear, panthers, or deer on the Island, he was just the right age to absorb all the hunting stories and retain them in memory’s casket at the time Bois d’Arc Island was at its height of glory. Later on, he traversed its wilderness-like jungles and learned for himself many things, which will, later on, be related.

In 1879, Bois d’Arc Island was practically unknown, except to a few pioneer settlers who had traversed its edges, and decided it was not habitable. The panthers yelled, bears growled, and all kinds of wild animals made a protesting noise against its invasion by Man.

This island was formed by a change in the river’s course. In early days, the Trinity’s course was what is now known as Parsons Slough. Later, the waters cut a channel west of the old river bed, and made what has, for the last seventy-five or more years, been known as Bois d’Arc Island.

A fiction writer could take the actual facts connected with this island and make a story that would cause the reader’s hair to stand on end, but this chronicler is merely a prosaic writer of facts, and can only, in a feeble way, say of the place, what should be written and published about it.

His earliest actual knowledge was gathered in 1880, when the old Texas Trunk Railroad was being built just on its northern border. Though, previous to that time, he had been once or twice to help hunt cows on the margins of the Island, and had seen deer in herds of the size one sees chicks following Rhode Island Red hens around Garland these days.

One of his earliest hunting experiences was a trip to the Island to hunt wild turkeys. The party went over early in the afternoon and camped near a big roost. Just before day, next morning, the gobble-gobble and the put-put of numerous turkeys could be heard, seemingly, all around the camp, and thinking all that was necessary to secure a good turkey dinner, was to walk boldly out and shoot one, this inexperienced nimrod sallied forth through he brush, making as much racket as a horse-power thresher-and never got in sight of a turkey. Some of the older hunters gave him some fatherly advice, which is not forgotten, even unto this day.

On another occasion, while hunting squirrels on the Island, a deer jumped up just in front of him, and there is where he got his first introduction to buck ague. When the deer was about 100 yards off, he remembered his gun-an old-fashioned muzzle loader loaded with squirrel shot-and turned both barrels loose. Some of the shot must have taken effect, because no kind of racket could have made a deer run so fast, as that one did.

Old Uncle Jack Ballard, who owned a lot of land, and lived near the lower end of the Island, kept a big pack of bear dogs, and used to have great times chasing bruin. He frequently killed a bear, and had lots of fun chasing them. He raised a large herd of horses, which grew up practically wild, and after he died, and his estate was being settled up, many of these animals were killed getting them out to the prairies.

Parsons Slough was one of the finest fishing streams in Texas, probably, for many years. There were long, deep holes with gravel bottoms and crystal-clear water, and fish abounded there, until practically exterminated by dynamiters and netters. People went there to fish from all over Dallas, Collin, Rockwall, Kaufman, Ellis, and other counties, and for years, it was the hunter’s and fisherman’s paradise.  Many lakes were about the lower end of the Island, and fish were caught there by the wagon load, and left to spoil on the banks through pure wantonness.

And, the fish fries they used to have! We have seen five hundred people at these affairs, and more fish cooked than four times that number could eat. Ten-, fifteen-, and twenty-pound catfish and drum, sliced up like ham, and fried to a crisp brown and piled in dishpans, where one waded in and ate, till eating was a burden. The men did the catching and dressing, and the women looked after the cooking.

     In the early days, nearly every family kept a pack of hounds, and it was almost a nightly occasion to hear the dogs trailing.  On clear, still nights, they could be heard for miles, and the prettiest music ever listened to, is a chorus of long-eared hounds on a hot trail, with all parts carried.  Many of these dogs have been known to follow a trail for two days, after which, they would be in the repair shop for several days.  Nothing would cause a fight quicker, than to abuse one of these dogs, or try to steal him. Horse and cattle stealing could be overlooked, but the man who stole a hound, carried his life in his hands.

On occasion, dogs ran a deer across the prairie, from East Fork to the Island, and the fagged animal came right through the old Farmer’s School House yard.  Uncle Lige Spillman was teaching, and he was a disciplinarian unquestioningly obeyed, but on this occasion, every pupil made a break for the doors, windows, or any way to get out and give chase. The deer appeared to be run down, and the boys thought they could catch him, but after running half a mile, they decided that he still had too much speed, and gave up the case. The dogs were about an hour behind, but were persistently holding to the trail. They had been running the deer, according to their owners, for over 18 hours, but we never learned if they caught him.

     The meat problem in those days was a simple one. Mash was fine on the Island, and hogs were turned loose there to hustle for themselves.  A few weeks before killing time, some owners would feed the hogs a little corn to make them gentle, but many merely went to the Island and killed and dressed what they wanted.  A “claim” was established by turning one or more hogs loose, and it was related of one man, that he lived off the meat killed and sold from his claim, after turning loose only one male pig there.

But, now all this is changed.  Where once blinds were constructed around salt licks and deer were killed at will, where the aristocratic black bear roamed at will, where wild turkeys and bee trees abounded, and the scream of the panther was not uncommon — is now a pastoral agricultural paradise.  Broad fields of alfalfa, big farms of cotton, corn and grain, occupy the place once the home of more fine game than any one spot of like size in Texas.  Navigation of the Trinity, with the consequent shutting out of the water from the slough, big levees, and the march of progress, have made of a game preserve, one of the finest farming sections of the state.

Perchance, ’tis better so, but some of us pine for the good old times of fewer crops and more game.

June 17, 1910, Garland News.
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