White Rock Lake,
Garland Road near San Rafael 1933-1934
As told to Keri Mitchell by Sally Rodriguez, Dallas Park and Recreation Department’s historian. Photos are courtesy of the Dallas Municipal Archives and curated by Rodriguez. She authored the book “White Rock Lake,” available at area bookstores and through arcadiapublishing.com.
White Rock Lake, Garland Road near San Rafael
If you notice, Garland Road is just a two-lane road, not the six-lane road it is today. Because Garland Road is so small, there’s more parkland in that picture than there is today, and there was actually a park road that ran parallel to Garland down lower. We used to have a lot of little dirt roads that ran through. There’s now a guardrail at the edge of the trail, and that’s all the space there is. The parkland is very narrow now in most of the area.
This photo was something acquired at an estate sale, and so we have no background information on the picture. We have no clue what the group was gathered for. Behind them is the house, if I’m not mistaken, that used to have a line of rooms in the back, a separate building, and that was the hunting lodge.
(Because of the lack of photo information, city archivist John Slate, who oversees Dallas Municipal Archives, made an educated guess that the photo was taken in 1933-34.) “The cloche or cloche-style hats match the time period, as do the dress hemlines,” Slate says. “Hemlines were higher in the late ’20s, went back down to shin and lower in early ’30s. The one fellow in the white suit would not be out of place in the early ’30s. The fedoras on the men are also on line for about that time. The photos we have of hats on Clyde Barrow and his buddies are very, very similar and are 1933-34.”
White Rock Lake, Garland Road near San Rafael today Photo by Can Türkyilmaz
