Written by Jerry Flook, Historian
Published in the Garland-Rowlett Messenger, April 2013
Most of us Garlandites cross it at least once daily, rarely paying it the least bit of attention. Unfortunately no signs mark its identity, but Duck Creek, Garland’s natural watercourse, is the original reason for the town’s existence. The pioneer settlers of the Blackland Praries sought as a location for their homes streams where water could be obtained from springs: where woodlands protected them from prairie wildfires and provided the material for their log cabins. For that reason the earliest settlers of this area located along Duck Creek and its major tributaries. Long before the arrival of the white man, Indian hunting parties camped along the creek, leaving scattered remnants of dark points and arrow heads. Before the development of the area along O’Banion Road west of the creek, neighborhood children occasionally found such stone artifacts there.
It is surmised that Duck Creek was named by Warren A. Ferris, early surveyor and explorer of the so-called Three Forks of the Trinity, who laid off land surveys in this area in the early 1840s. Duck Creek is, of course, a tributary of the East Fork of the Trinity River and as such would have been explored and mapped by Ferris. It is known that the name was being applied regularly by the late 1840s. The creek arises in the Richardson city limits a short distance west of Plano Road and south of Collins Boulevard and runs 19 1/2 miles southeast to empty into the East Fork in Kaufman County just below the dam of Lake Ray Hubbard. As for the “duck” part of its name, in earlier days an abundance of those wildfowl apparently could be seen on the creek. It is known that Will Kingsley, who owned land on the creek in the early 1900s, erected blinds for duck hunting there.
The first settlement here to bear the name “Duck Creek” was the store and post office operated by Henery Valentine in 1848 about where Barnes Bridge Road (at that time the Central National Road of the Republic of Texas) crosses the creek. That first Duck Creek post office was discontinued in 1866. In the late 1870s the post office was re-established with the same name farther north on the creek where the Dallas-Greenville Pike crossed. The distinct nucleus of a settlement was developing at that location, that settlement itself being referred to as Duck Creek. It is from this Duck Creek settlement that Garland developed.
The creek itself at one time or another served useful purposes for the community. The water of the creek was used to generate steam to power at least two cotton gins and a flour mill. One or two deep pools in the creek were used by early Baptist and Christian congregations for baptisms.
Garland’s first park, called Alexander Park, was located on Duck Creek between Avenue D and Avenue F and was originally platted as part of Embree. At that time it was forested, had a bandstand and was a popular venue for community picnics and political rallies. Groups even took the train from Dallas for outings at Alexander Park. In 1907 the park was purchased by W. M. Walker of Ft. Worth, who improved it and dammed the creek to form a lake 500 yards long and a depth graduating from two to eight feet. The name of the park was changed to Lake Garland Park, and a bath house and gasoline-powered launch added. The popularity of the lake declined, however, as it gradually filled with silt until it was purchased in 1919 by Cecil Williams, who visualized making it a destination for tourist arriving on the new Bankhead Highway. He built a new dam and bath houses and improved the lake with lights, rafts and a diving board. It is believed that this operation continued until about 1939.
Unquestionably there are portions of Duck Creek which at one time had an aesthetic potential which was never developed. In 1937 the Kessler Association of Dallas drew up a master plan for Garland which, among many other suggestions, recommended that Garland build a municipal park on the east side of Duck Creek between the Katy Railroad and Avenue B. It also recommended that the portion of the creek between the Katy Railroad and the Santa Fe Railroad near the cemetery be developed as a parkway like that on Turtle Creek in Highland Park, as an enhancement for a district of fine homes. Presumably Garland never took any of this advice seriously.
Unfortunately Duck Creek has not always been so benign. On 13 June, 1949 a deluge in the upper drainage of the creek generated a flood the like of which Garland had never before experienced. Five lives were lost, and most of the commercial buildings along South Garland Avenue between avenues B and F were destroyed. Although not as devastating, Duck Creek floods subsequently became more and more frequent as urban development increased in the area. Finally, after serious flooding in 1990 and 1991, the bed of the creek was widened. Nevertheless, in the last 10 years, the creek has again overflowed its banks along Glenbrook Drive below Kinglsey Road, causing property damage.
Duck Creek was again in the news in 2007 when local resident Denis Oktay discovered the fossil remains of an 80-million-year-old monsasaur embedded in the limestone creek bed. Monsasaurs were giant fish-eating reptiles some 45 feet long and weighing as much as 8 tons which inhabited the ancient sea once covering this area. It took volunteers of the Dallas Paleontological Society until late 2012 to remove all of the skeleton from the creek and it is still undergoing preparation for Display in McKinney’s Heard Museum.
For reasons good and bad, Duck Creek has played an important role in Garland’s history and is deserving of far more recognition than we give it.