Weather | Flashback : Dallas

Tornado Snapshots — 1957

April 2, 1957, Oak Cliffwards…

by Paula Bosse

A few photos of the infamous April 2, 1957 tornado which hit Dallas and was, at the time, the most photographed tornado in history. See more photos (and film footage) in the 2014 Flashback Dallas post “Tornado as Learning Tool — 1957.”

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Sources & Notes

All four photos were sold as one lot on eBay several years ago.

In addition to the post linked above, here are a few other tornado-related posts:

tornado_1957_ebay_3_sm

5 Comments

February 17, 2021

Snow at White Rock Lake: The Bath House and Winfrey Point

A snowy Bath House at WRL… (photo: Squire Haskins/UTA)

by Paula Bosse

I’m racing to post this — like many in the Dallas area (or, really, in the ENTIRE STATE OF TEXAS!), power availability has been spotty. Mine has been out more than it’s been on over the past few days. I have a brief window here to post a couple of wonderful aerial photos showing a snow-dusted White Rock Lake, taken by ace Dallas photographer Squire Haskins. Both are undated.

Above, a shot of the eastern edge of the lake, with the Bath House seen in the center. (Take a look at a larger image at the University of Texas at Arlington website here — click the thumbnail image on that page to see the larger image — then click one more time to magnify.)

Below, a shot of Winfrey Point, also on the eastern edge of the lake, a little farther south. (See the larger image at the UTA site here.)

Here’s a map of WRL showing the locations, via Google:

Funny, I used to love snow. It was always such a thrill on those rare occasions when it snowed. …Back when we all had heat and electricity. Ah, those were the days….

Stay warm, y’all. If you need information on “warming stations,” the City is directing people to call 211.

***

Sources & Notes

Both photos are by Squire Haskins, from the Squire Haskins Photography Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. More information on these photographs is at the links above.

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5 Comments

October 25, 2020

Highland Park High School: Photos from the 1964 Yearbook

HPHS senior cyclists after school…

by Paula Bosse

A few random of photos of extra-curricular activities featured in the 1964 Highlander, the yearbook of Highland Park High School.

Above, the caption in the yearbook reads: “Senior cyclists Gay Crowell, Carol Webster, and Margaret Paxson prepare to pedal home.”

Below, “ROTC cadets salute the inspecting officers at the annual federal inspection.”

Below, “Ralph Cousins gives Donna Guest and Rick Sable a doubting look as Eloise Hancock tells of her adventures on the Midway during High School Day at the State Fair.”

Below, “Maintaining an international atmosphere, French teacher Neil Jarrett leaves his Volkswagen in the teachers’ parking lot.”

“Early morning finds girls repairing damage caused by gusty March winds.”

Below, a before-and-after photo featuring a student with the amazing name of “Kitten Quick” (!): “Vice-President Joe Tom Wood, Treasurer Kitten Quick, Sponsor Mrs. Rita Palm, Secretary Susie Urquhart, and President Lewis McMahon resist the temptation to play in the snow-filled schoolyard…”

“…but finally succumb to testing the depth of Dallas’ record snowfall.”

And, lastly, a huge snowman! “‘Seniors ’64’ marks the 14-foot snowman, built during Dallas’s record 7-inch snow.” (A record 7.4 inches of snow fell on Dallas in January, 1964.)

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Sources & Notes

All images from the 1964 Highlander, the yearbook of Highland Park High School.

Other Flashback Dallas posts featuring items from HPHS yearbooks can be found here.

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6 Comments

April 24, 2019

A Flooded Sportatorium — 1945

Boys gotta do what boys gotta do… (photo: Squire Haskins/UTA Libraries)

by Paula Bosse

Imagine it has flooded around the Sportatorium: what would you expect seven boys and their dog to do? Well, here they are doing about what you’d expect. (The image above is a detail from the photo below, by Squire Haskins — see this photo really big on the UTA website here.)

Another photo, this one with a Huck-Finn-meets-Iwo-Jima-Memorial vibe (full-size on the UTA site here):

My closer-up detail (click to see larger image):

Another view (original full-size image here):

Closer up, with a Grand Prize Beer billboard, cars (on Industrial?), and a sign for the next-door Plantation nightspot:

No wrasslin’ tonight, y’all.

***

Sources & Notes

All photos by Squire Haskins, from the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. More info can be found on the first photo here, the second photo here, and the last photo here.

The photos in the UTA collection are undated, but a photograph of these same boys and dog on their raft appeared in The Dallas Morning News on April 5, 1945, along with a whimsical article titled “Pint-Size Warriors Fight Battle of Trinity, Prove Stormiest Rain Cloud Has Silver Lining.” A few pages away there were several aerial photos showing the major flooding which had submerged large portions of the area around the Sportatorium and Corinth Street viaduct.

The Sportatorium was located at 1000 S. Industrial (now Riverfront), at Cadiz (see map here). Maybe a little too close to the Trinity….

9 Comments

October 9, 2018

A Rainy Opening Day of the State Fair of Texas — 1967

A damp day at the fair… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

It’s been raining pretty heavily today. And the State Fair of Texas is underway. I always feel bad for the people visiting and working at the fair when it rains like this. What a disappointment!

It rained so much on Opening Day of the State Fair in 1967 that the downtown parade ended up being canceled, as did the ceremonial ribbon-cutting which was to have been performed by Governor John Connally. That day — Oct. 7, 1967 — was also Rural Youth Day, and newspaper reports estimated that more than 100,000 “farm boys and girls” from more than 200 Texas counties had traveled to Dallas for what turned out to be a soggy day at the fair. (But kids never seem to mind being out in the rain as much as adults do.)

Watch rainy footage of the parade preparations downtown and wet-haired teenagers at the fair in an atmospheric clip shot by WBAP Channel 5 News cameramen, collected and digitized by UNT (see bottom of this post for more info). The 1:47 film footage can be viewed here (be sure to watch it in full-screen mode).

Below are a few screenshots.

sfot_rain_1967_wbap_unt

At the top, a girl from Carthage, wearing a Future Farmers of America jacket (it was Rural Youth Day, and the FFA was well represented) as well as a couple of ladies in coif-preserving plastic rain bonnets.

Below, a rain-drenched downtown.

El Chico float getting soaked.

Marching band guys taking shelter.

Grandma as human umbrella.

Quadrupedestrians. (Pretty sure horses shouldn’t be trotting along sidewalks….)

A break in the precip — rides are revved up.

Menacing clouds as seen from the top of the Comet.

San Antonio Express-News, Oct. 8, 1967

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Sources & Notes

Screenshots are from the video titled “News Clip: 1967 Texas State Fair Begins, Parade Rained Out.” It is part of the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection and was provided by UNT Libraries Special Collections to The Portal to Texas History, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries. More info — including the video itself — can be accessed here.

More rainy-day SFOT weather can be seen in this clip from 1970, courtesy of SMU.

1 Comment

September 8, 2018

Flooding Along Gaston

I do believe some of these vehicles have drifted out of their lanes…

by Paula Bosse

It’s been a rainy, flood-y day — why not post a picture of part of Big D underwater? The photo above appeared on eBay several months ago, minimally described as capturing a scene of a flooded Gaston Avenue in Old East Dallas (Peak’s Suburban Addition). I took a virtual drive down Gaston via Google Street View to see if I could find the exact location of the photo, and it looks like it was taken in the 4600 block of Gaston at Annex (Gaston, between Carroll and Fitzhugh). The two houses on the left in the photo above are still standing, the house on the right has been replaced by an apartment building. Below is a Google view from 2014. (The most recent Google Street View capture is here.)

Google Street View, Feb., 2014

Stay dry!

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Sources & Notes

Top photo from eBay.

Color image from Google Street View.

A 1961 Clarence Talley ad featuring the same (or very similar) dropside VW pickup is here. Speaking of Volkswagens and flooding, might as well watch a 1967 TV commercial showing that, yes, a VW Beetle does float, here.

Click pictures to see larger images.

4 Comments

February 23, 2018

The Prelude to the Great Flood of 1908

April 20, 1908… (click for larger image) / SMU

by Paula Bosse

The greatest flood Dallas has ever known — the disastrous flood of 1908 (read about it here) — happened in the spring of 1908. The Trinity River reached its highest crest of more than 52 feet on May 26. The photo above was taken on April 20 — five weeks before that.

On April 20, 1908 — the day this photo was taken — The Dallas Morning News reported that after three weeks of rain the Trinity had finally crested at “nearly 39 feet.” This flooding was the worst in 20 years and the third worst on record.

In a mere five weeks, though, every record regarding the Trinity River and flooding in Dallas would be broken. Those people who had ventured out to survey the river from the Commerce Street Bridge that April day had no idea what was in store for them in just 35 days.

Let’s zoom in on this photo and look at some of the details of the crowd and the bridge (all images are larger when clicked).

Above: are refreshments being sold?

“NOTICE: $25.00 FINE FOR DRIVING FASTER THAN A WALK ACROSS THIS BRIDGE.”

The editorial cartoon below appeared on the front page of The Fort Worth Telegram next to a story with the headline “Dallasites Flee Flooded Homes; River is Rising.”

FWT, April 20, 1908

In May, this photo (by Henry Clogenson) showing “Highest Water in the History of Dallas” appeared in The Dallas Morning News:

DMN, May 26, 1908

Another photo by Clogenson:

For comparison, here’s the bridge at a calmer time:

Flood memorabilia? Check out the book and stationery department at Sanger Bros.

June, 1908

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Sources & Notes

Top photo titled “Commerce St. Bridge, Trinity River, Dallas, Tex., April 20, 1908” from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University; the photo and more information can be accessed here.

The wide-angle photo of the Commerce Street Bridge, taken by Henry Clogenson, is from the Library of Congress, here.

“Calmer” photo of the Commerce Street Bridge is from the Fall, 1995 issue of Legacies, from the article “Bridges Over the Trinity” by Mary Ellen Holt.

Read the Dallas Morning News article “Trinity Flood Crest Has Reached Dallas … Great Damage is Reported” (DMN, April 20, 1908) here.

2 Comments

February 20, 2018

Forest Avenue-Area Flooding, South Dallas — 1935

Beyond the levees… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Sometimes the Trinity River is a puny little trickle, sometimes it’s a raging torrent. Here are aerial photos taken from around Forest Avenue (now MLK Blvd.) by Lloyd M. Long, showing the major flooding of May, 1935.

Here is the lead sentence from The Dallas Morning News, May 21, 1935 (the day after these photos were taken):

With sections of South Dallas inundated for the first time since the record 1908 flood, numerous bridges and highways and thousands of acres of lowlands hidden by its swirling, muddy currents, the roaring Trinity slowly was receding Monday night at Dallas after reaching a crest of 42.10 feet at 11 a.m. (DMN, May 21, 1935)

There was great rejoicing that that the new-ish levees had held the waters and prevented the wide-scale flooding seen in 1922. But once you got to the Forest Avenue bridge (which ran below the Corinth St. viaduct and the Santa Fe railroad trestle), things got real bad real fast. In the photo above, the levee protection ends exactly at the railroad trestle — the Forest Avenue bridge is mostly underwater. The river above the trestle: a beautiful feat of engineering; below: water, water everywhere.

Below the Forest Ave. bridge where the levee protection ended, flood conditions were far worse than those created by the 1922 inundation. (DMN, May 21, 1935)

Again, sometimes the Trinity is just a trickle….

***

Sources & Notes

Both photos (by Lloyd M. Long) are from 2017 eBay auctions: the top photo here, and the bottom photo here.

More on Dallas flooding can be found in these Flashback Dallas posts:

“The Nellie Maurine: When a Pleasure Boat Became a Rescue Craft During the Great Trinity River Flood of 1908,” here
“One of the Victims of the Great Trinity Flood: The T & P Railroad Trestle — 1908,” here
“The Trinity River at the City’s Doorstep,” here
“Cole Park Storm Water Detention Vault,” here

Maybe it’s just me, but I was really taken with that little L-shaped building in the top photo which was, briefly, its own island. What was it? It was part of the Guiberson Oil Well Specialty Corporation, founded in 1919 at 1000 Forest Avenue — the building seen in the photo was built in 1926. It’s still standing (here) and appears to be part of Faubion & Associates, a manufacturer of retail display cases and store fixtures.

Click photos to see larger images.

1 Comment

July 27, 2017

How to Keep Cool During a Heat Wave — 1951

by Paula Bosse

The photo above appeared in newspapers around the country in August, 1951 above this caption:

What the well-dressed Texas gal will wear during the current heat wave might be something quite novel. Here, Dallas secretary Mildred Walston starts a new trend in her efforts to keep cool. She uses two fans and a cool pan in which to slosh her feet. Later in the afternoon, Aug. 14, when the temperature hit 103 degrees, Mildred’s boss broke down and sent her off to the nearest swimming pool.

Mildred Walston Fulenwider (1915-1962) worked for many years in the motion picture business in Dallas and was a founding member of WOMPI (Women of the Motion Picture Industry), organized in Dallas in 1952.

I’m going to have to remember that fan-pointed-at-feet-soaking-in-pan-of-cool-water trick.

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Sources & Notes

Photo from the old Bettmann/Corbis site.

December 6, 2016

A Rainy Day at Main and Akard — 1932

Fedoras, cloches, umbrellas…

by Paula Bosse

A nice photo of a rainy day downtown, almost 85 years ago. The photo — taken on January 16, 1932 by Dallas photographer Frank Rogers — shows the intersection of Main and Akard (the people with umbrellas are crossing Akard Street, heading east). Marvin’s Drug Store (which occupied the ground floor of what was later known as the Gulf States Building) was on the northwest corner, and the A. Harris department store occupied the first five floors of the Kirby Building (originally the Busch Building) on the northeast corner — both buildings are still standing. See the view today, via Bing, here.

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Sources & Notes

Photo from the Fall, 2013 issue of Legacies, viewable at the Portal to Texas History, here.

1 Comment

Flashback : Dallas

Category: Weather

June 26, 2023

Tornado Snapshots — 1957

Sources & Notes

February 17, 2021

Snow at White Rock Lake: The Bath House and Winfrey Point

Sources & Notes

October 25, 2020

Highland Park High School: Photos from the 1964 Yearbook

Sources & Notes

April 24, 2019

A Flooded Sportatorium — 1945

Sources & Notes

October 9, 2018

A Rainy Opening Day of the State Fair of Texas — 1967

Sources & Notes

September 8, 2018

Flooding Along Gaston

Sources & Notes

February 23, 2018

The Prelude to the Great Flood of 1908

Sources & Notes

February 20, 2018

Forest Avenue-Area Flooding, South Dallas — 1935

Sources & Notes

July 27, 2017

How to Keep Cool During a Heat Wave — 1951

Sources & Notes

December 6, 2016

A Rainy Day at Main and Akard — 1932

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Category: Weather

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