Utilities

Few people think about utilities—until they stop working. As Dallas County moved from rural to urban, cities needed to supply water to citizens. Other amenities followed, giving urbanites comforts unimagined by their grandparents

The first municipal water supplies tapped into natural springs, like like Henry Keller’s spring in Richardson and Browder Spring south of downtown Dallas. It was the location of the first pump house when the Dallas Water Supply Company was formed in 1876. It was not able to supply residents with an adequate supply of pure water. By 1896 a dam and pumping station at Record Crossing in north-west Dallas County pumped water through wooden pipes to the new Turtle Creek treatment plant, and the water supply improved. The supply did not become reliable until the White Rock Lake reservoir was constructed in 1910.