Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall, 2002 Page: 53

                                
the 1840s, hoping to carve homes out of the
wilderness that soon became Dallas County.4 In
time, however, the bison disappeared from the
scene as more and more settlers arrived and
began turning the great beasts' grazing grounds
into farmland.
Most of the land now occupied by White
Rock Lake Park was originally parceled out by
the government of the Republic of Texas to three
men: John H. Hyde, C. A. Lovejoy, and D. A.
Murdock. Whether Murdock actually took up
residence in the area is uncertain, but it appears
that Hyde did. His land, part of which adjoined
a smaller grant belonging to his son Samuel
Monroe Hyde, occupied what is now the northern
end of White Rock Lake, as far as presentday
Mockingbird Lane. The entire park north of
Mockingbird    covers
land   patented   to
Murdock. The southern
reaches of the lake
and park occupy the
Lovejoy  grants, the              W
claims to which were
actually filed by Warren
Angus Ferris, the first
surveyor of what is now
Dallas County, in his
half-brother's  name
(Clarence A. Lovejoy
being  an   alias  for
Joshua Lovejoy). Ferris
also took out patents along White Rock Creek in
his wife's name, settling there in 1847.5
Samuel Hyde's grant, the very first patent
recorded in Dallas County following the admission
of Texas into the Union, was for "640 acres
on White Rock Creek, near the military road
from Austin to Red River." This land, which lay
on the east side of the present day lake, was
watered by Dixon's Branch, a creek that was
probably named for Solomon Dixon, another
early settler.6 The military road mentioned in the
grant's description was laid out in the early 1840s
in order to link Austin, the state capital, with Fort
Inglish (present-day Bonham), near the Red

River. To commemorate this "Central National
Highway of the Republic of Texas," the Jane
Douglas Chapter of the Daughters of the
American Revolution erected a historic marker
made of stone on June 14, 1923, at White Rock
Lake. Incorporating a drinking fountain in its
design, the marker still stands today on the pavement
beside the spillway, near the site where this
early-day "highway" crossed White Rock Creek.7
During the seven decades that followed the
founding of Dallas in 1841, the area surrounding
present-day White Rock Lake was gradually settled,
albeit sparsely, endowing the locale with a
rural character it retained in some parts up
through the middle of the twentieth century.
Most prominent among the families who
established farms in the vicinity were the
Coxes, the   Dixons,
the Fishers, and the
McCommase s--all
related to each other by
both blood and marriage.
The old Cox
Cemetery, located on
Dalgreen  Road near
the lake's western shore,
is the final resting place
for many    of these
pioneers.8
By the end of the
nineteenth   century,
farms, ranches, and a
handful of small rural communities surrounded
the shallow, tree-filled valley that today lies
underneath the waters of White Rock Lake. One
of these communities was a tiny whistle-stop
town that lay just north of the present-day lake,
alongside the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and
Texas (MKT or "Katy") railroad, a line that is
now part of the DART system. The town, to
which the Fisher's family name was later
attached, was originally known as Calhoun. It
was situated about two or three blocks north of
the present-day intersection of Fisher Road and
Mockingbird Lane and is clearly marked on several
early maps, including George Kessler's 1911

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