Blackland Prairie ecosystems: Lost & Found's Journal

With the invention of plows capable of breaking through the “black waxy”, the prairie sods were turned and European-style farming came to the area. As R. T. Hill pointed out in 1901, “Large quantities of cotton, corn, and minor crops are annually raised upon these fertile lands.” The chief limiting factor for farming was the availability of water. Dams and small tanks were soon constructed to retain surface flows, and as Hill noted “for domestic purposes its inhabitants depend largely upon cisterns or ponds, the water from both of which is unwholesome”. Land not plowed for crops was mowed for hay, and a few of these old hayfields still stand open to the North Texas sun. Similarly, a few farmhouses built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can still be found at historic sites in Dallas and smaller cities across the area.

Over the ensuing decades, deep cultivation, cotton and drought were not kind to the black lands, and by the mid-20th Century farmlands began to be sold for other development. In 1947, a developer named Rick Strong purchased several parcels of land that surrounded a major portion of Orr Branch which became a Dallas addition known as “Hillcrest Estates”. Centered on a roughly mile-long stretch of Northaven Road, the tracts of old pasture and farm structures were subdivided, typically into 300-foot-deep lots, some with horse corrals, and restrictions required homes to be a minimum of 2,300 square feet. Landscaping on these semi-rural lots often involved adapting the native plant species. South of Northaven, a small chain of water impoundments lay along Orr Branch, some these descended from old stock tanks used by the precursor farms. With time, additional dams, bridges and retaining walls were constructed, with old horse shoes turning up in the excavations.