gc
12 October 2003, 10:28 PM
Oasis at the runway's end
Asphalt-weary urbanites find refuge at Bachman Lake
09:42 PM CDT on Saturday, October 11, 2003
By JOYCE SÁENZ HARRIS / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/texasliving/stories/101203dnlivbachman.55a9e.html
When you're No. 2, it is said, you have to try harder.
So it goes with Bachman Lake. Bachman Lake, in northwest Dallas, is much smaller than White Rock, its counterpart in East Dallas. Whereas White Rock's setting is a huge city park bordered by the mansions of millionaires, the Bachman park's neighbors are Love Field, the Stemmons Corridor, and the prosaic tire stores of Northwest Highway. Yet this small, green oasis is a pleasant surprise, appearing so unexpectedly in Dallas' asphalt desert. Bachman's yearlong, $5.2 million dredging project, now almost completed, bought the lake a new liveliness, just as White Rock's massive dredging a few years ago did.
The Dallas Rowing Club has trained on Bachman for years, and now prep-school rowers have discovered the lake, too. Families gather in the park along Bachman's shores for weekend barbecues and birthday parties, complete with balloons, music and piñatas. The park daily attracts joggers, walkers, cyclists, fishermen, soccer players, lovers strolling hand-in-hand, ice-cream vendors. Although Southwest Airlines jets roaring overhead are the biggest "birds," plenty of ducks and other waterfowl join citified pigeons and songbirds in the urban wildlife here. For the birds, as for the people who love the park, Bachman Lake is a refuge: not apart from the city, but a part of it.
Asphalt-weary urbanites find refuge at Bachman Lake
09:42 PM CDT on Saturday, October 11, 2003
By JOYCE SÁENZ HARRIS / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/texasliving/stories/101203dnlivbachman.55a9e.html
When you're No. 2, it is said, you have to try harder.
So it goes with Bachman Lake. Bachman Lake, in northwest Dallas, is much smaller than White Rock, its counterpart in East Dallas. Whereas White Rock's setting is a huge city park bordered by the mansions of millionaires, the Bachman park's neighbors are Love Field, the Stemmons Corridor, and the prosaic tire stores of Northwest Highway. Yet this small, green oasis is a pleasant surprise, appearing so unexpectedly in Dallas' asphalt desert. Bachman's yearlong, $5.2 million dredging project, now almost completed, bought the lake a new liveliness, just as White Rock's massive dredging a few years ago did.
The Dallas Rowing Club has trained on Bachman for years, and now prep-school rowers have discovered the lake, too. Families gather in the park along Bachman's shores for weekend barbecues and birthday parties, complete with balloons, music and piñatas. The park daily attracts joggers, walkers, cyclists, fishermen, soccer players, lovers strolling hand-in-hand, ice-cream vendors. Although Southwest Airlines jets roaring overhead are the biggest "birds," plenty of ducks and other waterfowl join citified pigeons and songbirds in the urban wildlife here. For the birds, as for the people who love the park, Bachman Lake is a refuge: not apart from the city, but a part of it.