Imagine life in North Texas with:
• A concrete channel a football field wide, often flanked by heavy industry, replacing the Trinity River from east Fort Worth, through the center of Arlington and the Mid-Cities, and past downtown Dallas to the Gulf.
• A constant flow of barges the size of warehouses, serviced by a steady churn of huge semi-trucks and trains on railroad spurs.
• All of it emanating a stench, effusing exhaust, and exuding a clamor of industrial noise. Leaked motor fuels and petrochemicals coating the water with an oily sheen that no fisherman, canoeist, or aquatic life could tolerate.
Imagine life in North Texas without these iconic developments:
• Dallas Design District
• Trinity Groves in Dallas
• The Viridian in Arlington
Imagine life in North Texas without these popular trails:
• Ned & Genie Fritz Texas Buckeye Trail
• Trinity Trestle and Trinity Skyline Trails in Dallas
• Trinity Trails system from Fort Worth to Arlington
• Trinity River Paddling Trail (National Park Service Water Trail)
Imagine life in North Texas without these important historic cultural sites:
• African-American communities of Bonton, Floral Farms, and Joppa
• Pemberton Big Spring historical landmark
Imagine life in North Texas without these natural amenities (to name a few):
• Goat Island Preserve in Southeast Dallas County
• Trinity River Audubon Center in Dallas
• McCommas Bluff Preserve in Dallas
• Quanah Parker Park in Fort Worth
• River Legacy Park in Arlington
• Trammell Crow Park in Dallas
• Great Trinity Forest in Dallas
• Gateway Park in Fort Worth
• Joppa Preserve in Dallas
We came so close to losing it all. Dallas could have become an industrial town tied to a waterway of constant maintenance, furor, and expense—not the current sleek Dallas of finance and fashion, a modern mecca and high-tech hub.
For that we have to thank Ned Fritz and his coalition Citizen’s Association for a Sound Trinity and colleagues.
It all came to a head 50 years ago on March 13 when taxpayers said no in a bond election to contributing $150 million to the boondoggle project benefitting a small cadre of businesses. That no vote, coupled with Alan Steelman’s defeat of pro-canal Earl Cabell and the federal decision to stop construction on the Wallisville dam at the river’s end, defeated the $1.8 billion canal and its adjunct projects like channelizing the Elm Fork, piping water from East Texas into the West Fork, and running a canal up Duck Creek into Garland.
Amy Martin has taken on the Herculean and pocketbook-draining task of writing Ned’s biography, Ned Fritz Legacy. She’s finishing the story this week of how Ned and his coalition took on canal boosters of immense apolitical and financial power. It will be an exciting tale, written play-by-play style with uppercuts, sucker punches, and knock-out blows, like the boxing match it was.
Here’s the first section, which sets up the fight (layout still in progress).
We hope you’ll tune in and perhaps join our community of underwriters.
A few seats may be left in a screening of the KERA documentary about the canal fight, Living With The Trinity, on April 6, which will be followed by a panel on the future of the Trinity.
