Where the heck is Big Lake Texas?

Beleive it or not. “Big Lake is in West Texas and there is normally no water in the lake!” 

Find out why, below…

The city of Big Lake Texas (76932) got its name from the large dry lake bed just south of the city on Hwy 137, but the lake is far more than just a dry land lake feature, impressive though it is.  It is the largest playa on the western Edwards Plateau, and possibly the largest in Texas, a significant geological feature covering over 2100 acres, and differs from other playas in the Southern Great Plains not only in size (the average is 17 ac), but in having three major draws that feed into it, with a total watershed coverage of over 100 sq. miles.  Though historic springs undoubtedly contributed water continually, the lake only remained full during extended periods of wet weather and in extreme rainfall runoff events.   

In the photo to the right, taken from the middle of the highway looking west, barely visible to the left on the horizon is the escarpment of the Edwards/Stockton Plateau near Best, 11 miles away, and closer in to the right one can see the light-colored bluffs, a cliff about 30′ high, showing the boundary of at least two major dunes to the north and northeast of the lake bed, formed over thousands of years by the deposition of windblown material from the lake bottom.

In 1994, Solveig A. Turpin, of the Texas Archeological Laboratory at UT, Austin conducted a brief study of the lake and Big Lake Draw in response to artifact and bone fragments found in the bottom of the lake during pipeline construction.   In her 1994 detailed report, “A Reconnaissance of Big Lake Draw: Implications for  Prehistoric Playa Utilization in Reagan County, TX”, part of the TARL Technical Series 40, she observed that the draw course has remained essentially unaltered for the past 5000 years, and that a bison kill, probably of the Archaic Period, had taken place in the bottom of the lake, itself.  

Artifact evidence, midden concentrations, and grinding mortars from the draw and lake date basically from the Late Archaic and subsequent periods, although PaleoIndian occupation is indicated by one Folsom point found by a local collector.  Sandstone grinding material suggested that early occupants in this area interacted with neighboring areas, and that the Big Lake country was a ”targeted resource.”