Answer: "Big Lake is in West Texas"

 

Another frequently asked question... How big is the lake at Big Lake Texas?

From almost anywhere in the Big Lake area, as in the photo of the neighborhood to the right, the water tower dominates the skyline. From this water tower, a wireless internet signal is broadcast to the surrounding area, bringing broadband internet access to an area where only dial-up was available.   The high school mascot, a Reagan County Owl, is visible on the tower's face.   

 

And, yes, this is the same Big Lake where Jimmy Morris, the hero of the movie 'The Rookie', was coaching  just before he became baseball's oldest major league rookie pitcher!

 

Big Lake Playa in a dry period (which is the normal state)

The city 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 above, 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."

In a more exhaustive report in the Plains Anthropologist, Journal of the Plains Anthropological Society in February, 1997, entitled "Stuck in the Muck: The Big Lake Bison  Kill Site (41RG13), West Texas", she goes even further in her conclusions.   From the introduction of that article, she concludes, "The Big Lake bison kill demarcates two periods of regional importance.  Perhaps most importantly, the site provides a start date for the period of extreme aridity that undoubtedly markedly affected the distribution and economy of human populations some time after 8000 years ago.  Secondly, the site bridges the spatial and temporal gap between two equally well known bison kill sites- Bonfire Shelter in the Lower Pecos region, 160 km to the south, and Lubbock Lake on the Llano Estacado, 250 km to the north."

If you find yourself on the way to or from Big Lake from the south, the next time you cross the expanse of seemingly featureless dry lake bed, pause for a moment in your thoughts, and reflect upon the importance of this lake to the past area occupants over a long span time.  

It is sad to me, today, to consider that the current occupants of this region, of which I am one, form the most concentrated, continuous occupation of this area over several thousand years of time, and, of all the populations that have existed on this land,  we have the least dependence upon it, and know the least about it;  and we do not appreciate it at all for what it is- a feature whose presence meant life and survival for those of the past.