John McCann, you lose

The Great Dallas Flood

100 years ago from today, on May 26, 2008, our fair city experienced the worst flood in its history. The Great Dallas Flood, as some historians called it, caused $2,000,000 in damage (equivalent to $55,000,000 in today's dollars) and left over 4000 homeless. All residents were without electricity or clean water for several days.

The Trinity River has experienced heavy floods several times after the founding of Dallas in 1841, but the spring flood of 1908 was unprecedented. On May 26, the river peaked at 52.6 feet and was one and a half miles wide.

All the bridges between Dallas and Oak Cliff were lost. On the Oak Cliff side, Zangs Boulevard was covered by 12 feet of water, and, on the Dallas side, McKinney Avenue (shown above) was covered by 6 to 10 feet of water. This flood started the century-long issue that we've all read about and are still facing today: what to do with the Trinity River.

The initial solution involved hiring famed architect and city planner George Kessler (think Oak Cliff's Kessler Park), who sought to re-channel the Trinity River one mile south of Downtown and create a levy system to control flooding. He also sought to beautify the area with "wildflowers and horse trails". The City of Dallas, led by city officials such as Dallas Morning News Publisher George Dealey (think Dealey plaza), OK'd the rechanneling, but never the beautification project. That part got put on the back burner. The other parts of Kessler's other plans - Central Expressway, Union Station -- received priority.

And that decision, in 1908, kicked off what has been, quite possibly, the single most talked-about issue that many of us Dallasites have with our city. Our leaders chose production and growth over beauty. Commerce over quality of life.

Years later, when the issue was brought up, the country was deep in the Depression era, then WWII. It wasn't until the 70's that the city got around to buying the land it needed to create the Trinity River Project. But by then, our government and citizens were seemingly focused on oil and image rather than nature and family-friendly parks. For nearly 30 more years, Dallas voted down the Trinity bond issue until 1998 when it finally was passed.

10 years after gaining approval, we're all still waiting. Wow. Maybe this decade we'll see some progress.

Yard photos taken with the cell phone - some new plants and flowers

Mission to the Sea rules

Airline on BlogCritics.org

Read the interview with Robby from Airline on BlogCritics.org!

SXSW 2007

This kinda sums up the fun we had SXSW 2007.

More photos coming soon.

Oh Don Piano

SlideRoom.com

My business partner, Derek, and I have been working hard on SlideRoom.com, the brainchild of our friend/artist and now-entrepreneur Chris Jagers. SlideRoom allows organizations to receive online portfolio submissions from artists. It is a web-based system that requires no downloading or installing of new software.

We couldn't be happier to be SlideRoom's official development partner, and we look forward to watching this great idea change the way artists and organization manage the portfolio submission process.

Read more about SlideRoom.com.