Photo courtesy of the Dallas Municipal Archives, via the Portal to Texas HIstory.
This undated photo shows swimmers ready to hit the pool at Lake Cliff Park’s bygone beach, which opened in 1921.
Before that, people swam in the 30-acre lake, which was fed by “numberless springs,” with clear water and lots of fish.
From our 2016 story about the history of public pools in Oak Cliff:
The pool at Lake Cliff was built in 1921 and by 1945, it had generated a total of $100,000 in net revenue for the city. The city estimated that around 80 percent of the population had swum in the pool that year. It was a 310-square-foot all-concrete pool, 10 feet deep at the diving end with a 2.5 million-gallon capacity. It also had a sandy beach and bathhouses with showers and lockers. The city renovated the pool in 1949, expanding its sandy beach and adding underwater lights for night swimming. Several children drowned in the massive pool over the decades. That, along with ever-increasing maintenance costs, inspired the city to close it in 1959.
