1950S DROUGHT LED TO ERA OF CONSERVATION

‘The Great Dry Up’ lasted seven years in most of Texas

One of the worst natural disasters in Texas history didn’t happen suddenly. It was a scorching drought that plagued the state day after day for seven long, blistering years from 1950 to 1957 — and it started even earlier in some parts of the state.

Over the course of those parched years, farms and ranches turned to dust. Nearly every county in Texas was declared a disaster area. A newspaper headline from 1956 at the tail end of that period called it “The

Great Dry Up.”

The punishing drought is still a vivid memory for those who lived through it.

“Our house wasn’t sealed tight and dust would come in through the walls,” said Herman Kellner Jr., 76, a rancher from Fashing, about an hour’s drive south of San Antonio. “You’d wipe your hand on the furniture and it was black.”

With no sustained rain, crops withered. Ranchers resorted to burning the thorns off prickly pear cactus to feed their cattle.

Droughts have always tormented Texans.

“Texas experiences so many droughts in part because of its location along 30 degrees north latitude, a climate transition zone called the Great American Desert. This is the latitude where many of the Earth’s deserts are found, including the Sahara,” Todd Votteler, executive manager of science, intergovernmental relations and policy at the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, wrote in a July 2000 magazine story about the history of droughts in Texas.

Other droughts have caused billions in economic losses for farmers and ranchers. But the 1950s drought is still considered the “drought of record” in Texas. It was long and unrelenting, drying up reservoirs and hammering home just how unprepared Texas was for a long drought.

The 1950s drought did more than devastate farms and ranches and compel agricultural workers to find jobs in the city. It set in motion a decadeslong push for reliable water supplies for a rapidly growing state with the creation of the Texas Water Development

Board in 1957, which launched a series of reservoir projects across Texas.

SAWS, from its earliest days, realized conservation wasn’t a luxury in drought-prone South Texas. The agency urged customers to conserve water, and SAWS viewed conservation as a type of water supply it could rely on.

Today, restrictions on lawn watering saves SAWS anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000 acre-feet of water every year. An acre-foot provides enough water for two families annually.

A longer version of this report by John Tedesco ran on Sept. 11, 2015. Read it at ExpressNews.com.

Associated Press / File photo Texas State Park police officer Thomas Bigham walks across the cracked lake bed of O.C. Fisher Lake in San Angelo in 2011. A record heat wave and a lack of rain combined to dry up the 5,440-acre lake.

Harvey Belgin / San Antonio Light In this iconic photo, San Antonio farmer Sam Smith celebrates rain on Easter in 1951 during a severe drought.