Frentress_Carl_FlatCreek.mp3

Carl Frentress [00:00:01] I was a teenager in the '60s, early '60s, when Lake Athens was proposed and then built.

Carl Frentress [00:00:11] And we've talked about how East Texas was full of people on the land, relating to the land. And often there were many, many places like my grandfather's, and later with my father and the property that he came to own that had been in the family for quite some time. They'd lived on it. Flourished or gone through adversity on the land, either way, but they were there. And there was a lot of intense devotion to it.

Carl Frentress [00:00:41] And then here comes something totally unexpected, and they said, "We're taking your land. You don't have any choice."

Carl Frentress [00:00:48] And therefore, you had to negotiate a sale.

Carl Frentress [00:00:53] There was one woman who had inherited some land that did not do that, and she was given a dollar, and her land was taken by eminent domain.

Carl Frentress [00:01:02] And probably that was an example.

Carl Frentress [00:01:05] But in those days, there was not mitigation for losses. And so, a lot of the bottomland hardwood system, which was still fairly intact and in pretty good shape, there was no compensation for that. And those were wetlands. And we got nothing for that kind of destruction.

Carl Frentress [00:01:26] The other impact was even after he was forced off the land and had to move to town, which he didn't live long after that because it just was not his kind of lifestyle, this lake was cleared and we saw that. We saw the bulldozers absolutely lay bare the ground and the creek itself. Flat Creek itself was just, I mean, it was just a ditch going down through this big couple thousand acre bare cleared area and all those trees were just burned.

Carl Frentress [00:02:03] It was a very shocking experience for everybody who had some sense of connection to that land.