There is a fairly famous photo of the Cascade Pool, from the 1950s, that I've seen in several collections of Kerrville and Kerr County photographs. But this one is different: it's much older and nearer to the time when the pool was new.
How can I tell?Well, the automobiles in the background are a clue. But the fact that the boys are wearing one-piece bathing suits (similar to the girls' suits, actually) is another.
This pool was in the 700 block of Water, on the river side of the street, behind the old Charles Schreiner Bank. When I was a kid, it was a parking lot and a motor bank. Today the area is about where the back lobby and officer's offices stand for the Bank of America.
The pool was closed, I understand, because of integration: the decision was racist. The pool's owners did not want children of different races swimming together. Of course, this was pig-headed and wrong. As a result there was not public swimming pool in Kerrville for many years -- for children of any race.
Click on any image to enlarge
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| Cascade Pool, 700 Block of Water Street, Kerrville, around 1935. |
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| The Cascade Pool, 1950s. This is the photo people have seen before. Note the two divers: one is in the air, a graceful swan dive underway. |
Note the stripes on the bottom of the pool in the old photo. This corresponds with the stripes you can see in the flood photos -- http://joeherringjr.blogspot.com/2010/09/flood-of-32-big-one-part-3-of-3-heroes.html
ReplyDeleteI swam in this pool back in the 50's. I lived a few blocks away on Water Street. This blog is awesome and really brings back wonderful memories of growing up in the best of times!
ReplyDeleteI learned to swim in the Guadalupe about 1947, but I certainly spent a good portion of my time in the Cascade Pool in the '50s and may very well be in the latter picture. Ah, those were the good old days.
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