White Rock Lake Before Dallas County was settled the land on
which the lake was built was a shallow, tree-lined valley in
Native Americans hunted for the bison that came to drink from
White Rock Creek and graze its grassy banks. In the 1840s, while
Texas was still an independent republic, white settlers began
establishing homesteads on the high ground surrounding the White
Rock Valley. Among them were the Coxes, the Dixons, the
Humbards, the McCommases, the Fishers, and many others. In the
late 1840s some of the men went off to fight in the War with
Mexico with Col. John Coffee "Jack" Hays. Others joined the
Confederate Army when Texas seceded from the Union in 1861. Some
of those veterans are buried in the old Cox cemetery,
established in 1848 when the daughter of Solomon and Lydia Dixon
(for whom Dixon Branch is named) was buried there. Following the
Civil War, Freedmen and their families established a community
named Egypt on what is now the northeastern shore of White Rock
Lake. There, in addition to thei