Take Advantage

[TCRanch]

My father dug one about that size with a 2wd tractor and a 3 pt dirt scoop on back in the late 70s or early 80s, but over 12' deep.
Had to hook another tractor in front to pull it out when he got pretty deep, as the slope coming up with a full load of dirt in that old scoop put the front end up in the air.
It was solely for the kids and grandkids to fish and swim in. I measured back around 2017 and it was still over 9' deep after all those years. A friend of mine made a too tight turn in the middle of the night and came close to losing a trailer and bobcat off in it. Trailer caught on a stump and stopped the slide. I had to pull truck, bobcat and trailer out with a Case backhoe.

View attachment 34898

Don't you hate when that happens? And no, I wasn't driving.

 

[GoWyo]

Don't you hate when that happens? And no, I wasn't driving.View attachment 34909

Did you get it out? Looks like a tough recovery. Somebody's feet get wet?

 

[Caustic Burno]

The best every here was a D5 upside down on the roll cage in the front yard.
Off to the lake now.

 

[greybeard]

The

That's what they call ponds in Texas.....tanks. Like you, when I hear it or see it, first thing that comes too mind is an actual tank like the rubber, plastic or metal ones you buy at TSC. And when they say shredder, they don't mean the office machine used to get rid of paper documents. They mean bush hog.

The term tank, for a small body of water here in Texas goes back 100s if not thousands of years. Hueco Tanks out near El Paso is an example. Hueco is Spanish for 'hollow'. Hueco Tanks predates even Spanish and Indian occupation of the desert Southwest.

Generally, (in Texas) a tank is hollowed out in mostly level terrain, with the water coming from whatever rain falls directly into it or from the immediate area on the same property..and maybe some from a closely adjoining area.

But if an impoundment is made by digging out a dry stream bed and throwing a dam across it, it's a pond. The picture I posted above would be a pond because it get's water from runoff emanating from several hundred acres in the National Forest. It comes in thru the culvert or pipe you can see in the background. Most of the time there is no water coming in.

In Northeast Texas, it's common to call any impoundment constructed downstream from a running spring a pool, just as most of us call a deep part of a small constantly running stream or small river, a pool. My grandfather built his pool on Moss Springs, a small artesian spring that was on his property, about 45 miles East of Texarkana.

(That spring also provided water to his house up the hill. My father, my uncles, I and my older sisters carried lots of buckets of water up to the house from that spring until my uncles dug down into the spring and sunk a couple of big cement culverts stacked vertically as a settling vessel and dropped an electric powered pump suction off into it and piped the house for running water. Prior to that, a bucket sat on the kitchen counter, with a dish towel over it to keep flies out and a long handled aluminum dipper in the bucket. Best tasting water I ever drank. Yes, we all drank right out of the same dipper. That went away after the pump was installed but everyone had a bit of a shock when one of the uncles came back from the spring one day to report that a week old calf had wandered in and fell off in the culvert and drowned. Probably been in there a couple of days but the spring water was so cold year round, no putrefaction had occurred yet.)

 

[Ouachita]

Granddad built one of the four ponds on his place using something I think called a "slip", but yes, drags behind the tractor. The "slip" is still on the place surround by large trees that have captured it.

Granny must've been fancy, because she had a stainless steel dipper that we shared. She was also known to exploit child labor to fetch the spring water to the house; kid's, grandkids, and then great grandkids, until 2004. That's when the family pitched in and bought them a mobile home and drilled a well. It was about the same time that support for her rotary dial phone ended and she had to get one of them push button type.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

I remember recently reading that some young people had lost a dog in a tank in Texas and died when they went down to try to rescue the dog.
I thought that's what you were talking about .. an underground tank

 

[greybeard]

Granddad built one of the four ponds on his place using something I think called a "slip", but yes, drags behind the tractor. The "slip" is still on the place surround by large trees that have captured it.

Granny must've been fancy, because she had a stainless steel dipper that we shared. She was also known to exploit child labor to fetch the spring water to the house; kid's, grandkids, and then great grandkids, until 2004. That's when the family pitched in and bought them a mobile home and drilled a well. It was about the same time that support for her rotary dial phone ended and she had to get one of them push button type.

I know the ones pulled by mules were called slips. That predates me by a few years.
The only slips I was familiar with always hindered my view as a young boy and hurt my back as a young man.

 

[Ouachita]

I know the ones pulled by mules were called slips. That predates me by a few years.
The only slips I was familiar with always hindered my view as a young boy and hurt my back as a young man.

That may explain why I get confused when I've stared at that slip and wondered how he attached it to a tractor. I always assumed he pulled it with a tractor, but maybe not. By the time my ears dried off, the mules were long gone.
It's a small pond, about 30 feet diameter,, and maybe 3 or 4 feet deep when it's full. The slip he used is permanently parked about 50 feet away in the woods.

 

[TCRanch]

Did you get it out? Looks like a tough recovery. Somebody's feet get wet?

Ended up getting it out from behind. Somebody's feet didn't just get wet, but muddy! Mr TC wasn't real happy I was taking pics but our neighbor that was helping thought it was funny. (I did too!)

 

[lavacarancher]

What tank ?
Is it buried ?
Looks like a dry pond

When I saw the word "tank" I knew someone would have to say "pond". Folks, in Texas this is called a tank. It is used to hold drinking water for the cows (and bulls; and calves).

 

[Warren Allison]

The

The term tank, for a small body of water here in Texas goes back 100s if not thousands of years. Hueco Tanks out near El Paso is an example. Hueco is Spanish for 'hollow'. Hueco Tanks predates even Spanish and Indian occupation of the desert Southwest.

Generally, (in Texas) a tank is hollowed out in mostly level terrain, with the water coming from whatever rain falls directly into it or from the immediate area on the same property..and maybe some from a closely adjoining area.

But if an impoundment is made by digging out a dry stream bed and throwing a dam across it, it's a pond. The picture I posted above would be a pond because it get's water from runoff emanating from several hundred acres in the National Forest. It comes in thru the culvert or pipe you can see in the background. Most of the time there is no water coming in.

In Northeast Texas, it's common to call any impoundment constructed downstream from a running spring a pool, just as most of us call a deep part of a small constantly running stream or small river, a pool. My grandfather built his pool on Moss Springs, a small artesian spring that was on his property, about 45 miles East of Texarkana.

(That spring also provided water to his house up the hill. My father, my uncles, I and my older sisters carried lots of buckets of water up to the house from that spring until my uncles dug down into the spring and sunk a couple of big cement culverts stacked vertically as a settling vessel and dropped an electric powered pump suction off into it and piped the house for running water. Prior to that, a bucket sat on the kitchen counter, with a dish towel over it to keep flies out and a long handled aluminum dipper in the bucket. Best tasting water I ever drank. Yes, we all drank right out of the same dipper. That went away after the pump was installed but everyone had a bit of a shock when one of the uncles came back from the spring one day to report that a week old calf had wandered in and fell off in the culvert and drowned. Probably been in there a couple of days but the spring water was so cold year round, no putrefaction had occurred yet.)

Up in here, most ponds ( or lakes) are made by simply damming up the low part of a depression between hills. Maybe not even hills, but just slopes. You make them at the lowest part of where the water off of them drains to. Or dig them in area that has standing water after a rain. And it is pretty easy to dig one that holds water good in this red clay. But a lot are made by damning a stream, or building up around an underground spring where it surfaces.

Size is what people go by in determining if it is a pond or a lake. If spring or stream fed, if it is an acre or less we call it a pond. Anything bigger is called a lake. A real estate ad might say the property has a 1/2 acre pond, or a 3 acre lake.

 

[Ouachita]

Up in here, most ponds ( or lakes) are made by simply damming up the low part of a depression between hills. Maybe not even hills, but just slopes. You make them at the lowest part of where the water off of them drains to. Or dig them in area that has standing water after a rain. And it is pretty easy to dig one that holds water good in this red clay. But a lot are made by damning a stream, or building up around an underground spring where it surfaces.

Size is what people go by in determining if it is a pond or a lake. If spring or stream fed, if it is an acre or less we call it a pond. Anything bigger is called a lake. A real estate ad might say the property has a 1/2 acre pond, or a 3 acre lake.

Pretty much the same around here in these Ouachita Mountains, but after reading your post, I'm now going to refer to my 3 acre pond as a lake. Sounds good. Even better, it was formed by damming up Jake Creek, so Jake Lake it is hence forth.

 

[Brute 23]

Growing up pond is not a word I ever heard unless it was a book or movie. It was dove hunt by the tank, fish at the tank, swim in the tank, etc. Every now and then some one said stock tank.

As more people flowed in the area you heard pond a little more. I have learned to use it more now just from dealing with so many of those people. My friends will catch me from time to time and give me a hard time. It doesn't make sense but they will say stuff like... Is your pond on the edge of the forrest?

 

[farmerjan]

US Yankees...... had ponds and lakes, streams and rivers...
I learned what a "tank " was from reading in Louis L'Amour western books....
A friend in the south had cricks and creeks, so I learned the southern terminology of our northern streams and rivers...

One thing is that many man-made "lakes" on the small side are still called ponds... they dammed a stream and dug the area out and created the 4-5 acre ICE POND behind my grandparents and cut ice off it and stored it in the ice house there for many years... Hoth's Pond it was known as and is still referred to the pond there behind where her house used to sit...so size is not always a determining factor but a good rule of thumb in general... creek fed into it and the water went out over the dam at the other end.....

 

[greybeard]

Before the big pond was built on my old place, there were a couple of cross fences that cut it in half then 1/4. It was VERY flat land. The fences meant the livestock on the far East side had no water. (we've never allowed cattle access to the East property line river, even when it was all Open Range)

2 stock tanks were dug over on the East side. Not very big, and not very deep at all. Maybe 4' deep and 20'x40' long but even in 2011, they never dried completely up. See the yellow arrows. The yellow line is where a cross fence once was, before I took it out.


These are Texas tanks:

(Near Ganado--Brute knows where that is)
Built on flat land not far from the coast.


Most certainly Texas tanks, 1/4 mile from my current home:



And this of course, is a California tank, built for a different kind of stock...sheeple. Seems to work as designed....

 

[Ouachita]

Thinking back now, which can be a dangerous thing for me at times, I'm pretty sure that little slip built pond that I mentioned earlier is probably a tank.

Now, because of this thread, I have at least one lake and one tank. I feel better knowing this.

I did have a brother-in-law from Texas, about thirty years ago. When we first went window shopping together (deer hunting from the truck with windows down), driving along in the forest service, he said "there's a phone". After several back and forth attempts of me asking and looking for the phone booth, a fawn jumped and ran.

 

[greybeard]

Thinking back now, which can be a dangerous thing for me at times, I'm pretty sure that little slip built pond that I mentioned earlier is probably a tank.

Now, because of this thread, I have at least one lake and one tank. I feel better knowing this.

I did have a brother-in-law from Texas, about thirty years ago. When we first went window shopping together (deer hunting from the truck with windows down), driving along in the forest service, he said "there's a phone". After several back and forth attempts of me asking and looking for the phone booth, a fawn jumped and ran.

To confuse things even more, there is in Harris County (same county Houston is in) an infamous body of water called Tank Lake. At one time, described by EPA as the most polluted body of water West of the Mississippi and south of Love canal, but locals swam and fished in it all the time I was growing up. (Not me tho..I had better places to go.)