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The WPA Comes To Coppell: Walls and Structures Were Built by The WPA in Grapevine Springs Park

The WPA provided work for unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. In Coppell, the WPA employed 90 men from 1935-1936 to build Grapevine Springs Park, constructing a retaining wall, gravel walks, footbridges, a dam, picnic areas, and landscaping. They also built a paved road to the park from Belt Line Road. The WPA helped build infrastructure like roads and parks that Coppell still benefits from today.

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407 views3 pages

The WPA Comes To Coppell: Walls and Structures Were Built by The WPA in Grapevine Springs Park

The WPA provided work for unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. In Coppell, the WPA employed 90 men from 1935-1936 to build Grapevine Springs Park, constructing a retaining wall, gravel walks, footbridges, a dam, picnic areas, and landscaping. They also built a paved road to the park from Belt Line Road. The WPA helped build infrastructure like roads and parks that Coppell still benefits from today.

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The WPA Comes to Coppell

Walls and structures were built by the WPA in Grapevine Springs Park.

Its 1933. You are President of the United States. The country is in
financial depression. Thousands of banks have closed, and people
cannot get their money. More than 13 million Americans are unemployed. In Coppell, farm and cotton prices have fallen. Times are
hard. What can the President do?
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1933 to help put people to work. The WPA
offered work to the unemployed with different programs, including
highways and building construction, slum clearance, reforestation,
and rural development.
After helping construct several roads in the area, the WPA began
work in Coppell in November 1935 at Grapevine Springs Park. This
was the historic site of Sam Houstons attempt to negotiate a peace

treaty with Native Americans in 1843 when Houston was President of


the Republic of Texas.
WPA records say that work on the park cost $25,000 and required
five months to complete. Ninety men worked to build a 1,800 foot
retaining wall of native rock, 2,500 feet of gravel walks, three footbridges, a dam, twenty picnic tables, thirteen benches, and landscaping with trees, plants and shrubs. A paved road seven-tenths of a
mile in length was built from Belt Line Road to the park.
Johnny Dobecka, who was 18 years old at the time, remembered the
WPA keeping their horses, mules and wagons at his family home on
Ledbetter Road off of E. Belt Line. There was a hill next to his
familys house and the WPA took down the entire hill using picks and
shovels! They had five or six wagons that they used to haul dirt,
sand, and rock from that hill down to a low spot where the road
crossed the Trinity River. They dumped their loads there to raise the
road, but when it flooded again the road washed away.
You and I may still travel on portions of Belt Line Road between

WPA stone columns, a gathering spot

Coppell and Carrollton that was built by the WPA workmen. The WPA
program gave money to projects and helped build things within the
Coppell community that the state could not have afforded at the
time. The historic park and a significant portion of the roads we use
today were first built and funded by the WPA.
Coppells experience with this jobs program of the '30s still benefits
the community today.

This drawing shows downtown Coppell in the 1930s.

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