Old town, campus and lake
Nolan Creek floods, early-1900s houses and campus rentals
Three kinds of housing, each with its own usual failure.
The county seat is older than the railroad towns around it. First called Nolan Springs and then Nolanville, the settlement took the name Belton in December 1851, after Bell County. Baylor Female College moved here in 1885 and later became the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
Downtown has been rebuilt more than once. A fire in 1879 destroyed much of the business district, and Nolan Creek flooded much of downtown in December 1913. The population peaked near 6,500 in 1928 and fell by almost half within three years. Early-1900s houses from those boom years still stand on the streets nearest the courthouse.
Houses of that age were usually plumbed with cast-iron drains and galvanized supply, often over pier-and-beam floors. Cast iron rusts along the bottom of the pipe until grease and paper catch on the rough edge. Galvanized pipe narrows with rust until the far bathroom has barely any pressure.
The other groups are newer. Student rentals near campus change hands with the school year, and each tenant inherits the slow drain or tired heater the last one put up with. Homes out toward the lake round out the mix, from older places due a repipe to newer ones on their first water heater.
Lake, water and roads
Belton Lake, WCID No. 1 water and the roads in from I-35
The reservoir north of town supplies the tap, and the interstate brings us in.
Belton Lake lies about three miles north of town on the Leon River. The Corps of Engineers began the dam in 1949, started filling the lake in March 1954 and raised the conservation pool 25 feet in 1972. It serves flood control, water supply and recreation.
That lake is also the tap. Bell County WCID No. 1, created in 1952, draws from it and from Stillhouse Hollow Lake, and it runs a 90-million-gallon-a-day treatment plant on the shore. The Brazos River Authority lists this city among the district’s customers, alongside Killeen, Harker Heights and Copperas Cove.
The calls follow the housing. Near downtown it is camera runs on old cast-iron mains. In rentals it is toilets and water heaters between leases, and in older houses under remodel it is a repipe. We come up I-35, and US 190 links town west to Nolanville, Harker Heights and Killeen.