The Hands Across Time Project
The Hands Across Time Project is the effort of two photographers who are native daughters of Fannin County. Wanda Holmes Oliver is a local photographer known for the popular photography class she has taught at the Bertha Voyer Memorial Library for the past ten years. She grew up in Windom and remembers the beauty and the lure of the Bois d’Arc bottom lands from her youth. Ginger Sisco Cook is an adjunct professor in the Department of Art at Texas A&M University - Commerce who teaches photography, art appreciation and graduate classes. Her family came to Fannin County in the 1850s from Tennessee and settled in the Dial area.
On Feb. 2, 2018, the US Army Corps of Engineers granted the final permits needed for the North Texas Municipal Water District to begin construction on the long awaited reservoir to be built in the Bois d’Arc Creek watershed near Bonham, Texas. The new lake, now officially named Bois d’Arc Lake, is the first major reservoir to be constructed in Texas in more than two decades. It, the related mitigation areas at Riverby Ranch and on the Upper Bois d’Arc Creek, and the Leonard Water Treatment Plant are the most significant changes in the landscape and character of Fannin County, Texas to occur in living memory. It is history in the making.
The Bois d’Arc Lake Project, map provided by Freese &Nichols, Inc., and used by permission of North Texas Municipal Water District.
As daughters of Fannin County, we knew from the start that we wanted to capture history as the lake was formed - we wanted to tell the story of the land, the people, and the transformation. When we learned that the Wilks Family Cemetery and the nearby Bonham grave sites were the only historic cemeteries to be directly affected by the construction of the reservoir, we decided to tell the story through the lens of those cemeteries, the families resting there, and the communities they were a part of. The Hands Across Time Project was born.
The mission of The Hands Across Time Project is to preserve for future generations a palpable sense of this particular place and of the nature of Fannin County at this moment in time. It is our hope to connect the generation growing up now, and for whom the lake will be a given, to the early settlers of the Bois d’Arc Creek bottoms and of Fannin County at large. Far into the future when tourists are fishing or water skiing on Bois d'Arc Lake, they will be able to see what the land looked like and get a sense of the people who lived there and loved the land.
We will remember.
Ginger Sisco Cook. To see more of Ginger’s work, visit http://www.gingersiscocook.com. Photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.
Wanda on old Lannius Wooden Bridge. More of Wanda’s work can be found at https://www.wandaholmesoliver.com. Photo by Ginger Sisco Cook.
Wilks Family Cemetery in Morning Light. Photo by Wanda Holmes Oliver.