In the early years of Dallas, before the coming of logging trucks, the Arboretum site provided a vital service for Dallas Industry.

This was when timber cut in the high country came crashing down La Creole Creek to an early sawmill in Dallas. A series of 3 dams along this small creek held water to boost logs along when sufficient rainfall flooded the upper creek.

At a curve in the La Creole, where the Arboretum is now, a diversion dam propelled the logs into a flume, which carried them into a Mill Pond, now Dallas City Park. The sawmill was located at the West entrance to the park and is identified now by a large cross section of log erected there.

Remaining in the Arboretum is the last visible trace of this hazardous early logging, the old flume. The channel has been a verdant fern and flower path for years, but now it has been re-identified as the Historic Log Flume.

Today when rains fill La Creole Creek, the flood waters still rush into the Arboretum through the old Flume.

Flume: an inclined channel for conveying water usually from a distance for various uses (as power production, transportation, or irrigation).