Dr. Tomlinson and his professional crew insisted that there would be a lake and that it would fill with water in an estimated 10 years. They based their estimate on the average yearly rainfall in the drainage area for the potential lake, and on measurements of the volume of water that ran off the land and through the 600-foot notch in the Devils Kitchen Conglomerate. This painstaking work of making measurements continued over several years. The dream of a lake, later to be known as Lake Murray, had been created, but it was only a dream. Dreams without follow-through are just that, dreams.
Projects can remain in file folders for a lifetime, and that is all they are, just projects.
Tomlinson, Milner, and Guthrey did not let this potential project remain only a dream. They got both the State and Federal governments involved, and brought them to Carter and Love Counties. Fred Tucker, an oil man from Ardmore, and explained the idea of the lake to him. Louis Fischl of Ardmore authored Senate Bill 382, which gave the State Board of Affairs authority to condemn and buy the land for Oklahoma's first state park. Later, however, when the name was changed from Arbuckle Lake to Lake Murray, he agreed to lend his support to the construction plan.