Danielle Cocanougher always knew she had history on her hands with Tanglewood Resort, the North Texas retreat her family purchased a few years ago. The vacation spot that opened in the late 1960s, with a few cabins overlooking Lake Texoma, was touched by some master designers and architects.
But a major component of that history recently unveiled itself after a chance email sent Cocanougher on a journey through the resort’s past, one that guests will soon be able to experience firsthand.
The property north of Sherman boasts a golf course designed by Arnold Palmer and a nine-story observation tower designed by Texas architect O’Neil Ford more than 50 years ago. Ford is well-known for the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, several buildings at Trinity University, and the Little Chapel in the Woods in Denton. But besides a handful of mentions in Texas newspapers in the 1970s, Ford’s full scope of work on Tanglewood was nearly lost to time.
Cocanougher wanted to learn more about the architect’s involvement in designing what he called “The Lighthouse,” so last fall, she filled out a contact form on the website for the firm he started in 1967, Ford, Powell & Carson Architects & Planners Inc.
Adam Reed, a principal at the firm, called Cocanougher and let her know he’d look into it. A week later, he sent a text message that he’d found several tubes of sketches that were drawn during the designing of when Tanglewood was being designed.
Cocanougher went to San Antonio to see them for the first time in September. As they unrolled each tube, the pages within told a story trapped in time. One showed the exterior of the tower, with its dimensions and the materials to be used. Another laid out the eighth floor bar, with a square where the bar now sits and a circle denoting where a spiral staircase leads to the ninth floor observation level. The top two floors have floor-to-ceiling windows that give sweeping views of the lake and the tree canopy below. It’s similar to the $20 view visitors get at the Tower of the Americas that Ford designed in San Antonio, but here, it’s free and gives a line of sight all the way to Oklahoma.
“One of Ford’s things was invoking the elements of nature into the design, and to me, it makes perfect sense that he was like, ‘We need the biggest windows, we need to be able to see everything. It needs to feel like the wooded forest area is in here,’” Cocanougher says as she looks out from the bar. “He wanted it to really blend.”
As they continued flipping through the pages, one showed the “Tanglewood Yacht Club,” a familiar-looking building that is attached to the tower. The resort was added onto in the early 2000s, so the Cocanougher family didn’t know where Ford’s influence ends and modern additions begin.
They realized it was the restaurant at Tanglewood, and that Ford had actually designed it. It was a detail they had missed for decades.
“It was very exciting to call my dad and say, ‘Not only do you have this amazing tower that was designed by a famous architect, but the restaurant and the bar, and all of the original structure was touched by Ford,’” she says. “Of course, as soon as we realized this, it became very obvious because you can see Ford and his style throughout that building.”
The ground floor of the tower, with its Saltillo tile, leads to a hallway that takes you to the Yacht Club, which is designed to look like you’re on a ship, Cocanougher says. There are Ford’s signature carved wood-paneled walls and a bar with a porthole. The dining room has dozens of Martha & Beaumont Mood globe lights that can fetch thousands of dollars apiece on resale sites.
Ford’s drawings also show plans that never came to be, including a racquet club with a deck that overlooked 18 tennis courts, including grass and hard ones.
“I went to their office and I was like, ‘What is this? This is amazing,’” Cocanougher said. “I wish they had built this.”
Now that Tanglewood’s origin story is uncovered, the resort is planning a vintage vacation summer for its guests. They’ve framed copies of the drawings and vintage ads that have run through the decades. Along the walls, there are snapshots of the eras the vacation destination has gone through: photos of women in 1960s bikinis and thick headbands of that time, a neon-colored advertisement from the 1990s, and a picture of two children proudly holding up a fish they caught sometime in the decades between.
There will be baskets of board games to take to the room, vintage lawn games like croquet, a popsicle hour, and ice cream socials. Picnic kits will be available for purchase with chicken salad sandwiches, fruit, cheese, and jars of banana pudding.
“I love the idea of a vintage vacation, where everybody is just playing outside, doing yard games and not looking at their phones,” Cocanougher says.
The owners hope that visitors this summer will take the idea to heart; that slowing down and forging more human connections won’t always feel like a blast from the past.
