With the invention of plows capable of breaking through the “black waxy” soil of the region, the prairie sod was turned and European-style farming came to the area.

In 1947, a developed named Rick Strong purchased several parcels of land surrounding a major portion of Orr Branch, a City of Dallas addition that was incorporated as “Hillcrest Estates”.

Centered on a roughly mile-long stretch of Northaven Road, these parcels of old pasture and farm structures were subdivided, typically into 300-foot-deep lots, some with horse corrals, and the neighborhood association's building restrictions required homes to be a minimum of 2,300 square feet.

Rampant real estate speculation throughout Texas had drastically inflated North Dallas land values, and what had been middle class homes were being acquired, demolished and replaced with opulent mansions.

[6] On those occasions, the area inundated in places extended up to a quarter mile from the main channel of the Creek, but was very limited along most of Orr Branch, suggesting a high rate of flow in this tributary during such floods.

Since the 1950s, the flat lands west of the stream have been dominated by paved suburban streets and adjacent homesites, suggesting a significant quantity of chemical and particulate water pollutants (e.g. motor oil, lawn fertilizers, pesticides, animal waste, tire rubber and brake dust) is carried into the channel by stormwater runoff.

In the portion of Hillcrest Estates south of Northaven Road, a small chain of such water impoundments lies along Orr Branch, some of these descended from old stock tanks used by the precursor farms.

On a journey west out of Fort Smith, Arkansas Territory in 1819, Nuttall encountered a portion of the Black Lands where they extend just north of the Red River (east of present day Durant, Oklahoma).

[9] When one includes invertebrates, birds (migratory and resident species), mammals and other vertebrates, the Blackland Praririe comprises perhaps the most diverse biota of all the central North American prairies.

The Austin limestone exposed in the beds of the Orr Branch stream channels is marine in origin and of Cretaceous age,[11] and while not generally fossiliferous will occasionally produce the preserved remains of Inoceramus clams, ammonites, and large vertebrates such as Xiphactinus, a predaceous fish.