errr... does the dry creek bed get really... wet.... when you get a thunderstorm?

not really. that's the thing - over the past year and a half i've never seen running water in it....no more puddles than the rest of the yard during a heavy rain.

so you think someone put it in to be decorative? generally something like this is developed to avoid slow term erosion or fast term 'gully washers'. what does it look like uphill from your property?

put a fake canoe in it and a cut garden bridge and the kids will love it!

Since you want to get rid of it, I'd start how you did, offer the rocks for free. I love rocks and would come get them!

(when i was a kid it would have been an awesome place to play... but i get it if yours might be a little young for an 'adventure feature' in their backyard.)

i do think it was more decorative. i'm in a subdivision so i have neighboring backyards that I can see from mine and none have it and I've never seen it really serve a purpose during the heavy rains. I'm in texas - the yard is pretty flat there is no real uphill or downhill, so puddles just form all over but never actually floods. But I've only been here a year and a half so...it is possible that it was installed because of something bad happening once. But I know for sure that the house has never flooded. I'm not opposed to keeping it there if I can make it somehow safer - the large rocks just seem way too risky for young kids running around. It's limestone.

I don't understand the logic in wanting to get rid of it. When we were kids we never wanted to play in our yards, and always wanted to play in the neighborhood prairies. What a great place to exercise a young imagination. I would add exciting plants that will attract hummingbirds and other animals found in nature.