Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River

290 Pages·2015·3.69 MB·English

by  Kenna Lang Archer

Environmental Studies • Southwest a
r
c Running more than 1,200 miles from head-
h waters in eastern New Mexico through
e Unruly Waters the middle of Texas to the Gulf of Mexico,
r the Brazos River has frustrated developers for
nearly two centuries. Like the state of Texas, the
Brazos is part southern, and thereby prone to
a social and environmental history
“an engaging and well-researched study of an important river in flooding, and part western, hence prone to
an important state. California has the San Joaquín, Massachusetts has the of the brazos river drought. It is a river of many faces, all of which
Merrimack, and Texas has the Brazos. And now the Brazos has its historian.” have resisted efforts at improvement. Kenna Lang
—christopher morris, author of The Big Muddy: An Environmental Archer’s environmental history of the Brazos
U
History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from traces the ways engineers and politicians have
Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina n tried over and over to manage its flow.
r Frustrated with the waywardness of their river,
u
“people of the brazos river valley have tried to make the river people who live along the Brazos have turned to a
l
navigable, dam it for flood control, and supplement its flow to fend off times of variety of technological solutions for their riparian
y
drought. Archer brilliantly shows why an unyielding Brazos River Valley frus- problems. These advocates for greater control of
W
trated nearly all of these technocratic drives.” the river rarely agreed on the purpose of develop-
—james sherow, editor of A Sense of the ment—navigation, flood control, agricultural use,
a
American West: An Environmental History Anthology t reclamation—and so they envisioned canals,
e
levees, and ports but also locks, dams, and even
r
“in this deeply researched study of the Brazos River, Kenna Lang transnational diversion channels. The vast major-
s
Archer provocatively challenges Americans’ technocratic faith in their ability ity of projects proposed or constructed in this
to manage nature. A muddled cultural identity (the Brazos was neither fully watershed were failures, undone by the geology of
southern nor fully western), escalating costs, contested political ambitions, the river as much as the cost of improvement.
and the riverine geology undermined human efforts to systematically develop When developers erected locks, the river changed
the full length of the river and contributed to persistent cycles of flood and course. When they built large-scale dams, flood-
drought. Unruly Waters is compelling environmental history.” waters overflowed the concrete rims. When they
—kathleen a. brosnan, author of constructed levees, the soils collapsed. Yet law-
Encyclopedia of American Environmental History makers and laypeople, boosters and engineers
continued to work toward improving the river
and harnessing it for their various uses.
The story that emerges from this narrative of
frustration and failure is unique to the Brazos,
kenna lang archer
but, as Archer shows, the inability of engineers to
kenna lang archer is an instructor in the
tame the river offers a suggestive commentary on
Department of History at Angelo State University.
other efforts and other rivers and reflects national
issues about the purpose of development. The
struggle to overcome nature, she notes, reflects a
ISBN 978-0-8263-5587-4
quintessentially American faith in technology.
90000
university of new mexico press
unmpress.com • 800-249-7737 9 780826355874 >
Unruly Waters

Unruly Waters
a social and environmental history
of the brazos river
kenna lang archer
University of New Mexico Press | Albuquerque
© 2015 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. Published 2015
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Archer, Kenna Lang, 1982–
Unruly waters : a social and environmental history of the Brazos River / Kenna
Lang Archer. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8263-5587-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8263-5588-1 (electronic)
1. Brazos River (Tex.)—History. 2. Brazos River Valley (Tex.)—Environmental
conditions—History. 3. Brazos River Valley (Tex.)—Social conditions—History.
I. Title. II. Title: Social and environmental history of the Brazos River.
F392.B842A75 2015
976.4—dc23
2014031881
Cover photo courtesy the Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas
Cover design and text composition by Catherine Leonardo
Composed in Sabon LT Std Roman 10/13
Display type is Minion Pro and Syntax LT Std
This work is dedicated to Charles Turnbo, the author and uncle and
vibrant personality who inspired my first history paper and inspired all
of those around him. Though cut short far too soon, his was a life well
lived.

Contents
Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
Chapter One Ecology and Geology along the Mighty Brazos
River 1
Chapter Two Culture, Continuity, and a Brazos River
Reimagined 23
Chapter Three Immigrants, Improvements, and Agricultural Ideals
along the Lower Brazos River 45
Chapter Four Locks, Dams, and a Hope for Navigation along the
Middle Brazos River 74
Chapter Five Big Dams and Big Dreams along the Upper Brazos
River 90
Chapter Six Importation and Diversion along a Still-Untamed
Brazos 109
Chapter Seven A Defiant Brazos and the Persistence of Its
People 130
Appendix A Overview of Improvement Projects 143
Appendix B Geological Timeline 145
Notes 147
Bibliography 231
Index 251
vii
Illustrations
Figures
Untitled photograph of the 1902 Waco flood xviii
Photograph of the 1909 flood in Waco that shows “the Brazos on a
Rampage” xix
Photograph of the Possum Kingdom dam site along the Brazos
River 18
Undated painting of Ellersley Plantation by Don Hutson 29
Photograph of cotton in the Waco Town Square 31
Fred Gildersleeve photograph of the Cotton Palace Parade forming in
the Waco Town Square in 1912 32
Undated photograph of convicts from the Brazos River prison farms
working a line in the cane fields 34
Photograph from 1911 of convict laborers and prison officials along
the Brazos River 36
Undated photograph of convicts from the Brazos River prison farms
picking cotton 37
Undated photograph of a cotton gin near Waco 57
Undated postcard proclaiming Waco the “Head of Navigation, Brazos
River” 78
Photograph of Elm Street in East Waco, taken by C. M. Seley during
the 1908 floods 81
viii
Illustrations ix
Photograph of several Waco bridges during the 1913 flood 82
Army Corps of Engineers photograph from November 8, 1912, that
shows the site for Lock-and-Dam No. 1 84
Undated photograph from the 1910s of laborers working to build
Lock-and-Dam No. 8 near Waco 85
Families looking over the Possum Kingdom Dam at a site near
Breckenridge 99
Photograph from 1937 of families playing near a low-water dam on
the Brazos River near Breckenridge 105
Comic book titled Ogallala Slim (ca. 1960s) 110
Photograph, taken by Windy Drum Photography around 1956, of irri-
gation methods used in regional cotton fields 117
Photograph by C. M. Seley of the Cotton Belt Railroad Bridge in Waco
during the 1908 flood 134
Photograph of the Brazos River near Waco during the 1913
flood 135
Photograph of a flood near the Darrington Prison Unit, taken in
1965 136
Photograph of the Baylor University Bookstore after heavy rains in
1989 flooded nearby Waco Creek 137
Maps
A. R. Roessler’s Map No. 59: Texas 3
E. Hergesheimer’s Map showing the distribution of the slave popula-
tion of the southern states of the United States (1861) 49