Headwaters of the Sabine River

The Sabine has no single source. The Handbook of Texas says it rises in three main branches, the Cowleech Fork, the Caddo Fork and the South Fork, all in Hunt County. The Cowleech, the fork the plaque points to, runs 35 miles from the northwest of the county to the southwest corner before it meets the others. That meeting point, where the Sabine proper begins, now lies under Lake Tawakoni, built in 1958. From there the river runs 555 miles to the Gulf, forming the Texas-Louisiana line for much of its length.

What the plaque says

Headwaters of the Sabine River A half mile to the west rises the Sabine River, lower channel of which separated New World empires of France and Spain and in 1836 became Republic of Texas - United States border. Fork here is called Cow Leach, for Indian chief who lived in the area. This marker is on a 3-way watershed: flow to the north goes into the Sulphur and to the Mississippi; the west drains to the Trinity; south goes into the Sabine, which forms Texas-Louisiana boundary and pours more water into Gulf of Mexico than any other Texas river (6,400,000 acre feet annually). (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 15 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 26 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Birthplace of Mack Harrell — 2.0 mi
• First Baptist Church of Celeste — 2.2 mi
• Audie Murphy — 2.4 mi
• Leonard — 4.6 mi