The Confluence of the Brazos, Trinity, and Red River Watersheds

Rain falling on this ridge can end up in three rivers, and the Trinity's route is the long one. From its source a short way west of the mound, the West Fork runs about 180 miles through Jack, Wise, Tarrant and Dallas counties. From the Elm and West forks' meeting at Dallas the river runs another 423 miles to Trinity Bay near Anahuac, making it the longest river lying wholly in Texas. Its basin takes in all or part of thirty-seven counties.

What the plaque says

The Confluence of the Brazos, Trinity, and Red River Watersheds The Trinity, a major Texas river rises 250 yards west of this 1250-foot mound. South of this site water drains to the Brazos, and north and west to the Red. This high point has been important in Texas history. It guided Capt. Diego Parilla to battle Indians on the Red in 1759 and aided Capt. R. B. Marcy in mapping a California trail in 1849. Marcy and Maj. R. S. Neighbors used it as a beacon point in finding a site for an Indian reservation in 1854. It also was on U.S. Cavalry maps for 1870s Indian campaigns. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — 14 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Fort Belknap — 18 mi
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 23 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 31 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.

More markers nearby

• St. Luke Lutheran Church of Olney — 3.3 mi
• Little Salt Creek Indian Fight — 6.4 mi
• Extinct Town of Anarene — 6.5 mi
• Cimmaron (Persimmon) Springs — 8.4 mi