The Red River

The river carries a heavy load of salt as well as red soil. The Spanish called it the Rio Rojo, and on the frontier it was also the Red River of Natchitoches and the Red River of the Cadodacho, for the Caddo. Downstream the Wichita joins it in Clay County, and in 1944 Denison Dam formed Lake Texoma. Far below, a logjam called the great raft choked the channel for seventy-five miles. Henry Shreve cleared it in 1834-35, but it formed again, backing Big Cypress Creek into Caddo Lake and making Jefferson the main Texas river port until 1874.

What the plaque says

Named for the red soil across which it flows, the main stream of the Red River is 1,360 miles long, and for 440 miles the river forms the Texas-Oklahoma boundary. For years, this was an international boundary. The 1819 treaty with Spain established the course of the Red River to the 100th meridian as part of the boundary between the United States and New Spain. Until after the 1845 annexation of Texas, this river did not lie entirely within the United States. During the Spanish Colonial period, the waterway and the crossing here became a main gateway into Texas. In the mid-19th century, brisk steamer traffic went on at the eastern end of the river. A military expedition under Capt. Randolph B. Marcy in 1852 explored the river to its upper reaches in land held by Native Americans. In 1921, the Burkburnett oil boom here led to a dispute between Texas and Oklahoma over ownership of the valuable river bed. The Supreme Court in 1921 and 1923 upheld the south bank as the Texas border. This site is 25 miles west of the important old Fort Sill crossing on the major military road that once linked the Oklahoma fort to outposts on the Texas frontier. The bridge here, opened to traffic in 1927, is the second free bridge to span the Red River. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 13 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 14 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 25 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.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 28 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Burkburnett ("Boomtown USA") — steps away
• Fowler Discovery Well — 1.4 mi
• First National Bank of Burkburnett — 1.4 mi
• Samuel Burk Burnett — 1.5 mi