Used with permission of Norman Lowell McCarver, Jr. These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format by other organizations or individuals. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the written consent of McCarver family relatives or contact William Kent Brunette, Robertson County TXGenWeb coordinator.
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The
Brazos River
Across
the heart of Texas winds a river that has written its name deep in legend and
history. The Indians called it the
Tokonohono. The Frenchman LaSalle,
who later died on its banks, named it the Maligne.
To the early Spanish explorers, who drank of its water after thirsty
weeks at sea, it was el Rio de los Brazos de Dios - the River of the Arms of
God.
Today
we call this stream the Brazos River. It
stretches 1210 river miles from New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, cutting Texas
in half. It drains a water shed 640
miles long, and covers 44,600 square miles in sixty-five counties. In this watershed, a sixth of the state's area, live a sixth
of the people of Texas.
This
is an eccentric river. In flood
stage it sweeps its precious water out to the Gulf, washing out crops and
buildings on the bottom lands. But
mostly, between these rampages, the Brazos winds slowly down its flat valley, a
river without too much water.
The
Brazos basin has always been a victim of water feast or famine.
From 1891 to 1932 alone its flood waters killed 542 persons and destroyed
property worth $54 millions. Yet
between its flood years there have been long stretches of drought, when farms
along its banks turned brown under the sun and a boy could wade the stream.
As
early as 1837, Sterling C. Robertson's colonists and other early settlers on the
Brazos realized that they would remain victims of alternate flood and drought
unless the river could be controlled. But
it took the great floods of 1913 and 1921, which destroyed all standing crops
and much wealth from Waco to the Gulf, to fire the people to action. The result, four years later, was the Conservation Amendment
to the State Constitution. Now, for
the first time, there was a legal means by which people in an area could band to
save themselves from the ravages of water or lack of it.
It was on the banks of el Rio de los Brazos de Dios - the River of the Arms of God, the river that today we know as Big Brazos River, that Sterling C. Robertson's Colony was settled about four miles west of the present town of Hearne, Texas. The cotton and other farm crops raised in the Brazos River Bottoms control the economy of Hearne today as it did in the days of long ago.