Texas’s Most Important River

The Trinity River is the biggest river in Texas whose watershed is entirely within Texas. It may be Texas’s most important river. Around half of Texas’s population depends upon it. It provides water to over 16 million people in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. It has played a critical role in Texas history, alternately a barrier and a passageway. Its bottomlands are among the richest in Texas, yet unpredictable flooding make planting there a gamble.

Despite its importance, the Trinity is Texas’s most anonymous river. The Brazos, Neches, and Rio Grande are storied, with multiple books about them. The Trinity has almost none.

“The River That Made Texas: A Forgotten History of the Trinity,” by Scot McFarlane corrects that omission. A serious and thoughtful history of the river, it gives the Trinity its due. It follows the Trinity from its source to its mouth, from the distant past to the present.

McFarlane opens explaining why the river’s history has been ignored. It is dirty story, one of uncontrollable floods, its use as a slave highway. and a conduit for pollution. Its upper reaches were where the Commanche ranged. Its East Texas bottomlands a haunt for those outside the law, criminals and runaway slaves. The lower Trinity, in East Texas, remains one of the state’s least-developed parts. The historical inability to tame the Trinity seems embarrassing, at odds with Texas’s belief in progress.

McFarlane’s story is fascinating for those reasons. He goes over the different aspects of the Trinity and its history. He examines the river people, those who dwelled in its bottoms, from pre-Columbian times to the present. He looks at the river’s varying roles: as a moat, a highway, a cotton farming region, and as a wildlife shelter. Today it remains a destination for hunters and fishers.

He tells of attempts to tame the river. Levees were built to contain it – often abandoned when they failed. It became an open sewer in the late 1800s, when Fort Worth dumped the untreated effluent from its stockyards and slaughterhouses into it. The river was cleaned up only in the late 20th century. He also presents failed attempts to transform the Trinity into a navigable waterway, starting in the steamboat era and ending in the 1970s.

“The River That Made Texas” give access to a fascinating, yet neglected part of Texas history. McFarlane provides the Trinity with the voice it has been missing.

“The River That Made Texas: A Forgotten History of the Trinity,” by Scot McFarlane, The University of North Carolina Press, September 2026, 240 pages, $99.00 (Hardcover), $27.95 (Paperback), $22.99 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.