Red River

My friend Jim Clark lives close to the Red River, on the Texas side. The river is the northern border of his land. Jim’s family first moved into Red River County before there was a county by that name, before there was a Texas. His great-great-great grandfather, James H. Clark, and great-great-great grandmother, Isabella, were members of the Wavell Colony.

The Red is known for its floods, not as many as before the Lake Texoma Dam went in, but still some good ones now and then. It gets low during summer, too. Drive across any bridge in the summer and you will see long sandbars.

Jim said the Red went down so low one year that even he got surprise one day. “I went out and there was a place, must have been a thousand musket balls in the sand.”

The sand was too wet to get out in at that time, Jim said. “And then a little while later, we got a rain and that part was covered with water again.”

There is also a story about a paddle wheeler that hit a snag one day in the late 1800s. All passengers and most of their luggage got off the steam boat before it went down. Not rescued were barrels of whiskey, said to be several hundred or a thousand, depending on the story teller.

That boat has been seen at least three times since it sank. But water always came back up before anybody could rescue the barrels of whiskey. One story says a finder got a barrel from the wreckage, and shared the whiskey with friends. When they sobered up, not a one could remember where the boat was.