Lakes, Creeks, and Rivers
LAKE MEREDITH
WILLOW CREEK
DIXON CREEK
COTTONWOOD CREEK
WHITE DEER CREEK
SOUTH PALODURO CREEK
ROCK CREEK
HILL CREEK
CARSON CREEK
SPRING CREEK
BENT CREEK
BEAR CREEK
ANTELOPE CREEK
ADOBE CREEK
ADOBE WALLS TRAIL
PANHANDLE WATER
CONSERVATION AUTHORITY
CANADIAN RIVER
LAKE MEREDITH
Lake Meredith is on the Canadian River ten miles west of
Borger in Hutchinson County. The lake is impounded by
Sanford Dam and extends into Moore and Potter counties.
A. A. Meredith, former Borger city manager, devised the
project, which was built and financed by the federal
government under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of
Reclamation and is owned and operated by the Canadian
River Municipal Water Authority.
Construction of Sanford Dam began on March 11, 1962, and
was completed in 1965. Lake Meredith supplies water to
eleven West Texas cities: Amarillo, Borger, Brownfield,
Lamesa, Levelland, Lubbock, O'Donnell, Pampa, Plainview,
Slaton, and Tahoka. A. A. Meredith died of cancer in
April 1963, two years before the project's completion.
The lake that bears his name has a total storage capacity
of 1,407,600 acre-feet and a surface area of 21,640 acres
at an elevation of 2,965 feet above mean sea level.
Water is diverted, filtered, treated, and pumped to area
cities and towns for municipal supply. The pumping plants
and pipelines made up a major part of the project's total
estimated cost of $103,230,000. Though the total drainage
area of the Canadian River above Lake Meredith is 20,220
square miles, the actual drainage area contributing to
the lake is only 9,090 square miles. Since 1965 the
reservoir has been under the administration of the
National Park Service. In 1972 Sanford Recreation Area,
as it was called, was renamed Lake Meredith National
Recreation Area.
Several resort communities, including Sanford, Lake
Meredith Estates, and Bugbee Heights, lie just outside
the park boundaries. Archeological traces of prehistoric
Indians, most notably the Alibates Flint Quarries, dot
the lake area. The remains of Amos McBride's stone ranch
house, dating from the 1870s, are in McBride Canyon on
the southeastern side of the lake. This historic
structure is located in Potter County beside an
environmental study area.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. L. Dowell, Dams and Reservoirs in Texas:
History and Descriptive Information (Texas Water
Commission Bulletin 6408 [Austin, 1964]). Hutchinson
County Historical Commission, History of Hutchinson
County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1980).
WILLOW CREEK
Willow Creek rises in the northeast corner of Hutchinson
County one-half mile west of the Roberts county line (at
36°01' N, 101°06' W) and flows south for nine miles to
its mouth on the Canadian River, five miles northeast of
Adobe Walls, just inside Roberts County (at 35°56' N,
101°05' W). It was once part of Henry W. Cresswell's Bar
CC Ranchq ranges, and its drainage area is a sandy
aquifer recharge zone of local escarpments and deep sandy
loam soil.
DIXON CREEK
Dixon Creek, sometimes known as Limestone Creek, rises in
north central Carson County (at 35°34' N, 101°21' W) at
the confluence of two of its three branches; the third
branch joins it a mile south of the Hutchinson county
line. The creek runs north for twelve miles to its mouth
on the Canadian River, northeast of Borger and Phillips
in southern Hutchinson County (at 35°45' N, 101°21' W).
Dixon Creek is in the center of the Borger oilfield,
where many of the early strikes that touched off the
Panhandle boom of the late 1920s were made. The stream
traverses an area with deep sandy loams and was named for
the frontier scout William (Billy) Dixon. The
headquarters of the Dixon Creek division of the Four
Sixes Ranch is located in Carson County near the middle
branch of the creek.
H. Allen Anderson
HORSE CREEK
Horse Creek rises a mile south of the junction of State
Highway 207 and Farm Road 281 in northern Hutchinson
County (at 36°01' N, 101°20' W) and runs northeast for
fifteen miles, through a vast agricultural and
oil-producing region in eastern Hansford County, to its
mouth on Palo Duro Creek (at 36°22' N, 101°10' W). The
stream rises in a plains region with some local shallow
depressions, then as it nears its mouth, crosses an area
of moderately sloping terrain. Local soils are generally
sandy and clayey and support mesquite and grasses. The
town of Spearman was founded just east of Horse Creek in
1917.
COTTONWOOD CREEK
Cottonwood Creek, sometimes known as Coldwater Creek,
rises four miles north of Stinnett in central Hutchinson
County (at 35°53' N, 101°27' W) and runs south for
twelve miles to its mouth on the Canadian River, four
miles north of Borger (at 35°44' N, 101°24' W). It
crosses flat to rolling plains with sandy and clayey
soils that support mesquites and various grasses. The
stream was part of the Hansford Land and Cattle Company's
Turkey Track Ranch. Much of it remains in the Whittenburg
family holdings (see WHITTENBURG,
JAMES ANDREW), and the old Dial
townsite is located on the creek.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
WHITE DEER CREEK
White Deer Creek rises southeast of Skellytown in eastern
Carson County (at 35°28' N, 101°10' W) and flows north
twenty-six miles to join the Canadian River in eastern
Hutchinson County (at 35°52' N, 101°08' W). It runs
through flat to rolling terrain with some steep slopes,
where clay and sandy loams support cacti, brush, and
grasses. The stream, once on Diamond F ranges, gave its
name to the White Deer Lands Company and the town of
White Deer to the south. It drains the Skellytown
oilfield and a vast ranching area.
SPRING CREEK
Spring Creek rises in east central Carson County (at
35°31' N, 101°16' W) and flows northward twenty miles
until it empties into the Canadian River in the east
central part of Hutchinson County (at 35°48' N, 101°15'
W). It flows through flat, rolling, and steep terrain
surfaced by clay and sandy loams that support cacti,
brush, and grasses. Once part of the Diamond F ranges, it
drains a vast ranching and oil producing area.
SOUTH PALODURO CREEK
South Paloduro Creek rises in northwestern Moore County
1½ miles from the Hartley county line (at 35°55' N,
102°08' W) and flows east for thirty-five miles through
a vast, flat ranching and oil-producing area into
northwestern Hutchinson County. At State Highway 136 it
turns and flows north through rugged local escarpments to
join North Paloduro Creek in southwestern Hansford County
(at 36°06' N, 101°28' W) near the area of the old Cator
Ranch. The course of the creek is through mostly barren
land; only in local draws is the sandy soil deep enough
to support brush and grasses.
ROCK CREEK
Rock Creek rises in northern Carson County (at 35°32' N,
101°29' W) and flows north for twenty miles into the
Canadian River northwest of Borger in southwestern
Hutchinson County (at 35°44' N, 101°23' W). It runs
through flat land and rolling to steep slopes surfaced by
clay and sandy loams that support cacti, brush, and
grasses and drains the center of the Pantex oilfield, on
which the community of Bunavista is located.
HILL CREEK
Hill Creek rises in northwestern Carson County (at
35°35' N, 101°28' W) and runs north for ten miles,
across mostly flat rangeland, to its mouth on the
Canadian River, northwest of Borger in southern
Hutchinson County (at 35°44' N, 101°28' W). The stream,
formerly on the LX Ranch, drains part of the Borger and
Pantex oilfields.
CARSON CREEK
Carson (Kit Carson) Creek rises in northeastern
Hutchinson County (at 35°57' N, 101°16' W) and runs
southeast for eleven miles to its mouth on the Canadian
River (at 35°50' N, 101°12' W). It crosses flat to
rolling plains with sandy and clayey soils that support
mesquite and various grasses. The stream was named for
Col. Christopher Houston Carson, who mounted his bold but
unsuccessful attack against marauding Comanches and
Kiowas at the nearby Adobe Walls site in November 1864.
Carson Creek is now part of the Turkey Track Ranch
properties.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
BENT CREEK
Bent Creek rises in northeastern Hutchinson County (at
35°58' N, 101°16' W) and flows south for eight miles to
its mouth on the Canadian River, eleven miles northeast
of Plemons (at 35°'54 N, 101°'07 W). It crosses an area
of flat to rolling plains and sandy and clayey soils,
where the vegetation consists mainly of mesquite shrubs
and grasses. Bent Creek was named for William Bent, of
the Bent, St. Vrain, and Company trading firm, which
operated from 1832 until 1849 and in 1843 built the
short-lived trading house that gave Adobe Walls its name.
It was also the site of the first battle of Adobe Walls
in November 1864. The creek is on the Turkey Track Ranch.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
BEAR CREEK
Bear Creek rises at the junction of its east and west
forks in central Carson County (at 35°31' N, 101°18' W)
and flows to the north for seventeen miles to its mouth
on the Canadian River, northeast of Borger in southern
Hutchinson County (at 35°46' N, 101°19' W). The stream,
in the Dixon Creek Division of the Four Sixes Ranch, is
in the center of the vast Panhandle oilfield, a harsh,
mostly flat area of sandy soils that support brush,
grasses, mesquite, and cacti.
ANTELOPE CREEK
Antelope Creek starts where its east and west forks join,
northwest of Panhandle in northwestern Carson County (at
35°35' N, 101°32' W), and flows north through a
ranching and oil area for twelve miles to its mouth on
the Canadian River, east of Sanford in southwestern
Hutchinson County (at 35°44' N, 101°29' W). The stream
was once a part of the LX Ranch. It gave its name to the
Antelope Creek Focus, the common term used by
archeologists for sites of pre-Columbian Indian
slab-house ruins in the general area. The stream crosses
an area of rolling to steeply sloping terrain and loamy
and clayey soils. The vegetation includes juniper, cacti,
and sparse grasses.
ADOBE CREEK
Adobe Creek rises in its northern branch in northeastern
Hutchinson County (at 36°01' N, 101°11' W) and flows
southeast for eight miles to its mouth on the Canadian
River, twelve miles northeast of Plemons (at 35°53' N,
101°08' W). The creek crosses an area of flat to rolling
plains surfaced with mesquite and various grasses. The
stream received its name from the sandy and clayey soils
along its banks, which were used to make adobe bricks.
Bent, St. Vrain and Company used these soils to construct
their adobe trading house in 1843. The Adobe Walls
trading post of 1874 was also located near the creek (see
ADOBE WALLS, TEXAS).
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
ADOBE WALLS TRAIL
The Adobe Walls Trail, perhaps a subroute of the Jones
and Plummer Trail, ran from Dodge City, Kansas, to the
vicinity of Adobe Walls, Texas. The success of the
buffalo hunters encouraged a group of Dodge City
merchants in March 1874 to establish Adobe Walls as a
trading center on the Canadian River in Hutchinson
County. Their stores and stockade were located four miles
east of Bent's Fort, the original Adobe Walls trading
post. A. C. Meyers, who hired Ed "Dirty Face"
Jones to organize a caravan of thirty wagons, and Charles
Rath, who used his own teams, freighted in more than
$70,000 worth of goods. The route established by the
merchants and other buffalo hunters, such as J. Wright
and John Mooar,q was heavily used by hunters and hide
freighters even after Quanah Parker's raid. But after the
buffalo hunting ended, the Adobe Walls Trail became
primarily a cattle trail, while the Jones and Plummer,
the Tascosa-Dodge City, and the Fort Supply trails were
preferred by freighters and stage operators.
The Adobe Walls Trail ran due south out of Dodge City and
crossed Mulberry Creek some twelve miles out, near the
common crossing for all trails leading south from Dodge.
It then veered southwest, gradually away from the more
popular Jones and Plummer, and skirted Crooked Creek,
which it crossed near the Meade-Ford county line.
The trail caught a corner of Seward County as it angled
south toward the Cimarron crossing near the Price and
Davies Ranch headquarters in Indian Territory. It
traveled west of the Beaver River and entered Texas just
east of Palo Duro Creek, then continued to Adobe Walls on
a nearly straight line south through Hansford County east
of Horse Creek. It entered the breaks of the Canadian
River west of Adobe Creek and followed that bank to Adobe
Walls, where it extended south a few more miles to
connect with the east-west Tascosa Trail.
The trail varied as travelers picked it up at different
points or branched off to travel other routes. The Adobe
Walls Trail remained generally on the high, dry flats,
which provided grass but limited access to water. Ranches
were few, and landmarks were scarce. Though the trail was
a somewhat quicker route to Dodge from the western
Panhandle than the others, by the late 1880s it had been
abandoned.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison,
Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the 1874
Trading Post (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1986). Harry E. Chrisman, Lost Trails of the
Cimarron (Denver: Sage, 1961). Frederick W. Rathjen, The
Texas Panhandle Frontier (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1973).
C. Robert Haywood
PANHANDLE WATER
CONSERVATION AUTHORITY
The Panhandle Water Conservation Authority was
established in 1937 by the Forty-fifth Legislature as a
state agency to control, store, and distribute the waters
of the Red, Canadian, and Brazos rivers and their
tributaries for domestic, municipal, flood control,
irrigation, power, and other useful purposes. One of the
largest conservation districts in the state, it included
forty counties of the Panhandle and South Plains area.
The forty-man board of directors consisted of one
director appointed from each county by the county
commissioners' court for a three-year term, with
one-third retiring annually. The principal office of the
authority was located in Amarillo.
To 1949 the authority had aided in securing the
construction of six dams and reservoirs: Buffalo Lake,
with a capacity of 18,121 acre-feet, in Deaf Smith and
Randall counties; Rita Blanca Lake, with a capacity of
12,100 acre-feet, in Hartley County; McClellan Creek
Lake, with a capacity of 5,005 acre-feet, in Gray County;
Tule Lake, in Swisher County on a tributary of Red River;
Boggy Creek Lake, in Hemphill County; and Wolf Creek
Lake, on a tributary of the Canadian River in Ochiltree
County. Wolf Creek Lake was washed away by a flash flood
in 1947. The six reservoirs were built primarily for soil
conservation, flood control, recreation, and promotion of
wildlife.
The investigations of flood control and related water
problems of the Canadian River basin, conducted since
1935 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, were
compiled in an unpublished survey report dated September
16, 1946. This report stated that a large reservoir
situated on the Canadian somewhere between the Texas-New
Mexico line and Union, Oklahoma, would help stem flooding
in the valley downstream. Sanford and Tascosa were
singled out as the most practical sites for such a
reservoir. In 1947 the Federal Bureau of Reclamation
resumed surveys of the basin it had initiated in January
1941 but had suspended because of World War II.
These investigations resulted in a series of meetings in
the spring of 1949 with representatives from a number of
High Plains cities interested in obtaining water from the
Canadian. At Plainview on June 17, 1949, plans for a
water project were presented, and the Canadian River
Water Users' Association was formed. The association, led
by Austin A. Meredith and representatives from eleven
cities, next sought authorization for its proposed
project from both Washington and Austin. Although the
Panhandle Water Conservation Authority had contemplated
playing a leading role in the construction of the
Canadian River dam, it ceased to exist after the Canadian
River Municipal Water Authority was authorized by the
state legislature in November 1953.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hutchinson County Historical Commission,
History of Hutchinson County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor,
1980). U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Canadian River Project
in Texas (Washington: GPO, 1950).
Comer Clay
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CANADIAN RIVER
The Canadian River, the largest tributary of the Arkansas
River, rises in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in
southern Las Animas County, Colorado, near Raton Pass and
the boundary line with Colfax County, New Mexico (at
37°01' N, 105°03' W), and flows south and
southeastward, separating the Llano Estacado from the
northern High Plains. It is roughly 760 miles long; a
stretch of about 190 miles is in Texas. The river is
dammed to form the Conchas and Ute reservoirs in
northeastern New Mexico before it enters Texas at about
the midpoint of the western boundary of Oldham County.
The Canadian crosses the Panhandle, flowing eastward and
northeastward through Oldham, Potter, Moore, Hutchinson,
Roberts, and Hemphill counties. Most of the river's
course across the Panhandle passes through a gorge 500 to
800 feet below the plateau. Particularly in its lower
reaches in Oklahoma, the riverbed contains great amounts
of quicksand; this and the deep gorge make the river
difficult to bridge.
A tributary, the North Canadian, heads in Union County,
New Mexico (at 36°30' N, 102°09' W), and flows briefly
into the northern Texas Panhandle before continuing on to
its confluence with the river in McIntosh County,
Oklahoma (at 36°30' N, 101°55' W). After crossing the
state line back into Oklahoma, the Canadian River flows
generally southeastward to its mouth on the Arkansas
River, twenty miles east of Canadian in Haskell County,
Oklahoma (at 35°27' N, 95°02' W).
According to some sources, the river's name came from
early explorers who thought that it flowed into Canada.
Among the Canadian's principal tributaries in Texas are
Big Blue, Tallahone, Red Deer, Pedarosa, Punta Agua,
Amarillo, Tascosa, and White Deer creeks. The Texas
portion of the Canadian River is noted for archeological
sites where extensive remains of Pueblo Indian culture
have been found. Some historians have said that Quivira
Province, long sought by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado,
was on the Canadian.
The Canadian is probably the stream that Juan de Oñate
called the Magdalena in 1601. The area was Comanche
country until the latter part of the 1800s, but the
stream was well known to the Comancheros, to Josiah
Gregg, and to others engaged in trade out of St. Louis or
Santa Fe. Lt. James William Abert of the United States
Army Corps of Topographical Engineers explored the river
in 1845 and made an extensive report of its physical
features and of the Indians whom he encountered. With the
decimation of the buffalo, cattlemen replaced Indians in
the area, and, except for oil developments, the Canadian
valley in Texas remained in 1949 principally a ranching
area.
The river is dammed to form Lake Meredith forty miles
northeast of Amarillo near Sanford in Hutchinson County.
The Panhandle Water Conservation Authority as early as
1949 was contemplating construction of Sanford Dam to
create a reservoir of some 1,305,000 acre-feet capacity
that would furnish a municipal water supply for eleven
Panhandle cities and serve the secondary purposes of
flood control, soil conservation, recreation, and
promotion of wildlife; actual impoundment of water did
not begin until 1965.
Lake Meredith is named for A. A. Meredith, who was
executive secretary of the Canadian River Municipal Water
Authority. An aqueduct to serve Pampa, Amarillo, Lubbock,
Lamesa, Borger, Levelland, Littlefield, O'Donnell,
Slaton, and Tahoka was estimated to cost $54 million.
Cities purchasing the water would repay the major part of
the cost of the project over a period of fifty years. The
Canadian River Compact Commissioner, appointed in 1951,
negotiates with other states regarding the water of the
Canadian. The National Park Service assumed management of
recreational facilities at Lake Meredith in 1965.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Summary of the Preliminary Plan for
Proposed Water Resources Development in the Canadian
River Basin (Austin: Texas Water Development Board,
1966). Texas Planning Board, The Canadian River Basin in
Texas (Austin, 1936). U.S. Army Corps of Topographical
Engineers, Guadal P'a: The Journal of Lieutenant J. W.
Abert, from Bent's Fort to St. Louis in 1845 (Canyon,
Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1941).
Hobart Huson
This page was last updated June 9, 2004.