Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring, 1991 Page: 5
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assuring the growth of his settlement, soon named
Dallas.
In June 1843, to speed the river's development,
Bryan and John Beeman, one of the first
settlers, set fire to a large raft of driftwood that
obstructed the river's flow a few miles downstream
from Dallas. Bryan was encouraged in his attempts
by Colonel Jacob Elliot, who earlier in the year had
navigated the Trinity from Magnolia (near Palestine)
to Dallas in five days, using a canoe dug out of a large
cottonwood tree. Elliot reported to the Clarksville
Northern Standard that, with the removal of two or
three small rafts and a few leaning trees, steamboats
could ascend with little difficulty. He predicted that
within ten years "the citizens of the Red River
counties will find it more advantageous to direct
their trade to Galveston by the Trinity than to continue
it by Red River to New Orleans."3 Another visitor to
the area in 1844, E. B. Ely, an agent for the Peters
Colony, concurred with Elliott's Trinity River assessment,
noting in a letter to the Northern Standard
that "two thousand dollars judiciously expended
would remove the entire obstruction."4 With these
newspaper articles began the first expressions of
dreams and visions for the Trinity River, dreams and
visions notable even then for a tendency to overestimate
the possibilities and underestimate the cost.
Settlers did come to Bryan's town of
Dallas, and they quickly recognized the desirability
for river transportation both for crops going to market
and for the supplies that had to be brought by wagon
from the nearest port of Jefferson in East Texas, a two
to three week trip in good weather.5 But the Trinity
River had a major problem: its water flow was never
reliable. One French colonist at La Reunion noted in
1855 that ". . . this year it has not been navigable at
all. At Dallas, its bed is not wider than 30 feet; it has
been dry in a great many places."6 Some innovative
folks suggested a solution to this problem in 1848:
cut a canal from the Red River to the head of the
Trinity, and the volume of water in the Red River,
west of the head of the Trinity, could be turned into
it.7 Bryan and two Dallas settlers, J. M. Crockett and
the Rev. James A. Smith, tried a different approach.
They attended a convention in Huntsville in 1849 to
garner support for making the Trinity a highway to
Galveston, but nothing came from their efforts.8
Undaunted, the Reverend Smith (who, in
addition to his labors as a Methodist minister and
founder of the First Methodist Church in Dallas, hadalso built the first cotton gin in the county) decided in
1852 to send his cotton crop to market by riverboat.
Since no Mississippi River style ster-wheelers had
made it to Dallas, Smith built a flatboat which he
named the Dallas and set off on March 2, 1852, with
twenty-two bales of cotton and several bundles of
cow hides. Powered by pole and oars, the Dallas got
as far as Porter's Bluff, some 80-90 miles south by
river, in four months, only to find the water
there too low to continue. The cotton bales had to
be loaded on a wagon and sent overland to Houston.9
Word of Smith's lack of success apparently
had not reached Washington, D.C., for that
same year (1852) Congress authorized a survey of
the Trinity River which resulted in a report characterizing
the Trinity as "the deepest and least obstructed
river in the State of Texas," and declaring,
"for purposes of navigation, this stream is practicable
during the time of high water for about 600
miles; during low water, at present, for 100."10 It
would be well to note that the point at which the
West and Elm Forks merge, considered the start of
the Trinity and a short distance above the settlement
of Dallas, is some 505 miles from the mouth. So, as
early as 1853, engineers were precluding navigation
of the Trinity as far as Dallas except during periods
of "high water."
Although the U. S. Congress declined to act
on the favorable report, in 1858 the Texas Legislature
approved $315,000 for river improvements throughout
the state. The Trinity's only benefit from these
funds, however, was the clearing of a bar from its
mouth. This action allowed a rather healthy steamboat
traffic as far north as Trinidad in Kaufman
County and Porter's Bluff in Ellis County.
AW JITH THE ADVENT OF THE Civil War, efforts to
make the Trinity navigable to Dallas halted.
After the war, Dallas residents convinced the Texas
legislature to charter the Trinity River Black Water
Navigation Company, with authority to establish permanent
navigation year round from Dallas to
Galveston." This company left no record of any
success. Its efforts may have been delayed by a flood
in May 1866, which caused the Trinity to rise to the
second floor of Mrs. Sarah Cockrell's home adjacent
to her toll bridge over the river at Commerce Street,
and inundated the east side of town when it caused Mill
Creek and Dallas Branch to back up, leaving Dallas
almost surrounded by water.'2
5
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Dallas County Heritage Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring, 1991, periodical, 1991; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35118/m1/7/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.