I read that the flood of 1913 essentially merged the Brazos and Colorado rivers to form a 65 mile wide lake south of Columbus. In addition, it says that flood caused the Brazos to change course .

Anyone know if it changed course simply upriver or actually changed where it entered the gulf from somewhere else to where it is now in Freeport?

This is the best I've found via the googles that mentions the river changing course.

http://www.brazos.org/brazoshistory.asp

climate change

Can you imagine if something like that happened today, and the waco area was flooded? I think you're looking at $3 - $5 million in improvements.

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I read that the flood of 1913 essentially merged the Brazos and Colorado rivers to form a 65 mile wide lake south of Columbus. In addition, it says that flood caused the Brazos to change course .

Anyone know if it changed course simply upriver or actually changed where it entered the gulf from somewhere else to where it is now in Freeport?

This is the best I've found via the googles that mentions the river changing course.

http://www.brazos.org/brazoshistory.asp

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That timeline makes it sound like it did change the location where it entered the gulf. I don't know, you might be able to pull the old location out of a topo map or something

1835 map of Texas has the Brazos just east of Velasco, which was annexed into Freeport. I'll see what the other maps say.

The 3 main stem reservoirs can really help prevent flooding if operated properly by the Brazos River Authority.
But they came very close to having some serious flooding in summer of 2008.

1844 map shows East of Velasco, west of Brazoria. One note, look at Brazosport High School on Google maps satellite view. Located between the Brazos and what may be the old river bed. The shape is right, and by estimate it's less than 200 yards of land separating the river from this RIA.

Not sure though, that change may have been made when they put in the levees.

Cool, thanks for the info.

Oldest map the USGS has is 1943, prior to the Flood Control Act of 1962, which put in the Corps Of Engineers Levees, and it has that same separation of the river and ria. However, seems the Corps levees extended some that had been in place since the 40's.

Where are you finding these older maps?

This may help

www.historicaerials.com

A guy I work with is obsessed with metal detecting and uses this to learn about an area.

Update, found some more info. Appears that is a diversion dam, put in between 1935 and 1943. 81st Congress, First session, document 195 has more info, and references to earlier documents that may pinpoint more exactly. Sorry for the small constant and potentially contradictory updates, looking at this between calls and it's hard to get the full picture.

Some are USGS maps, most available as free files on USGS.gov. Others are links and files included in the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection on t.u.'s library site. If you look into those, focus on the ones that are from the time period. Some of the new ones are modern maps with stuff like army movements mapped out, and won't reflect changes to the land itself. And thanks for the question. I like history and maps, and it's been an interesting diversion.

It changed course in quite a few spots in addition to where it enters the gulf. I actually duck hunt one of the "oxbow" lakes created in that flood.

Thanks a lot Woodrow.

Interesting graphic on old mouth of the Brazos and diversion to the west.

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Can you imagine if something like that happened today, and the waco area was flooded? I think you're looking at $3 - $5 million in improvements.

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I think you're severely underestimating the amount of blight Waco puts on the Texas landscape

look in burleson county (next to brazos county) on google earth, you can see where the river once ran to the west of its current position. not sure when that shift happened.

It was diverted in the 1935 -40 timeframe to provide an uninterrupted supply of Salt water for the Magnesium plants in Freeport in support of the war.
The plants were later sold to the Dow Chemical Co .
It also created a deep water harbor.
You can see it on google earth where the harbor and river are separated by a small road /leve a couple of miles up river from the gulf.

I was born in the old Freeport hospital. I have a great uncle that has passed, but he used to talk about that old Magnesium plant. He said it discharged a ton of lime and would attract monster tarpon. Said it was quite common to catch tarpon in the area at the time.

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I was born in the old Freeport hospital. I have a great uncle that has passed, but he used to talk about that old Magnesium plant. He said it discharged a ton of lime and would attract monster tarpon. Said it was quite common to catch tarpon in the area at the time.

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i was born in the Dow hospital also.

I was actually looking for some good Brazos River books and noticed this one came out on May 1.

Any history buffs heard of this yet? Written by an instructor at Angelo State University.

Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River

Dragging this post back up- Traces of Texas on Facebook has a post that got me reading up on the flood!! Anyone GIS guys that have made or could make a map of the flood? I live south of Waco near the Brazos, it would be awesome to see!

Don't Let Me Die In Waco
Beats on us Ags a bit but it's a hell of a song