GUADALUPE RIVER I the Handbook of Texas Online! Texas State Hi
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GUADALUPE RIVER I The Handbook of Texas Online! Texas State Hi. .. http://w w w .ishaonl i ne .org/handbook/onl i ne/ articles/rngO .\ 'l'!:.'!'.:J;i .:.;1~.d~ '-..I-/ ;; '-..\ GUADALUPE RIVER GUADALUPE RIVER. The Guadalupe River rises in two forks in western Kerr Cou11y. Its North Fork begins just south of State Highway 41, four miles from the Real-Kerr county line (at 30°06' N, 99°39' W), and runs east for twenty-two miles to its confluence with the South For!<, near Hunt (at 30°04' N, 99°20' W). The South Fo rk rises three miles southwest of the intersection of State Highway 39 and Farm Road 187 (at 29°56' N, 99°35' W) and runs northeast for twenty miles to meet the North Fork. After the two branches converge, the GuadaUJ>e River proper flows southeast for 230 miles, passing through Kerr, Kendal, Comal, Guadalupe, Gonzales, DeWitt, and Victoria counties. II then forms the boundary between southern Victoria County and Calhoun County and between Calholr! and Refugio counties before reaching Its mouth on San Antonio Bay (at 28°26' N, 96°48' W). The Guadalupe's principal tributaries are the Comal and the San Marcos rivers. Its drainage area Is about 6 ,070 square miles. The tpper Guadall4Je flows across part of the Edwards Plateau. Near the river, high limestone bluffs Sl.WC>rt bald cypress, mesql..ite, and grasses. The Balcones falM! line, which the river crosses near New Braunfels, marks the transition to the coastal plains. Sections of the t.pper and middle reaches of the river are sl..itable for canoeing, but a number of small waterfals prevent 1r1interr....,ted navigation of the entire river. The lower Guadalupe Is generally much quieter and has more sand bars that lend themselves to camping and day use. The name Guadalupe, or Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, has been applied to the present river, at least in its lower course. since 1689, iMlen the stream was so named by Alonso pe Le6n. Domingo Teran de los Rios, who maintained a colony on the river from 1691 to 1693, renamed it San Agustin, but the name Guadal._.,a continued to be used. Most of the early explorers, including Father Isidro Felix de Espinosa. Domingo Ramon, and the Marques de Aguayo, called the Guadaupe River the San Yb6n above its junction with the Comal, and referred to the Comal River as the Guadalupe. Above the motth of the Comal the name Guadalt.pe was appied to the present river at least as early as 1727, vblo Pedro de Rivera y Vilal6n so referred to it. Artifacts dating from the Archaic era have been found in the Guadal._.,a River valley, suggesting that the area has st.pported human habitation for several thousand years. The peoples encountered by earfy explorers belonged to the To nkawa, Waco, Lipan Apache, and Karankawa Indians. These earty inhabitants were gradually displaced by settlers from Mexico, Europe, and the United States. European settlement along the Guadak4Je began as early as the 1720s, iMlen the Spanish established several missions above the site of present Victoria. In 1755 the short·tived San Xavier MissiOn was established near San Marco s Springs. For a brief time in 1808 a settlement grew 1,.:> at the intersection of the Guadalupe River and the Old San Anto nio Road. but flooding and the threat of Indian raids made the site untenable. Settlements of a more permanent nature along the Guadalupe were not long in coming, however. Martin De Le6n established Victoria near the mouth of the river in 1824, and in 1825 James Kerr four-dad Gonzales sixty miles f!Xlher upstream, v.t.ere on the sotth bank a historic marker has been placed to commemorate the firing of the first shot for Texas independence in the battle of Goozales (October 2, 1835). During the 1830s some thirty or forty I of 3 3/28/201 2 I :50 Pl\ GUADALUPE RIVER I The Handbook of Texas Online! Texas State Hi ... http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rngO families homesteaded along the banks of the lower Guadaklpe, which was an early boundary of the Power and Hewetson colony. Settlement farther upriver increased in the late 1830s. Seguin (then called Walnut Springs) was surveyed by Benjamin McCulloch in 1839, and New Braunfels was founded in 1845 by a group of German settlers led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. In 1856 Kerrville was estab~shed on the l4>Per Guadalupe. The construction of railroads through the middle and \4)per Guadalq>e valey in the 1880s brougi. large runbers of new residents to the area. Kerrville, Comfort, Luling, and Cuero were among the smal communities on the Guadalq>e that prospered with the arrival of the railroads. Projects to make the Guadalupe navigable were approved by the Mexican govemment in the late 1820s and early 1830s, but these were intern4)ted by the Texas Revolution. Some improvements to the lower reaches of the river were alAhorized by the Reoublic of Texas in the 1B40s and by the Texas legislatixe in the 1B50s. Large snags in the Guadak.pe above Victoria made travel upriver impossible, but commercial routes were developed from Victoria to ports on the Gull of Mexico. River traffic declined after the completion of the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway from Victoria to Port Lavaca in 1861. Interest in the river's potential navigabitity was renewed in the early 1900s, but a 1935 study by the United States Army Corps of Engineers pronounced st.eh a project economically unfeasible. Instead, the corps proposed a canal paralelng the river to comect Victoria with the ili.tt lntracoastal Waterway. The proposal was reviewed in 1950, and constrt.elion began soon thereafter. The thirty-five-mile Victoria Barge Canal was opened to commercial traffic in the mid·1960s, thus eliminating the need to improve the Guadalupe itself for such a purpose. The steady flow from the springs that feed the Guadalupe and its tributaries have made the river an attractive source of waterpower. The Guadalupe Waterpower Company was estabtished in 1912, and by 1920 the company had bl.ilt a series of dams between New Bralrlfels and Seguin in an effort to hamess the river's power. Flooding, however, continued to be a problem. In 1933 the state legislatixe established the Guad8!uoe·B1anco River Autlloritv to oversee the control, storage, and distribution of water from the Guadalupe and Blanco rivers. In 1958 the corps of engineers, in cooperation with the river authority, began construction of the dam at Canyon Lake several miles 14>river from New Braunfels. After its completion in 1964, the dam provided the first effective flood control for areas downstream. DIXlng the early 1990s the Guadak.pe River contiooed to play a critical role in providing the sixrounding area with power, water, and recreation. Kerrville, New Bralrlfels, San Marcos, Seguin, Gonzales, and Victoria, as well as smaUer communities such as Prairie Lea and Fentress, relied on the river lo r their municipal water supply. At least six power stations in the middle and lower portions of the river depended on a steady release of water from Canyon Dam, and the construction of several more such stations was under consideration. Recreation on the river, which included canoeing and inner-ti.bing as we• as water parks and the faciNties available at Canyon Lake and Guadalupe River State Pall<;, attracted large ntxnibers of people to the vicinity and contrib!.Aed heavily to the area's economy. BIBLIOGRAPHY: An Analysis of Texas Watetways (Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 1974). Albert Terry Lowman, The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority: A Study in the Politics of Watershed Development (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1963). Vertical Files, Doph Briscoe Center for American History, Universily of Texas at Austin (Guadaklpe River, Gulf lntracoastal Waterway). Water for Texas, Vol. 1: A Comprehensive Plan for the Future; Vol. 2: Technical Appendix (Austin: Texas Department of Water Resources, 1984). 2 of:1 3/28/2012 I :50 P~ GUADALUPE RIVER !The Handbook of Texas OnlinelTexas State Hi ... http://www. tshaonl i ne.org/handbook/o nl i ne/anic les/rngO I Citation Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article. Vivian E~zabelh Smyrl, "GUADALUPE RIVER." Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonhne.org!handbookfonflne/articleslrnaOl), accessed February 27, 2012. Pubfished by the Texas State Historical Association. 3of3 3128/2012 I :50 P~ .