The Trinity River
Longest river lying entirely within Texas. The watershed of the Trinity covers 17,969 square miles, an area larger than any one of the nine smallest states of the Union. More than 20 per cent of the people in Texas reside in this area-- more people than in any one of the 24 least populous states.
The first recorded exclusive navigation rights to the Trinity were given by Mexico in 1833 to District Commissioner J. Francisco Madero, but before he could exercise his rights, the Texas revolution intervened.
As early as 1838, during the Republic of Texas, steamboat navigation had begun on the Trinity. The famous steamer "Ellen Frankland" plied it regularly. In 1852 a survey authorized by the
U. S. Congress reported that "the Trinity River is the deepest and least obstructed river in Texas". The river played a vital role in the Civil War, when a company of Alabama-Coushatta Indians transported key military supplies and boats from Anderson County to waiting Confederate officials in Liberty. Until 1874 steamers chugged from Galveston to as far north as Porter's Bluff in Ellis County. Under the River and Harbor Act of 1955, Congress authorized the comprehensive development of the Trinity Basin's water resources.