Brazos River by myrrhluz
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Description
When looking over my pictures from the airplane, I noticed some distinctive features and decided to see if I could locate any of them with Google maps. It is a lot of fun, like playing a matching game. I had some success and here is the first.
This is the Brazos River about 60 miles west of Houston , Texas. The large feature is Cannons Lake. The early Spanish explorers called it Rio de los Brazos de Dios (The River of the Arms of God). The various explanations given for this name, all relate to its being the first water found by very thirsty people. It is the longest river in Texas and the 11th longest in the US (1280 miles/ 2060 km from its sourse in Blackwater Draw, New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf o Mexico. On its way south it passes through Waco, Texas and past College Station, Texas (the home of Texas A & M University.
The river is dammed in three places. At one point there were plans for 13 dams along it. The last of the three was Granbury dam. Its proposed building was the impetus for John Graves' book, "Goodbye to a River", which contains many stories of the history and settlement of the river and the areas around it. The success of this book is believed to have been a major reason why more dams weren't built. It has been compared to Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" in its impact as a work promoting conservation. Nineteen major reservoirs are located along the Brazos. The river is an important source of power and irrigation.
The Brazos River can also be heard prominently in many prison songs. For a time, nearly every prison in Texas was near it.
The highway that can be seen running across the top of the second image and a little further down on the first is Interstate 10. I travel it frequently and will be looking to see the Brazos River as I go by in 3 days. I-10 is the fourth largest interstate in the US and stretches from the Pacific coast at State Route 1 in Santa Monica, California to I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida. Between my travels as a child from New Jersey to Louisiana, and as an adult from California to Louisiana, I have traveled most of it. It is 2,460mi/3959km in length, of which 879mi/1418km go through Texas.
(Information that is not of a personal nature is from wikipedia)
