Whether you're driving south or north over Interstate 35E to pass by downtown Dallas, poor you, you'll eventually cross the Trinity River. The bridges appear more imposing than the actual stream, because unless it's been raining really hard, it looks more like a ditch than a real river.
Here's some more pity: this poor river. It's been subjected to so much re-configuration that today, you'd never know what it once looked like.
Origin story next to the Red River
Like all Texas rivers -- save for its border rivers, like the Red and the Rio Grande -- the Trinity River originates in Texas and leaves Texas at the Gulf of Mexico. Even its source is its own: the springs that feed its three "Forks" (which is why the Spanish called it the Trinity River, in a nod to Catholicism) are both the Trinity and Seymour aquifers. These sources are adjacent to the Red River but are not part of the Red River. The Elm Fork originates near St. Jo in Montague County, Texas; the West Fork begins near Antelope in Jack County, Texas; and the East Fork has its start in Grayson County near Dorchester.
In Dallas, once briefly known as the Fork of the Trinity, the West and Elm forks meet east of Irving. Beyond this point, the river becomes known as the Trinity. The final convergence of its three forks, the East Fork, enters the Trinity in a very lonely part of Ellis County near the former riverboat town of Rosser.
A Navigable River
The West, Elm, and East forks of the Trinity River meander through a rapidly changing landscape. The rivers slice through the ever-growing Dallas Fort Worth metro-mess, and the mouth of the Trinity River is located at Houston, the country's fourth-largest city. This means that well over 10 million (!) people call the Trinity River basin home... and that means that the river is most definitely used and abused. Today, 32 (!!) lakes are fed by the Trinity River. Some were built the Army Corps of Engineers and some were impounded by municipalities to secure their drinking water, but all were constructed in the 20th century.
Prior to the building of these lakes, Texans wanted the Trinity River to serve river traffic between Dallas and Houston. In the latter half of the 19th century, boats were already steaming up and down the Trinity River, but they had a difficult time getting to Dallas due to floods, swamps, fords, and competing railroads. Then, based partly on the Kessler Plan of 1911, the US Army Corps of Engineers began constructing a system of locks and dams in the 1910s to help keep water level and available in the river for barge traffic. The project called for 37 locks and dams, but only seven were built (not necessarily completed), as the advent of the Great War (in the US, 1917 to 1919) led to funding cuts and ultimately, the end of the project.
Dallas ain't Done
Even though the lock and dam system had been derailed, the city of Dallas nonetheless hoped for a use for its river. But the Trinity's flood plain had other plans: the river often left its banks to soak large swaths of Dallas county. While the downtown core stood on a bluff and was spared deluge, the flood plain extended almost a half mile west of the county courthouse. West Dallas was especially vulnerable, and during periods of major flooding, Dallas could be cut off from its sister city, Oak Cliff.
Thus, in the late 1920s, the country's largest public works project (at that time) commenced along the Trinity River at Dallas: to curtail flooding, 30-foot-tall levies were built in the river's flood plain, and the channel was diverted, straightened, and sandwiched between the levies west of downtown. Now dry, the original river bed eventually became the infamous "Triple Underpass" and, by the 1930s, the path for Interstate 35E.
The Trinity River at Dallas Today
It's easy to surmise that Dallas kinda-sorta regrets its overly-ambitious idea to push its river away. What should have been a long-running solution to flood control that kept the environment and the city relatively intact, the city fast-tracked a quick and ill-advised response to natural phenomena. Thus, instead of building higher bridges, planning for elevations, forbidding development in flood zones, and so on, the city just simply turned its back on the river that was the impetus of its founding.
While the city can't turn back time, it continues to strive, halfheartedly, to rectify the neglect afforded the Trinity River. The Trinity River Corridor project has its ups and downs: the Audubon Center, a decided positive, is flanked by neglected portions of the Trinity River Forest trails, a decided negative. Unscrupulous developers are destroying the channel's historic and natural landscapes, too. Near Wilmer and Hutchins, the watershed is pock-marked by sand pits and discarded junk. Closer to downtown, multi-million dollar buildings and homes are displacing long-time residents.
I feel so sorry for the Trinity.
