Red River of the South
Rust-colored border river between Texas and Oklahoma
The Red River takes its color from the iron-rich red beds it cuts through on the southern plains, and for much of its 1,360-mile (2,190 km) course it also draws a political line. Its Prairie Dog Town Fork rises in the Texas Panhandle and carves Palo Duro Canyon before the river settles in as the border between Texas and Oklahoma, then between Texas and Arkansas. It crosses Louisiana past Shreveport and Alexandria and ends in the Atchafalaya River, linked to the Mississippi through the Old River Control Structure. The qualifier of the South separates it from the Red River of the North.
The border has been fought over in court for more than a century. A mapping error left both Texas and the federal government claiming the land between the river's forks, a dispute the Supreme Court settled for the United States in 1896. Oklahoma and Texas finally fixed the line at the vegetation line on the south bank in a compact approved by Congress in 2000. Downstream, the Great Raft, a logjam well over 100 miles (160 km) long, choked the river for centuries. Captain Henry Shreve began clearing it in 1833, and the job was finished in 1873. Denison Dam, completed in 1943, holds back Lake Texoma.