Just on the east side of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, almost at ten thousand feet, the Canadian River starts its tumble downward through a small piece of Colorado, into the New Mexico northern mountains, just east of Raton, the Sabinoso Wilderness is poured out of its banks in deep, deep valleys. It is dammed at Conchas Lake and Ute Lake, turns east, finds itself dammed again at Lake Merideth in the center of the Texas panhandle. It's northern border at Llano Estacdo separates it from the Great Plains, and then it rolls slowly down past Oklahoma City and falls into to Lake Eufaula at 422' elevation.
Across this wide and unearthly flight from the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas to the bare plains of Oklahoma, this river has watched and listened and seen more than we can imagine. Belle Star rounded up Eufaula, Oklahoma in her own way.
The mud and sinking grounds that have held the river in Oklahoma separating north from the south, Indian Land from White Land; holding a water basin outside of Stinnett Texas on white, caliche based soil, through canyons west across New Mexico, and in the the mountains of Colorado, the Canadian has rolled quiet, softly, slowley, through this valley region for centuries.
In 1818, the Quapaw tribe ceded all its land north of the Canadian to the United States, thus making this river the effective southern boundary of the new nation. In 1825, the Osage ceded their claims to land along the river. The Canadian was designated as the boundary between the Creek-Seminole lands on the north side and the Choctaw (and later the Chickasaw) on the south side. Major Stephen H. Long led an expedition up the Canadian River in 1821.
This seemingly tiny piece of rock and steel and concrete, portrays the rolling tide of railroad moving across the land of Oklahoma, before it was a state, and building a railroad bridge across the South Canadian, before it was truly Oklahoma, and carrying the goods meant for the world north and south into Texas, designated and built in 1907.
The new bridge stands behind, the old bridge, made with the heart and souls of the railroad men of over a hundred years ago, lies beneath the water most of the time, but still shows its head by looking across the valley.
Ralph Peck
Photograph by Marla Bolton
Eufaula, Oklahoma
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