During the time between the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Adams-de Onís
Treaty of 1819, the location of the boundary between American Louisiana and
Spanish Texas was uncertain. While the diplomats and politicians wasted time
and accomplished little, the respective American and Spanish generals in the
region took matters into their own hands and established a de-facto neutral zone
by signed agreement. The eastern boundary of this zone ascended the west bank
of the Calcasieu River from mouth to head before heading directly overland to
another stream farther north.
About 20 years ago, as an experiment in demarcation, I decided to locate the
head of the Calcasieu River on the landscape. It's about 14 miles northeast of
here, at the red crossmark on the TopoZone map at
http://tinyurl.com/2k56z .
It's a pine forest, kept clear of underbrush by controlled burning, so it was
easy to access the streamcourse from a woods road on a nearby ridge.
I didn't know whether to expect a spring or what, but the actual course was dry
for a few hundred yards above the first moisture. It was obviously a
streamcourse kept bare of vegetation by flowing water, at least when it rains.
Since the generals' agreement placed the boundary on the west bank of the river,
I applied the theory that a stream's bed is distinguished from its bank by the
lack of vegetation. Therefore, I concluded that the official head of the river
should be placed at the upper end of its bed, thus defined. Since any line from
that point to the ridge would have had no west bank, I saw not need for the
boundary to go there.
The several other imaginary boundary commissioners concurred with my decision.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA