Excerpt from Surface Conditions and Stream FlowWhy has the Red River constantly changed its ¿ow toward steadi ness and uniformity, while many other rivers have changed in exactly the opposite direction? The area of the Red River drainage basin above Arthur City, Tex, where the records were made, is square miles, divided almost equally between Oklahoma and Texas. In this river, as in those before mentioned, the geology and topog raphy have not changed. The precipitation has changed consider ably in the direction of lessened rainfall, but not enough to account for the record. In soil conditions, and especially in the condition of the surface, however, the change has been marked. At the beginning of the period of measurement, in 1890, the country was for the most part occupied by large ranches. The native prairie sod had never been broken up.On the part of the watershed lying in Texas there had been some settlement at an early date, but as late as 1900 no more than 12 per cent of the Texas part of the watershed had been improved. In the Oklahoma part of the basin, in the same year, the improved portion was 16 per cent. Development began most extensively about 1900. In southwestern Oklahoma, in that portion drained by the Red River it was stimulated by the Opening of Indian reservations to settlement. The Cheyenne, the Arapahoe, and the ivichita lands were opened, it is true, in 1890, but the real Opening of the country to settlers came in 1901, when the Comanche, the Apache, and other Indian lands were opened, aggregating over 10 000 square miles, or more than one fourth of the entire Red River basin above Arthur City. Another tract of over 8 000 square miles, the Choctaw and Chickasaw lands began its development about the same time. A summary of these figures shows that in 1908 the Red River basin in Oklahoma had square miles of improved land, instead of square miles in 1900. Statistics are not complete for the Texas portion of this basin but the Texas portion has developed at about the same rate as the Oklahoma part. It is probable that the whole Red River basin above Arthur City, in T exas and Oklahoma, had 40 per cent of its land un der improvement in 1908 instead of 14 per cent eight years earlier.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.