San Jacinto River (Texas)
Catchment area of the San Jacinto River
Template: Infobox River / Obsolete
The San Jacinto River is a 45 km long river in the southeast of the U.S. state of Texas and runs from the dam of Lake Houston in Harris County on Galveston Bay. Until 1858 the area was home to the Karankawa.
The San Jacinto River is formed from two arms which are known as East Fork and West Fork. The western branch is 145 km long, initially fed Lake Conroe and then flows south through the Montgomery County, to then form the eastern arm in northeast Harris County jointly Lake Houston. The eastern arm rises in San Jacinto County, north of the Sam Houston National Forests and has a length of around 110 km. It then flows south through Cleveland in Liberty County and empties into Lake Houston one at the northern end.
The catchment area covers 10,297 km ². It flows through an area that leads to a great extent by sandy or loamy terrain and only a few meters above sea level. Its shores are overgrown with pines, elms, oaks and willows.
Below the Lake Houston San Jacinto River flows along with the Buffalo Bayou and fed together with this the Houston Ship Channel, a waterway that was created in 1914 to connect Houston with the sea. This consists of the depressed and widened lower reaches of Buffalo Bayou and a fairway in the Galveston Bay. Since the possibility of the lower reaches of the San Jacinto was deepened, the river on the last 32 km of its course is navigable. The lower river is under the influence of the tides.
On the banks of the river swollen by rains, the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 during the Texas Revolution fought. On the site today is a monument, the San Jacinto Monument. The history of the area around the river is full of change. Once located in the border area between French and Spanish colonial interests, this is probably the river, whose course was first explored under the name Aranzazu 1746 by the Spanish captain Joaqun Orobio y Basterra. For the origin of the name of the river there are two interpretations. Jacinto could either go back to the Spanish expression for the hyacinths, which drove on the surface, on the other hand the estuary on the feast day of Saint Hyacinth was discovered, which falls on the 17th of August.