The Medina River is located in south central

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, United States, in the

Medina Valley Medina Valley, also known as the Medina River Valley, is an area in south central Texas containing the Medina River, Lake Medina, and the Medina Dam. It serves to drain the Balcones Escarpment of the Texas Hill Country and irrigate the fire contain ...

. It was also known as the Rio Mariano, Rio San Jose, or Rio de Bagres (Catfish river). Its source is in springs in the

Edwards Plateau The Edwards Plateau is a geographic region at the crossroads of Central Texas, Central, South Texas, South, and West Texas. It is bounded by the Balcones Fault to the south and east, the Llano Uplift and the Llano Estacado to the north, and the ...

in northwest

Bandera County, Texas Bandera County (Spanish: "flag", ) is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. It is located in the Hill Country and its county seat is Bandera. As of the 2020 census, the population is 20,851. Bandera County is part of the San Antonio-New Brau ...

and merges with the

San Antonio River The San Antonio River is a major waterway that originates in central Texas in a cluster of springs in midtown San Antonio, about 4 miles north of downtown, and follows a roughly southeastern path through the state. It eventually feeds into the ...

in southern

Bexar County, Texas Bexar County ( or ; es, Béxar ) is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in South Texas and its county seat is San Antonio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,009,324. Bexar County is included in the San Antonio–New Bra ...

, for a course of 120 miles. It contains the

Medina Dam The Medina Dam is a hollow-masonry type dam built in 1911 and 1912 by the Medina Irrigation Company in what became Mico, Texas, USA. Medina Lake extends north of it in northeastern Medina County and southeastern Bandera County. The dam and irri ...

in NE

Medina County, Texas Medina County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 50,748. Its county seat is Hondo. The county is named for the Medina River. The extreme northern part of the county lies within the Edward ...

which restrains Lake Medina. Much of its course is owned and operated by the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Water District to provide irrigation services to farmers and ranchers.

History

The Medina River was named after

Pedro de Medina Pedro de Medina (1493 – Seville, 1567) was a Spanish cartographer and author of navigational texts. His well-known ''Arte de navegar'' ("The Art of Navigation", 1545) was the first work published in Spain dealing exclusively with navigational ...

, a Spanish cartographer, by

Alonso de León Alonso de León "El Mozo" (c. 1639–1691) was explorer and governor, who led several expeditions into the area that is now northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. Early life Alonso de León González was born in 1639, in the settlement of Cade ...

, Spanish governor of

Coahuila Coahuila (), formally Coahuila de Zaragoza (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza), is one of the 32 states of Mexico. Coahuila borders the Mexican states of N ...

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...

in 1689. It once served as the official boundary between Texas and CoahuilaEdmondson (2000), p. 6. with the

being considered its tributary. At that time, the river was called the Medina all the way to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

, but now the part below the confluence is called the San Antonio River. From 1849, Castroville on the river was a water stop on the San Antonio-El Paso Road and a stagecoach station on the San Antonio-El Paso Mail and San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line.

Natural features

Much of the source water to the Medina River is produced by springs emerging due to the presence of the

Balcones Fault The Balcones Fault or Balcones Fault Zone is an area of largely normal faulting Edwards Aquifer in the U.S. state of Texas that runs roughly from the southwest part of the state near Del Rio to the north-central region near Dallas along Inte ...

. This locale of the Balcones Fault is associated with an important ecological dividing line for species occurrence. For example, species such as the

California Fan Palm ''Washingtonia filifera'', the desert fan palm, California fan palm, or California palm,Flora of North America Association. ''Flora of North America: North of Mexico Volume 22: Magnoliophyta: Alismatidae, Arecidae, Commelinidae (in Part), and Zi ...

, ''

Washingtonia filifera ''Washingtonia filifera'', the desert fan palm, California fan palm, or California palm,Flora of North America Association. ''Flora of North America: North of Mexico Volume 22: Magnoliophyta: Alismatidae, Arecidae, Commelinidae (in Part), and Zi ...

'', occur only west of the Medina River or Balcones Fault. The Medina River once received significant waste discharge from upstream catfish farming operations, which utilized more water than was sustainable to the basin's safe usage.Robert Glennon. 2004

Notes

References

* * Robert Glennon. 2004
''Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters''
Island Press, 314 pages , * C. Michael Hogan. 2009
''California Fan Palm: Washingtonia filifera'', GlobalTwitcher.com, ed. Nicklas Stromberg

External links

* {{authority control Medina County, Texas Rivers of Texas Bodies of water of Medina County, Texas Rivers of Bandera County, Texas Rivers of Bexar County, Texas San Antonio–El Paso Road

History

Natural features

See also

Notes

References

External links