In Search of Half-Forgotten Rivers
After gushing up from cold springs, the James River’s crystal-clear waters wind through a narrow, verdant canyon before joining the Llano River at a shoal of smooth stones just south of Mason. Farther north, the Pease River runs in ribbons from the caprock through grass-tufted mesas and across pebbled limestone beds. Near its mouth at the Red River in Vernon, it bends around muddy pastures covered with tall grasses and big trees.
The James and the Pease, no matter how lovely, remain largely unvisited. There are few points of entry, making them difficult to access. During trips in 2016 and 2019, we—Michael Barnes, a longtime columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, and Joe Starr, an English as a Second Language professor at Houston Community College—hardly saw anyone on their banks. In fact, when we started tracing Texas rivers a decade ago, we had never even heard of the James or the Pease.
The two of us came up with a term for these rivers: half-forgotten. Few seem to know of their existence, and those who do don’t visit them often. So they sit isolated, hidden, and relatively untouched by human interaction. In seeking out the James and Pease rivers over the course of 10 years, we came to learn a lot about their distinct characteristics.
