Texas High Court Gives State
More Time On Canadian Appeal

AMARILLO — The Texas Supreme Court has given the state's land office another week to decide whether or not to appeal a ruling earlier this month that awarded much of the Canadian River bottoms to private landowners.

For more than a decade, landowners along a 37-mile stretch of the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle have claimed their land reaches to the edge of the flowing water in the river. The state, however, claimed the traditional boundary of the riverbed, which in some places is more than a mile wide.

The river cuts through the Panhandle from its beginnings in New Mexico on its way to join the Arkansas River in Oklahoma. Although the river's flow is only a few yards wide much of the year, it has run more than a mile across during flood stage, cutting a "gradient boundary" over eons.

In 1965, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed Sanford Dam across the river, forming Lake Meredith. The stretch of river below the dam runs shallow and narrow, rarely more than a few yards at its widest point.

Since surface water in the Lone Star State is publicly owned, hunters, sportsmen and recreationists have long used the swath of river bottoms left by the stream's natural flow.

More than 13 years ago, a group of landowners along the stretch of the river below the dam and across Hutchinson and Roberts counties filed suit against the Texas General Land Office in an attempt to establish once and for all where the boundary between state and private property lies.

Earlier this month, the Texas Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ruled for the landowners. The decision had the effect of giving the ranchers between 13,000 and 14,000 acres, leaving the state with only 138 acres of the river bottom.

Area hunters were outraged. On Thursday, Oct. 22, they presented the Texas Attorney General's Office and the Texas General Land Office with petitions signed by 3063 people, demanding that the state file a motion for rehearing.

An appeal of the ruling would be directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, says Mary Jane Wardlow of the Texas Land Office. Any appeal, therefore, would entail federal law, but Wardlow says there does not appear to be any basis for appeal. Still, attorneys from the Land Office and the Texas Attorney General's Office are poring over the decision. The state had 15 working days from the date of the decision to give notification of its intent to appeal.

Friday, Oct. 22, the Texas Supreme Court extended that date until Nov. 8, at the request of the Attorney General's Office.