Around 24 years ago, I dubbed myself Queen of Pronunciations when I moved to Forney and made it my job to teach people how to say a street name. See, I grew up an old soul. My grandfather made it his life’s work to teach me all about the things that country folk know, like instructions on skinning squirrels, how to avoid 1st gear if your clutch is going out and your transmission is grinding, and the merits of varnishing turtle shells after the turtles were gone. He also taught me a little about trees. His house was a pier & beam home. My house was a pier & beam home. Uncle Goat’s house was a pier & beam home. Yes, I had a great uncle called Goat. I digress. What does all of this have to do with Forney? Two things, actually. Firstly, I set about the task of gently correcting Forney residents. “Ahem. It’s not Boys Dee Ark. It’s Bo Dark, like the tree. You know, the ones under pier & beam houses – the stumps that don’t rot?” Secondly, it’s about my journey in life. I started in Seagoville, wound through Kaufman, circled around Fairfax County, Virginia, meandered across Mesquite, and touched down in Forney. If you eliminate the middle men, I basically just crossed the Trinity River to get here. Ah yes, the mighty Trinity River is our topic today. There is so much we just don’t know.
When La Salle set up a French settlement on the Texas coast in 1685, he was confused, bless his heart. He thought he was watching the Mississippi River emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Silly La Salle, welcome to what would eventually become Texas. By the time he made it to this literal neck of the woods in 1687, he was aware of his error. The skinny river he’d been tracking wasn’t the Mississippi at all. La Salle dubbed it The River of Canoes. It gets a mention in his journals as a river in some areas and as a stream in others. When Spain’s Alonso de Leon (not to be confused with Ponce) arrived on the scene in 1690, he decided to one up La Salle and name the river La Santisima Trinidad, or The Most Holy Trinity, possibly because he only found 3 of the 4 branches: West Fork, Clear Fork, Elm Fork, and the infamous East Fork that we know and love so well. Trinidad became Trinity and it won the battle of the names, rolling off the tongue easier than River of Canoes. Except, what about the name it already had? Lest you think gentrification is a 20th century calamity, no one cared about the river moniker bestowed by the indigenous Caddo tribe. They called it the Arkikosa. Names aside, this body of water has had its ups and downs in more ways than one. From points just south of the Red River all the way to the Gulf, she’s one impressive waterway, impressively altered.
To read more please log in or subscribe to the digital edition. http://www.etypeservices.com/Forney%20MessengerID423/
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.