Los Adaes

BOUNDARIES . In the middle of the twentieth century the boundaries of Texas were 2,845.3 miles long, counting the great arc of the Gulf Coast line and only the larger river bends. If the smaller meanderings of the rivers and the tidewater coast line were followed, the boundary was 4,137 miles long and enclosed 263,644 square miles of land and 3,695 square miles of water surface. The location of Texas boundaries has been the subject of international and interstate conflict resulting in treaties, litigation, and commissions from 1736 to the present. Controversy over details continues, as the tidelands controversy and the Chamizal dispute qqv illustrate. In 1995 the state legislature authorized a Red River Boundary Commission to fix the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas, where the still-shifting Red River has frequently changed course and muddied the issue for two centuries.