It all started when...

The Devils River, an intermittent stream, rises in southwestern Sutton County at the gathering of six watercourses, Dry Devils River, Granger Draw, House Draw, Jackson Draw, Flat Rock Draw, and Rough Canyon and runs southwest for ninety-four miles to its mouth on the northeastern shore of Amistad Reservoir in southern Val Verde County. On its long route thirty-two tributaries disembogue into it, including Dolan Creek, where Dolan Falls is formed, Dark Canyon, Dead Mans Creek, and Satan Canyon. The path of Devils River sharply dissects massive limestone and traverses wash deposits of sand, gravel, and mud on flat terrain. The area's generally dark, calcareous, stony clays and clay loams support oak, juniper, grasses, mesquite, and water-tolerant hardwoods and conifers. In 1590 Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, a Spanish explorer, traveled along the river and called it Laxas, meaning "slack" or "feeble." Later travelers and settlers called the river San Pedro. In the 1840s Texas Ranger captain John Coffee (Jack) Hays asked the name of the river as he stood before one of its deep canyons. Upon hearing its name, he reportedly replied that it looked more like the Devil's river than Saint Peter's. The stream was well known to early travelers because it allowed access from north to south through rugged canyonland, and it offered water. East-west expeditions followed its banks as far as possible before striking out into the desert.

When it comes to how the Devils River got its name, the Devil’s in the details.

Ambrose Bierce did not include a definition for the Devils River in his 1911 classic the “Devil’s Dictionary,” but as a hell of a hand at arranging English words in an amusing order, the famous journalist doubtless would have had fun with writing an entry for the Southwest Texas river.

As a long-time newspaperman, the first thing that would have caught Bierce’s attention in pondering a humorous definition for the scenic if difficult-to-traverse stream is that the accepted usage of its name is without an apostrophe. What the Devil? Referring to the river without using the possessive is strange, since attributing the stream to the person supposedly presiding over the nether world is how the river got its name in the first place. 

Well, maybe. Actually, that apostrophe only has to do with how some people think the river got its name. When a group of Spanish explorers traveled along the river in 1675, it may have already have had a name. Splashing across the Rio Grande on May 11 that year, a party of soldiers and friendly Indians rode into Texas to scout a hilly region then known as the “Sierra Dacate” that is believed by historians today to have referred to the rough country along the Devils River. During the first week of the trek, the expedition came to a river the Indians called the Dacate.

“Dacate” does not show up online as a Spanish word, so it may be an Indian word or a phonetic of an Indian word. No matter its origin or meaning, the name didn’t last.

Before, in a manner of speaking, the Devil took it, the river was known for a time as the San Pedro. Saint Peter, of course, was Simon Peter, one of the twelve apostles later beatified by the Catholic Church. Since the first Europeans to see the ruggedly beautiful river were Spanish explorers, they must have come up with that name.

After Spain lost its claim on Texas and the area became part of the new Republic of Mexico, it is possible that citizens of the nascent nation occasionally traveled across the river, and further possible that one of those visitors came up with the idea of naming the stream for Peter. But again, no specific information on this has come to light. Whatever led to the naming of the river for one of the apostles, the Devil didn’t darken the picture until the 1840s.

In 1848, former Texas Ranger Capt. Jack Hays led a party westward to explore a good route from San Antonio to El Paso. When Hays and his 70-plus men reached the river, not an easy trip then and not much easier even today, he supposedly reined his horse and surveyed the river and the rough terrain on either side of it before famously prounouncing:

“Saint Pete, hell. This is the Devil’s River.” As in suggesting that the river belonged to the Devil, hence the need for an apostrophe.

Hays’ opinion became codified when a San Antonio newspaper called the Western Texian printed Hays’ December report to Col. Peter H. Bell. The operable line in that document is: 

“Owing to the difficulties we had in extricating ourselves from the deep ravines and mountains which encompass it for many miles from its mouth, we named it Devil’s River.”

But as he did the research that went into his book “Devils River: Treacherous Twin to the Pecos, 1535-1900,” Midland writer- historian Patrick Dearen dug deep. One of the things he found was that contrary to legend and Hays’ own written claim, someone else may have come up with the idea of naming a Texas river in honor of Lucifer.

Examining the diary of noted Texas pioneer Samuel Maverick, who rode with Hays on his 1848 expedition, Dearen found where Maverick referred to the river as the Devil’s as early as Sept. 21 that year when he wrote: “Mouth of Devil’s river. 14 [miles].”As Dearen observed: “The casual way he noted the stream’s name seems unusual for a river never before known by that designation until that very day. Add to this Hays’ claim that he and his fellow riders named the river only after experiencing difficulty upstream, and it’s clear that the two men’s accounts contradict one another in regard to the party’s first use of the word ‘devil’s.’”

Dearen goes on to speculate that the river may already have been known by at least some people as the Devil’s. Indeed, as he notes, there’s a folk tale that at some point a lovelorn Indian girl leaped to her death from one of the river’s high bluffs. Learning the horrible news, her father the chief supposedly uttered: “The Devil’s River.” 

However the river got its name, the disappearance of the apostrophe is equally curious. 

Today, The Devils River is considered the most unspoiled river in Texas. Its remote location in a hostile environment limits pollution from human and domestic animal populations, as it has for generations. 

The Devils River Conservancy is a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Devils River for future generations of Texans and works throughout the basin to promote conservation ethics among landowners and paddlers.