Brainard v. State

Today we resolve a boundary dispute between the State of Texas and thirty owners of lands bounded by the Canadian River as it flows through Roberts and Hutchinson Counties in the Panhandle. The parties disagree about whether conditions on the Canadian River that were brought about or influenced by the closing of the Sanford Dam in 1965 should be considered by surveyors in marking the present-day gradient boundary of the Canadian River. The State contends that the location of the gradient boundary between the State’s riverbed and the private riparian land must be determined by the last…