For all its storied history, the Red River has always been equal parts asset and antagonist. Located in North Texas along the state line with Oklahoma, the 1,360-mile river has brought fortune and famine to Indigenous farmers, cattle drovers, slaveholders, European explorers, and Anglo settlers. The Red River was first explored by Spain’s Coronado, who, in a ruinous quest for the Seven Cities of Cíbola, rowed upstream to the river’s headwaters in Palo Duro Canyon. The French came later. On the river’s eastern stretches, near Arkansas, they came upon Caddo Indians who had mastered growing beans, squash, and corn at the edge of the Blackland Prairie formed by the river’s drainage. More settlers came in the 1820s, using the river as a highway into Texas. But they were routinely confounded by logjams—the blockages could stretch for 75 miles, impeding travel for months.

The river is the second-longest in Texas, after the Brazos, and it shapes our border with Oklahoma. It was the setting of the eponymous Red River War, a brief conflict in 1874 that saw the eradication of the southern bison herds and the mass removal of Native tribes along the river’s course. Around that time, when the Texas cattle trade was in full swing, drovers on the famed Chisholm Trail were forced to ford the Red River in current-day Montague County. The crossing was so heavily used that, during a flood in the 1870s, a herd of 60,000 head caused a 10-day traffic jam. The river was dammed in 1944 to create Lake Texoma, a flood-control reservoir that straddles Texas and Oklahoma.

Modern-day life on the Red isn’t quite so sensational. Watching the river run is about as exciting as waiting for water to boil on a slow stovetop. West of Clay County, which demarcates the river’s drier and damper halves, the summer sun is a cruel sculptor, smushing waterlogged red clay and fine white sand beneath jagged, loamy banks. The riverbed is kiln-dried to 100 degrees daily, sending catfish and turtles scurrying for cover. With so little liquid, the river is seen less as a source of water and more as a source of identity. It means you’re not in New Mexico, Arkansas, or Oklahoma, for goodness sake. The Red River is a line in the sand, literally, that delineates us from them. It’s a welcome sight, even if it’s not always fully flowing.

The locals don’t spend much time in the water, what little there is—it’s salty and booby-trapped with pockets of boot-sucking quicksand. But you don’t visit the Red River Valley to see the river. You come for the history, the people, and the peace and quiet. For years, photographer Dave Shafer documented the river and the small towns along its course. He spent long days traversing US 82, which generally follows the river from corner to corner. “That’s about as diverse as Texas is going to get in one road,” he says. His photos offer portraits of natural beauty and human ingenuity, along with places forgotten to time. “It’s almost like a time capsule,” says Shafer, who lives with his wife in Montague County. “The valley hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years. I thought it was time to give this beautiful, underappreciated place a closer look.”

—Christopher Collins