Colorado River (Texas) in the context of "Austin, Texas"

La Grange (/lə ˈɡreɪndʒ/ lə GRAYNJ) is a city and the county seat of Fayette County, Texas, United States, near the Colorado River. La Grange is in the center of the Texas-German belt. The population was 4,391 at the 2010 census, and in 2018 the estimated population was 4,632.

The Karankawa (/kəˈræŋkəwə/ kə-RANK-ə-wə) were an Indigenous people concentrated in southern Texas along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, largely in the lower Colorado River and Brazos River valleys. They consisted of several independent, seasonal nomadic groups who shared a language and some culture. From the onset of European colonization, the Karankawa had violent encounters with the Spanish. After one attack by the Spanish, who ambushed the Karankawa after the establishment of Presidio La Bahía in 1722, the Karankawa allegedly felt "deeply betrayed [and] viewed Spanish colonial settlement with hostility."

In the 1800s, white American settlers arrived in their land under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin. He commissioned a captain to expel the Karankawa from the Austin land grant, leading to multiple attacks, including the Skull Creek massacre of 19 Karankawa. In 1824, Austin sent Captain Randal Jones with a group of 23 soldiers to what is now Brazoria County to fight and disperse the Karankawa Indians from their encampment. Fifteen Indians were killed, and the remaining fled the area. This event is known as the Battle of Jones Creek.

The U.S. state of Texas has a series of estuaries along its coast on the Gulf of Mexico, most of them bounded by the Texas barrier islands. Estuaries are coastal bodies of water in which freshwater from rivers mixes with saltwater from the sea. Twenty-one drainage basins terminate along the Texas coastline, forming a chain of seven major and five minor estuaries: listed from southwest to northeast, these are the Rio Grande Estuary, Laguna Madre, the Nueces Estuary (Corpus Christi Bay), the Mission–Aransas Estuary (Aransas Bay), the Guadalupe Estuary (San Antonio Bay), the Colorado–Lavaca Estuary (Matagorda Bay), East Matagorda Bay, the San Bernard River and Cedar Lakes Estuary, the Brazos River Estuary, Christmas Bay, the Trinity–San Jacinto Estuary (Galveston Bay), and the Sabine–Neches Estuary (Sabine Lake). Each estuary is named for its one or two chief contributing rivers, excepting Laguna Madre, East Matagorda Bay, and Christmas Bay, which have no major river sources. The estuaries are also sometimes referred to by the names of their respective primary or central water bodies, though each also includes smaller secondary bays, inlets, or other marginal water bodies.

These water bodies include some of the largest and most ecologically productive coastal estuaries in the United States and contribute significantly to the ecological and economic resources of Texas. They are included in a number of national protected areas such as National Wildlife Refuges, a National Seashore, and a National Estuarine Research Reserve, as well as various state parks and other regional protected areas. The two most economically important (the Nueces and Trinity–San Jacinto Estuaries) have been designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as estuaries of national significance under the National Estuary Program. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway runs through each of the major estuaries, linking Texas ports with others along the Gulf Coast of the United States.