Colorado Citizen, June 5, 1879, July 15, 1880, October 14, 1880, November 10, 1881, May 18, 1882, May 25, 1882, January 25, 1883, March 22, 1883, April 12, 1883, October 4, 1883, December 13, 1883; Colorado County Deed Records, Book Y, p. 582, Book 2, pp. 182, 328, Book 4, pp. 166, 235. No absolute evidence of the route of the drainage ditch has been discovered. It seems reasonable to conclude that the railroad would have diverted the water to the nearby Colorado River. However, the channel of Ratliff's Creek is even closer. And, one must consider lawsuits filed by Louisa Mary Tait and James Alexander Seymour, each of whom owned land south of Columbus, well down Ratliff's Creek from Glidden, but certainly away from the river. In their suits, Tait and Seymour claimed that the ditches were responsible for flooding part of their property in April 1883, causing them monetary damage. Both cases went to the state supreme court, where, in February 1885, earlier decisions against the railroad were reversed. Central to the supreme court's decision was the fact that the railroad "had the right to drain the water to a natural water channel." Rather than go back to court, the railroad settled both cases (see Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 3720: Louisa M. Tait v. Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad, Civil Cause File No. 3725: James A. Seymour v. Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad, Minute Book I, pp. 132-133; A. W. Terrell, comp., Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas [Texas Reports], vol. 63 (Austin: State of Texas, 1885), pp. 223, 345; Colorado Citizen, April 5, 1883).
    Dorothy Jean Heine, in her Come Reminisce With Me A History of Glidden, Texas 1885-1985 (n. p., 1985) states that Glidden "was named by E. H. Harriman . . . for a railroad engineer named F. J. Glidden," who was, she said, his nephew (p. 4). This could not be confirmed. It should be noted that Edward Henry Harriman did not begin his career in railroads until the same year that Glidden was named, 1883, when he became a director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and that he did not have any control over the railroad which ran through Glidden, the Southern Pacific, until 1901.