Theiss River
Theiss (Hungarian Tisza, Romanian, Serbian and Slovak Tisa, German TheiÃÂÃÂ) is a river tributary of the Danube and one of the major rivers of Hungary.
It divides the regions of BÃÂácska/Bačka and Banat and flows into the Danube in central Vojvodina, Serbia and Montenegro.
The Theiss river drains an area about 157,186 km2.
Control of Theiss
The length of Theiss in Hungary used to be 1419 km. It flowed through the Great Hungarian Plain, which is one of the largest flat areas in middle Europe, and since it makes a river to flow very slow Theiss used to flow a path with lots of curves and turns. That was the main reason of many huge floods in the area. After many small attempts IstvÃÂán SzÃÂéchenyi arranged the "control of Theiss" ("a Tisza szabÃÂályozÃÂása") which started on August 27, 1846 and the main work was finished until 1880. The result: the new length of the river in Hungary was 966 km, with 589 km dead channels and 136 km long new riverbed.
The result length of the flood protected river is 2940 km (out of 4220 km of all Hungarian protected length) which is one of the largest protection in Europe; larger than Holland's 1500 km, the Po river's 1400 km or the Loire Valley's 480 km.
"Lake Theiss"
In the 1980s started the building of the KiskÃÂöre reservoir, which was planned to help the control of floods as well as helping the drought seasons. It turned out, however, that the resulting Tisza-tÃÂó (Lake Theiss) became one of the most popular tourist destination of Hungary, since it had similar features to Lake Balaton but the prices were fractions of Balaton's and it was not overpopulated. (Naturally overpopulation worsens as time goes by.)