Barren Ridge
Edgewood, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A post office opened at the crossroads settlement of Barren Ridge in 1850, and James Bundy was named the first postmaster. Because there was already a post office in Smith County called Canton and the postal service would not grant a post office by that name in Van Zandt County, citizens of the Van Zandt County seat of Canton were forced to travel eight miles to Barren Ridge for their mail. The post office also served as a stage stop on the Dallas-Shreveport road. Chesley Parker served as the only other postmaster, and when the post office was discontinued in 1857, the settlement soon dissipated. The lone remaining sign of the settlement is the Blair/Bundy Cemetery.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A post office opened at the crossroads of Barren Ridge in 1850 with James Bundy as its first postmaster. Because a Canton post office already existed in neighboring Smith County, residents of the Van Zandt County seat — also called Canton — had to ride eight miles here for their mail, and the spot doubled as a stop on the Dallas–Shreveport stage road. When the post office closed in 1857 the settlement quickly faded, leaving only the Blair/Bundy Cemetery behind.
Why it matters
Its brief life shows how a post office and a stage road could conjure — and just as quickly erase — a community on the antebellum Texas frontier.
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Related people
- · James Bundy
- · Chesley Parker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edgewood Cemetery
Edgewood, TX
Edgewood was born of the railroad: in 1878 Judge John C. Robertson and his partner W. S. Herndon gave land for a depot, and a community quickly grew around it. Amid Van Zandt County's seat dispute, Canton residents shifted their shipping here from Wills Point. The town cemetery holds its earliest gravestone from 1889, but after a lost deed and declining use, the last burial came in the 1920s; long neglected, the plot has since been restored.
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler
Grand Saline, TX
Born in Kentucky in 1818, Benjamin Franklin Wheeler spent years as a Mississippi River boatman before settling in Van Zandt County, Texas, in the late 1840s. He became one of the first mail carriers in the region, riding routes between Tyler, Edom, and Canton, helped improve the Shreveport–Dallas road, and carried mail for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1876 a friend's request for a post office produced the community of Ben Wheeler, named in his honor.
Dallas-Shreveport Road
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This route began as a trail blazed by Caddoan peoples and later followed by French traders. By the mid-1830s it had become a principal road bringing emigrants and cargo into North Texas from the river port of Shreveport, and Van Zandt County's first courthouse rose along it in 1848. Used heavily for Civil War troop movements, the road carried ox teams and settlers into the 1900s.
William A. Wills
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Tennessee native William A. Wills moved his family to Texas in 1847 and settled along the Dallas–Shreveport Road, where the Wills home became a welcome stop for travelers. He served the young county as tax assessor-collector, road overseer, and commissioner, and by 1855 court records were already calling the area around his property 'Wills Point.' When the town was laid out along the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1873, it took his name for good.