Beale Road
Borger, Hutchinson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale was a significant figure in 19th century America. In his long career, he was a naval officer, military general, explorer, diplomat, rancher and frontiersman. He fought in the U.S.-Mexico War, emerging as a hero of the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. He also carried the first gold sample from California to the East, contributing to the gold rush. Under President Franklin Pierce, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis began the Pacific railroad surveys to determine possible routes for a proposed railroad. Under the following president, James Buchanan, Lieutenant Beale was appointed under Jefferson Davis to survey a southern route to Los Angeles, California. The Beale Wagon Road has been well documented and marked from Los Angeles through Arizona, New Mexico and the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. The upper counties of the Texas Panhandle were the connecting link that made this road possible to connect the east with the west and made the migration easier and safer with an established road. Two earlier roads passed through Hutchinson County, the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail blazed by Josiah Gregg in 1840 and the Marcy Trail established by Captain Randolph B. Marcy in 1849. It was logical for Edward Beale to use the trails that had already been established. During the 20th century these established trails became the famous Route 66 and later developed into Interstate 40. Today, there are still parts of the Beale Wagon Road which are visible, recalling thousands of pioneers who traveled the road in its early days. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale packed several careers into one 19th-century life: naval officer, general, explorer, diplomat, and frontiersman who fought at San Pasqual and carried early California gold east. In the 1850s he surveyed a southern wagon road toward Los Angeles, and the Texas Panhandle formed the crucial link tying the eastern trails to the West. Earlier paths blazed by Josiah Gregg and Randolph Marcy fed into the same corridor, which in the 20th century became Route 66 and then Interstate 40.
Why it matters
This ground shows how the trails of westward migration became the highways of modern America, a direct line from pioneer wagons to the open road of Route 66.
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Related people
- · Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale
- · Josiah Gregg
- · Randolph B. Marcy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail
Borger, TX
In 1840 the trader and author Josiah Gregg blazed a shorter path between Arkansas and New Mexico, crossing this stretch of the Texas Panhandle as he returned from Santa Fe and Chihuahua. His popular 1844 account recommended the route, and within a decade thousands of California gold seekers followed it westward, some escorted by U.S. Army officers surveying it for a wagon road and even a railroad. By the late 1850s traffic shifted to a southern road, and the trail fell silent, its wagon ruts still faintly visible in the prairie sod.
Plemons Cemetery
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The Canadian River
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The Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail Marcy Route, 1849
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Faint ruts still visible on the Panhandle horizon mark the Fort Smith–Santa Fe Trail, the overland road linking the Arkansas River ports to New Mexico. The route won national fame in June 1849 when Captain R. B. Marcy escorted a party of some 500 Arkansans across it toward the California gold fields, and it was later surveyed as a possible transcontinental railroad line before the Civil War redirected the rails northward. Used until 1888 for gold-seekers, mail, and stagecoaches, the trail is a rare landscape record of westward migration.