Preston Road/Shawnee Trail
Pottsboro, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1840, authorized by an 1838 act of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, Col. W. G. Cooke and the Texas First Infantry Regiment laid out a military road from Austin north through what became Dallas to the Holland Coffee Trading Post on Red River (later covered by Lake Texoma). Coffee developed the town of Preston near the trading post, and Cooke's military route became known as Preston Road between the Red River and Dallas. Immigrants came from Missouri and Arkansas through Indian Territory (Oklahoma) into Texas along Preston Road. In one six-week period in 1845, roughly 1,000 wagons crossed the river into Texas. From the mid-1850s the road marked the route for Texas' first cattle drive. Later known as the Shawnee Trail, it probably was named for a Native American village called Shawneetown north of what became Denison. Cattle swam the Red River at Rock Bluff Crossing, a natural rock formation that served as a chute into the water, later the site of the city of Sherman's water intake station on Lake Texoma. This remained the principal route to the north for Texas cattle until the Civil War. The last large herds moved through Grayson County in 1871. The old route remains visible at Rocky Point on Lake Texoma, and along Hanna Drive. The overall passage is followed by parts of Preston Road in Grayson County, a farm-to-market road and State Highway Route 289, and Preston Road in Dallas. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Laid out in 1840 by Colonel W. G. Cooke and the Texas First Infantry, this military road ran from Austin north to Holland Coffee's trading post on the Red River, becoming known as Preston Road. Immigrants poured south along it—roughly 1,000 wagons crossed the river in one six-week span in 1845—and by the mid-1850s it carried Texas's first great cattle drives. Renamed the Shawnee Trail for a nearby Native American settlement, it funneled herds across Rock Bluff Crossing until the Civil War, with the last large drives passing in 1871.
Why it matters
The road is a living seam of westward migration and the cattle-drive era, where military engineering, settlement, and the great Texas trail drives all followed the same path north.
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Related people
- · W. G. Cooke
- · Holland Coffee
Related events
- · Shawnee Trail cattle drives
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pottsboro
Pottsboro, TX
Before Anglo settlers arrived, the Caddo and Wichita peoples occupied this stretch of North Texas. The town took shape when Confederate veteran and land developer James A. Potts, who had come to Grayson County in 1868, deeded a railroad right-of-way to a Missouri-Kansas-Texas subsidiary in 1878 and platted the townsite that bears his name. Incorporated in 1885, Pottsboro survived repeated fires and later drew new life from the 1940s construction of Perrin Army Air Field and Lake Texoma.
Sand Springs
Denison, TX
Sand Springs was a prized watering place where cold water boiled up at the foot of a rocky bluff, known to settlers by 1840 and carved with the names of passing travelers into an "inscription rock." Gold seekers bound for California camped here in 1849, Butterfield's Overland Mail coaches stopped by 1857, and postwar cattle drives watered their herds before the coming of the railroad to Denison in 1872 reshaped the land around it.
First Site of City of Sherman
Sherman, TX
When the Texas Legislature created Grayson County in 1846, it named the seat for Sidney Sherman, a hero of San Jacinto. Commissioners chose this spot on the old Cherokee Trail near an important crossing at Preston Bend, and the first courthouse was finished in 1847—celebrated with a Fourth of July barbecue, a barrel of whiskey, music, and dancing. But this "bald prairie" lacked water and wood, so in 1848 legislators arranged to move the townsite five miles east to its present location.
Waples Memorial United Methodist Church
Denison, TX
When the newly established railroad town of Denison counted forty Methodists in 1873, the North Texas conference sent the Rev. Alexander Jamison to organize them, and the little frame mission church was chartered in 1881. It took the name of E.B. Waples, a benefactor who cleared its debt for a single dollar and funded a larger building shortly before his death in 1898. Today it is remembered as the oldest continuing Methodist congregation in Denison.