Site of Epperson's Ferry
Maud, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
At this crossing, constructed by nature and used by Caddo Indians, early French and Spanish explorers, and travelers over Trammel's Trace, 1815, 1830, Mark Epperson before 1837 established a ferry used until the construction of a wooden bridge antedating the modern structure erected in 1924. Erected by the State of Texas 1936. SUPPLEMENTAL PLATE: 1956 This monument was removed to its present location when its original site, 7 miles southwest, was inundated by Lake Texarkana
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Where Trammel's Trace met the water, a crossing first used by Caddo people and later by French and Spanish explorers became Mark Epperson's ferry sometime before 1837. Travelers relied on it until a wooden bridge, and then the modern span of 1924, made the ferry obsolete. When Lake Texarkana flooded the original site in the 1950s, the state moved this 1936 monument seven miles to higher ground.
Why it matters
The crossing marks one of the old overland arteries into Texas, a place where Indigenous trails, European exploration, and Anglo settlement all funneled across the same river.
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Related people
- · Mark Epperson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Caddo Trace
Daingerfield, TX
The Caddo Trace was an ancient hunting and trade path worn by the Caddo people who lived in the northeast corner of what became Texas. Like many Indigenous routes, it was later taken over by newcomers, becoming part of stage and mail lines after 1840 and a road for teamsters and marching soldiers. It touched or crossed the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Trammel's traces, and modern state highways still trace its course.
Douglassville Cemetery
Douglassville, TX
This East Texas burying ground began with land donated by Williamson Petty, a Sulphur River ferryman who settled his claim in 1850. In 1855 Col. John C. Douglass of Georgia bought the rest of Petty's claim, and the growing cemetery took the name of his town, Douglassville. Its earliest legible stone, from 1859, marks the grave of Henrietta Cook and her infant twins, among some 400 burials still tended by a cemetery association.
Bowie County
New Boston, TX
Carved from Red River County land in December 1840 and organized the next year, Bowie County honors James Bowie, the Long Expedition veteran who died defending the Alamo. The country had been home to agricultural Indians before 1800 and was charted for Anglo-American settlement in 1819, back when it was still frontier of the fledgling Texas Republic. Its county seat wandered among DeKalb, Old Boston, Texarkana, and Boston as railroads and farming, lumber, and manufacturing took hold.
Trammel's Trace
Marietta, TX
Trammel's Trace, established in 1813 by horse trader and smuggler Nicholas Trammell, was one of the earliest immigrant roads leading pioneers into Spanish and Mexican Texas. Running from the great bend of the Red River down toward Nacogdoches, it linked the Southwest Immigration Road from St. Louis to El Camino Real, often following even older paths worn by game and Native travelers. The crossroads community that grew here, Old Unionville, faded after the Civil War, though the trace's route survived into the twentieth century as a county road.