Stage Coach Inn

Crockett, TX

New York-born John Titus Smith came to Texas from Georgia in 1849 and settled on a cotton plantation at McKenzie's Bend on the Trinity River, where he operated the steamboat Ida Reese. He served as chief justice of Houston County in the 1850s and later in the state legislature, and fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He and his wife Elizabeth raised a large family before his death in 1874.

Crockett, TX

This broad prairie was a favored nineteenth-century route to and from the Trinity River before Robert Newton Read and his wife Susan moved here from Arkansas by 1850, giving the landscape its name. The Reads farmed the opening, bought land, ran commercial ventures in Crockett, and donated ground for an African American Presbyterian church east of town. Though the family moved on to Mineola in 1876, Read's Opening remains woven into Houston County's history.

Weches, TX

Long before Europeans arrived, the Tejas Indians favored this spring-fed grove for its game and fresh water, and the site kept drawing travelers for centuries afterward. Sitting beside El Camino Real — the King's Highway that linked Spanish missions and presidios across the province — it hosted explorers, missionaries, traders, and later the wagon trains of 19th-century pioneers who circled up in the trees to rest. Hunting parties would camp here for weeks at a stretch well into the settlement era.

Douglass, TX

Michael Costley, remembered as "The Father of Douglass," reached Texas in 1832, enlisted in the Texas Army, and patrolled the Old San Antonio Road before laying out a town he expected to flourish. A river port on the Angelina shipped its cotton to the Gulf and a stagecoach line came through, but Costley was shot dead in a 1837 gunfight before his vision fully took hold. Named for Republic of Texas congressman Kelsey Harris Douglass, the town grew into a modest but busy waystation of inns, shops, and churches on the road between the Angelina and Neches rivers.