The Double File Trail
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Laid out about 1828 by Delaware Indians, "The Double File Trail" got its name because two horsemen could ride it side by side. The Delawares carved this trace migrating ahead of expanding white settlements. They moved from what they called "the Redlands" in East Texas to Mexico near present Nuevo Laredo. Of the 200 to 250 families reported in East Texas in the 1820s, only about 150 remained after the move. Early sites in Williamson County were settled where this trail crossed waterways. Texas Rangers and the Santa Fe Expedition also traveled the track. (1978)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1828, Delaware Indians blazed this trace wide enough for two riders to travel side by side — hence its name — as they migrated ahead of expanding white settlement. Moving from the East Texas "Redlands" toward Mexico near present Nuevo Laredo, only about 150 of the region's 200-plus Delaware families completed the journey. Early Williamson County sites grew up where the trail crossed streams, and Texas Rangers and the Santa Fe Expedition later followed the same track.
Why it matters
The trail marks the forced displacement of Native peoples in the face of Anglo-American expansion, while showing how Indigenous routes became the highways of frontier Texas.
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Related events
- · Texan Santa Fe Expedition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
North Fork of the San Gabriel River
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Part of the Brazos River system, this stream drew Native peoples to its fish- and game-rich banks long before it received the name San Gabriel. Spanish priest and explorer Fray Isidro Felix Espinosa christened it the Rio de San Xavier in 1716, and by the time Williamson County formed in 1848 settlers knew it as the San Gabriel. Anglo families established four major crossings along it — Booty, Russell, Box, and Hunt — that gathered mills, schools, churches, and cemeteries, most later submerged beneath Lake Georgetown.
The Double File Trail
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The Delaware Indians laid out this trace in 1828 as they migrated from the "Redlands" of East Texas toward the Rio Grande, and its name recalls that two riders could travel it abreast. In 1838 Kenney Fort rose at the Brushy Creek crossing as Williamson County's first settlement, serving as a way station and refuge; members of the ill-fated 1841 Santa Fe Expedition mustered here as well. Rangers, surveyors, explorers, and early Anglo settlers all followed the route.
The Round Rock
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This table-shaped stone in the middle of Brushy Creek long guided Native travelers and early settlers to an important low-water wagon crossing, where century-old wheel ruts can still be seen in the creek bed. The rocky ford drew a settlement whose "Brushy Creek" post office opened in 1851; at postmaster Thomas C. Oatts's urging it was renamed "Round Rock" in 1854 for the very stone. The town kept the name when it moved to meet the railroad a mile east in 1877.
Texan Santa Fe Expedition
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Envious of the lucrative Santa Fe Trail trade crossing the plains, Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar launched the Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1841—a mix of soldiers, merchants with $200,000 in goods, teamsters, and a newspaperman, hauling their hopes north in twenty-one ox-drawn wagons. Their first day's march ended near this spot on the San Gabriel River. Six hundred miles of drought and unknown country lay ahead, and the expedition ended in betrayal, capture, and imprisonment in Mexico City.