The Double File Trail
Round Rock, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
As the Delaware Indians moved from their home in the "Redlands" of east Texas in 1828 to near present Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, they laid out this trace. It was named Double File Trail because two horsemen could ride side by side. The first settlement in Williamson County, Kenney Fort, was built here at the Brushy Creek crossing in 1838. It served as a way station and for Indian protection. In 1841 members of the Santa Fe Expedition assembled here. Texas Rangers, early Anglo-American settlers, surveying parties, and explorers also used this important route. (1979)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The trail shows how Indigenous pathways became the arteries of Anglo-Texan settlement, binding Native movement, frontier defense, and westward expansion into a single corridor.
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Related events
- · Texan Santa Fe Expedition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
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1/2 Mile to the Site of Kenney's Fort
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Erected as a fortified home in the spring of 1839 by Dr. Thomas Kenney and Joseph Barnhart, Kenney's Fort was the first settlement in what became Williamson County and a place of refuge during Indian raids. It served as the rendezvous point for the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition of 1841, and on the last day of 1842 it was where the archives of the Republic of Texas—being carried off toward Washington-on-the-Brazos—were seized and turned back to Austin in the Archive War.