The Frisco Trailway
Sonora, Sutton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Important in development of Sutton County. 100-mile Market Lane, used 1900-1930. Built by E. F. Tillman (agent, Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railway), to move cattle via Fort McKavett and Menard to railhead at Brady. Fenced and 250 feet wide (generally), lane had watered holdover traps every 10 to 15 miles. Marker in memory of Joe B. Ross, historian.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Frisco Trailway was a 100-mile 'Market Lane' used from 1900 to 1930 to drive cattle across Sutton County toward the railhead at Brady. Built by railway agent E. F. Tillman, the fenced corridor ran a generous 250 feet wide and offered watered holdover traps every ten to fifteen miles, moving herds by way of Fort McKavett and Menard. It was a vital artery in the county's early ranching economy.
Why it matters
The trailway shows how the open-range cattle drive gave way to fenced, engineered stock lanes feeding the railroads, marking the transition from frontier ranching to a rail-connected livestock industry.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · E. F. Tillman
- · Joe B. Ross
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Verand
Eldorado, TX
Verand, the first town in Schleicher County, sprang up around 1890 near the Vermont Ranch headquarters, platted into 86 lots with a stagecoach station, post office, store, hotel, and homes for a few dozen families. But settlers could not secure clear title to their land, and when Eldorado's founder offered free lots five miles south in 1895, the whole town simply picked up and moved. The abandoned site soon returned to open range.
Emerald Townsite
Ozona, TX
Emerald, the first platted town in Crockett County, was founded in 1889 by a railway immigration agent who advertised its mild climate and fertile land from Maine to Minnesota, hoping it would sit on a rail extension and become the county seat. It gained a post office, held the county's first school in a tent, and survived a prairie fire in 1890. When it lost the 1891 county-seat election to the site of present Ozona, residents drifted away and the post office closed, leaving Emerald one of West Texas's many failed colonization schemes.
Comstock-Ozona Stage Stand, Site of
Ozona, TX
In the early 1900s these flagstone ruins were a working stage stand, the first stop on the mail-and-passenger run linking Ozona to the Southern Pacific railhead 80 miles away at Comstock. A stage leaving Ozona at 5:00 a.m. arrived here about 8:30 to find fresh horses already harnessed, while the agent's family lived in a tent floored with flagstone beside rock pens for livestock. The automobile made the whole operation obsolete around 1914, though the old wagon ruts still scar the land.
Powell, Ernest Malapert
Ozona, TX
Illinois native E. M. Powell came to Texas in 1874 and worked as a surveyor during the railroad boom, often taking land in payment and building up a 185,000-acre holding in present Crockett County. To draw settlers he advertised in newspapers and offered the first families forty acres of free land plus discounts on more. Ozona was founded on his property—complete with a public well, windmill, and lots for churches and a school—and his efforts led to Crockett County's organization in 1891 with Ozona as county seat.