Trammel's Trace
Texarkana vicinity, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Entered Texas at this point. The 1813 road from St. Louis brought in great numbers of pioneers: Stephen F. Austin, his settlers, Sam Houston, James Bowie, David Crockett and others who died in the Texas Revolution. From here pointed southwest. Crossed the Sulphur at Epperson ferry, going south to Nacogdoches, linking "Southwest Trail" with the King's Highway to Mexico. Surveyed by Nicholas Trammel (born in Nashville, Tenn., 1780; died, LaGrange, Texas, 1852), one of a family of U. S. surveyors and scouts. Mapped many trails, but only this one bears his name. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Trammel's Trace entered Texas at this point, carrying a flood of pioneers down from the 1813 road out of St. Louis—among them Stephen F. Austin and his colonists, along with legends like Sam Houston, James Bowie, and David Crockett. Running southwest to Nacogdoches, it linked the Southwest Trail with the old King's Highway toward Mexico. It was surveyed by Nicholas Trammel, a scout from a family of U.S. surveyors, and remains the only trail to bear his name.
Why it matters
Trammel's Trace was a principal artery of Anglo-American migration into Texas, the very road that funneled the settlers and revolutionaries who would remake the region.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1800s, the land where this marker stands was a borderland in every sense. The United States had just acquired the vast Louisiana Purchase, and Spain still held Texas as the thinly settled northern frontier of New Spain. Where one claim ended and the other began was argued over for years, and the piney woods and river bottoms of this corner of the continent were crossed by traders, hunters, and scouts long before any government drew a firm line.
Roads were how that frontier actually moved. Out of St. Louis, a route ran southwest through Missouri and Arkansas toward the Red River country, which this marker dates to 1813. For a family on foot or in a wagon, a known path with known river crossings could decide whether a journey succeeded or failed.
When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 and opened Texas to American colonists, those rough roads suddenly mattered enormously. A trickle of travelers became a steady stream, and the paths that already threaded the forest became the channels that carried them south.
People & events
The trail takes its name from Nicholas Trammel, born in Nashville in 1780 and buried in La Grange, Texas, in 1852. The marker describes him as one of a family of American surveyors and scouts who mapped many routes through the wilderness. Of all of them, this is the only one that kept his name, which says something about how heavily it was used.
From this point the trace pointed southwest, crossed the Sulphur River at a ferry the marker names for the Epperson family, and ran on to Nacogdoches. There it met the King's Highway, the old Spanish road that stretched across Texas toward Mexico. In effect, it stitched an American road network onto a Spanish one.
The marker counts a remarkable roster among those who came this way: Stephen F. Austin and his settlers, Sam Houston, James Bowie, David Crockett, and others who died in the Texas Revolution. Frontier travel was rarely written down step by step, so the exact route any one person took can be hard to document. But the trace was a principal gateway, and many of the people who reshaped Texas came in through it or along roads like it.
Its place in the American story
Trammel's Trace is a reminder that big historical changes often begin with something as ordinary as a road. The American settlement of Texas, the revolution of 1835–36, the Republic of Texas, and eventually annexation to the United States all depended on people being able to get there. This trail was one of the main ways they did.
It also shows how American expansion followed and borrowed older routes. Rather than cutting entirely new paths, travelers linked up with trails that Native peoples, Spanish officials, and traders had used before them. Joining the Southwest Trail to the King's Highway tied the Mississippi Valley to the heart of Spanish and then Mexican Texas.
For a nation arguing over its western borders, a single path through the East Texas woods turned out to have lasting consequences. The people who came down it helped decide what flag would fly over Texas.
If you visit
This is a place to use your imagination. The trace was a wagon road and footpath, not a paved highway, and much of it has been swallowed by farms, forest, and modern roads. Standing near the marker, try to picture the dust, the slow ox teams, and families watching the tree line for the next river crossing.
The marker sits in the Texarkana area, right where Texas meets Arkansas, which makes it a natural first stop on a road trip that follows the old migration south. From here, you can trace the general direction of the route toward the Sulphur River and on to Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in Texas and the place where the trace met the King's Highway.
It pairs well with other East Texas history stops along the way. Following the route in sequence gives you a real sense of how far those early settlers traveled, and how much of Texas history came in through this northeast gate.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nicholas Trammel
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Epperson's Ferry
Maud, TX
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.
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.
De Kalb
DeKalb, TX
De Kalb was named for Revolutionary War hero Maj. Gen. Johann de Kalb at the 1836 suggestion of David Crockett, who passed through on his way to fight in the Texas Revolution, as did James Fannin and William B. Travis. Settled by 1831, the town claimed the first college in Bowie County (1839), an early Masonic lodge, and a brief turn as county seat, and it sat on early stage lines and, later, the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Sawmills and, legend says, the nearby hideouts of outlaws like Sam Bass and Jesse James all figure in its lively frontier story.
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.