DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. There's a road out here in Van Zandt County that has been carrying people and stories for longer than Texas has been Texas. They call it the Dallas-Shreveport Road today, but that name is just the latest chapter in a very long book.
The trail was first laid down by Caddoan Native Americans — walked into existence by people who knew this land before anyone else put a name to it on a map. Then came the French traders, traversing this same corridor, following those same paths through the trees and the creek crossings. By the mid-1830s, the trail had grown into something bigger.
It became the main route for emigrants and cargo pushing into North Texas, all of it flowing in from the river port of Shreveport, Louisiana. Think about that — wagon after wagon, family after family, goods stacked high on ox carts, all of them funneling in through this corridor, pointed toward a new life in a new place. The road mattered so much that when Van Zandt County needed its first courthouse, they built it right along the route, at a place called Jordan's Saline, in 1848.
You don't put your courthouse just anywhere — you put it where the people are, and the people were on this road. Then the Civil War came, and the route took on a harder purpose, used extensively for troop movements. When the war was done, the emigrants and the ox teams came back, and they kept coming well into the 1900s.
Caddoan footpath to French trade route to emigrant highway to military corridor — one road, carrying everything Van Zandt County ever was. The marker says the route has greatly influenced settlement patterns in this area, and standing here, looking down that line of road, you can believe every word of it.
What the marker says
A trail established by Caddoan Native Americans and later used by French traders who traversed this area is known today as the Dallas-Shreveport Road. The trail emerged in the mid-1830s as a main route into North Texas for emigrants and cargo from the river port of Shreveport, Louisiana. Van Zandt County's first courthouse was built along the route at Jordan's Saline in 1848. Used extensively for troop movements during the Civil War the route remained active with emigrants and ox teams into the 1900s. The route has greatly influenced settlement patterns in this area. (1995)