DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker at Doan's Crossing tells it this way, and I'm going to do it justice. Now, if you want to understand how the West was won — or at least how a good chunk of Texas beef got hauled north — you need to understand the Western Trail. This was a major route for cattle drives, runnin from far South Texas all the way up to Dodge City, Kansas, and it developed in the 1870s.
Cowboys, longhorns, dust, and determination, stretched out across hundreds of miles of open country. Around 1876, trail drivers along that route started crossin the Red River near this very site. The Red River.
If you've ever seen her run high and red and mean, you know that choosing where to cross her was not a decision you made lightly. But cross her they did, right here, by the thousands. Then comes 1878, and a man steps onto the scene.
Jonathan Doan, an Ohio native — which is worth noting, because Ohio is about as far from a Texas cattle crossing as a man can get in spirit, if not always in miles. He established a trading post near that crossing, and in doing so became the first person to permanently settle in Wilbarger County. The county itself wouldn't even be organized until 1881, so Jonathan Doan was out here ahead of the paperwork, ahead of the government, ahead of just about everything.
In the early 1880s, Jonathan and his partner and nephew, Corwin F. Doan, started keeping track of what was passing through. And what was passing through was staggering — hundreds of thousands of cattle, recorded right here at this river crossing.
Hundreds of thousands. You start to picture that, the ground shakin, the dust risin, the sound of it rollin across the plain like slow thunder. The crossing took on a name.
Doan's Crossing. And that name held, the way names do when they're earned fair and square by the people who showed up and stayed.
What the marker says
A major route for cattle drives known primarily as the Western Trail developed from far South Texas to Dodge City, Kansas, in the 1870s. About 1876, trail drivers along the route began crossing the Red River near this site. In 1878, Ohio native Jonathan Doan established a trading post near the crossing and became the first person to permanently settle in Wilbarger County (organized in 1881). In the early 1880s he and his partner/nephew Corwin F. Doan recorded the passage of hundreds of thousands of cattle along this river crossing which became known as Doan's Crossing.