DUANE
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Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Now, there are places in Texas where the land itself seems to remember every boot heel, every wagon wheel, every herd that ever crossed it. Montague County is one of those places.
Sitting right on a direct line of travel from the United States to Mexico, California, and points west, this stretch of north Texas wasn't just passing through history. History was passing through it, again and again, cutting new grooves into the old ones. It starts in 1840.
Merchants with ambition and maybe a little too much confidence blazed what became known as the Chihuahua Traders Trail, hoping to open a trade route all the way from Mexico to St. Louis, Missouri. They came right across present Montague County, and whatever else came of their plans, they left tracks.
Tracks that the next wave of travelers would be mighty glad to find. Then 1841 brought the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition. Now, the marker is honest about this one.
It failed to open regular commerce between the Republic of Texas and Northern Mexico. But even a failed expedition leaves a road behind, and this one also enforced the claims of Texas to Western territories. So it wasn't nothing.
Not by a long shot. A few years pass, and in 1849 a United States Army Captain named Randolph B. Marcy shows up with a surveyor's eye and a mission.
He charted what he called a California Trail, threading it through parts of those older routes. And that trail, it grew. It grew into a thoroughfare for forty-niners rushing west with gold fever, and then for the sturdy pioneers who came along after the rush had settled into something more like ordinary courage.
By 1858, the famous Butterfield Overland Mail Line came sweeping across the county. Mail and passengers, moving on a schedule, across ground that not long before had been pure frontier. Then the 1870s.
Texas was busy building her image as a cattle empire, and Montague County answered the call. Two feeder branches of the Chisholm Trail crossed this ground, funneling cattle northward along routes that by then the land practically knew by heart. And in 1882, the county's first railroad arrived, laying its iron right along much of the Texan-Santa Fe Trail, as if even the railroad men knew there was no point arguing with a road that had already proven itself.
Today, Highway 82 partly traces the very route Captain Marcy charted back in 1849, and other roads run parallel to trails that merchants, soldiers, expeditions, pioneers, drovers, and mail coaches all traveled before anyone thought to pave a single inch of them. Montague County didn't just witness the opening of the West. For decades, it was the opening of the West, one trail at a time.
What the marker says
Lying on a direct line of travel from the United States to Mexico, California, and points west, the area now Montague County was once a network of trails. One of the first area roads forged by white men was the Chihuahua Traders Trail of 1840. Blazed by merchants hoping to open a trade route from Mexico to St. Louis, Mo., this road crossed present Montague County and left tracks for later travelers. In 1841 came the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition; though it failed to open regular commerce between the Republic of Texas and Northern Mexico, this delegation also left a road and enforced the claims of Texas to Western territories. In 1849 U.S. Army Capt. Randolph B. Marcy charted a "California Trail", using parts of older routes. This soon grew into a thoroughfare for forty-niners and sturdy pioneers who came later. In 1858 the famous Butterfield Overland Mail Line came across the county; and in the 1870's, as Texas was building her image as a cattle empire, Montague County was crossed by two feeder branches of the Chisholm Trail. In 1882, the county's first railroad followed much of the Texan-Santa Fe Trail. Today Highway 82 partly traces Marcy's route and other roads parallel many of these early trails. (1969)