DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, so take it for what it is — the record, straight from the stone. Now this one starts with a trail, and it ends with a piece of granite that traveled a long, long way to mark it. Let that sink in before we even get going.
The Mackenzie Scout Trail. That name carries weight out here on the South Plains, and this marker is sitting right along one of its routes — a route that stretched all the way from Camp Supply in Crosby County, reached out west across the Llano, and didn't stop until it hit Fort Sumner, New Mexico. That's a serious stretch of open country we're talkin' about.
The Army used this trail from 1872 to 1875. Three years of soldiers movin' through land that didn't much care whether they passed or not. Then came the buffalo hunters, rolling in right behind them, working the trail from 1876 to 1878.
And when the hunters had done what hunters do, the cattlemen took their turn — 1878, and they kept on usin' it until the fencing of the range closed the open chapter on all of it. Three different eras, three different kinds of men, one trail through the same hard country. Now here's where the story gets genuinely peculiar, and I want you to pay attention to this part.
The block of granite this marker is carved into — or rather, that this marker stands alongside — that block is not just any stone. It came from the wall that encloses the grave of Nancy Anderson, 1750 to 1827, buried near Chester, South Carolina. Someone, specifically the Nancy Anderson Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, took a piece of that grave wall and brought it all the way out here to the Texas plains to erect this marker in 1936.
A woman born in 1750, gone by 1827, resting near Chester, South Carolina — and a piece of the stone surrounding her grave now stands watch over a trail that Army scouts, buffalo hunters, and cowboys once rode through the wind and the dust of West Texas. Some trails connect places on a map. This one, somehow, connects centuries.
What the marker says
This marks one route of the Mackenzie Scout Trail extending from Camp Supply, Crosby County to Fort Sumner, New Mexico and used by the Army, 1872-1875, by buffalo hunters, 1876-1878, and by cattlemen 1878 until the fencing of the range. Erected by Nancy Anderson Chapter, N.S.D.A.R. 1936. This block of granite is from the wall that encloses the grave of Nancy Anderson, 1750-1827, near Chester, S.C.