Old Chihuahua Road

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. There's a road out here in Wilson County that most folks drive right past without a second thought. But this stretch of ground has carried more souls, more coin, and more stories than you might reckon.

They call it the Old Chihuahua Road. And oh, has it earned that name. This wasn't some wagon trail somebody scratched out one afternoon.

This was a Mexican cart road, cutting all the way from central Mexico up to the Texas coast at Indianola. Think about that route for a moment. The whole length of it.

Central Mexico to the coast. Generations of wheels and hooves and boots wearing that path into the earth. Now, the road didn't belong to any one kind of traveler.

Not by a long shot. Marauding Indians moved along it. And coming the other direction, or maybe the same direction, you'd find Alsatian immigrants, German immigrants, Polish immigrants, Irish immigrants, all of them pushing toward something.

Seeking freedom in the New World, the marker says, and those words carry real weight when you say them slow. After 1835, the road took on another kind of importance. Gold and silver, moving out of the interior, headed for the coast.

That's the kind of cargo that makes a road legendary. Then in the 1850s, the army found use for it too, rolling through on whatever business armies have. One road.

Marauders and migrants. Gold and silver. Soldiers on the march.

The Old Chihuahua Road didn't care who you were. It just kept going.

What the marker says

Mexican cart road from central Mexico to Texas Coast at Indianola. Route of marauding Indians as well as Alsatian, German, Polish, Irish immigrants seeking freedom in New World. After 1835 was important in gold and silver exporting; in 1850s for army travel. (1967)