Route of Marcy Trail

Duane's take

The way I heard it told, this comes straight from the official marker on the Route of Marcy Trail, right here in Hemphill County. Now let me tell it to you proper. Somewhere out there across that flat and wind-scoured Texas Panhandle, a man named R.

B. Marcy walked where there was no road and decided there ought to be one. The year was 1849, and the Army Captain the marker calls energetic and efficient, well, that's the kind of praise that gets carved in stone for a reason.

Marcy led an expedition starting in Oklahoma, pushed across the Texas Panhandle, and then wound his way back through central West Texas. Two wagon roads. He laid out two of them.

And both of those roads got put to work carrying emigrant traffic, all those restless souls pushing westward. Because this trail, you see, became best known as part of the California gold trail. Gold has a way of turning a rough cut through the wilderness into a highway real fast.

But here's where the story gets bigger. By 1853, planners were eyeing this very section, this stretch right here, as part of the route for the first transcontinental railroad in America. The first one.

You let that sink in for a moment. Hemphill County sitting on the spine of a line that would stitch the whole continent together. Then came the Civil War, and sentiment shifted, the way sentiment does in hard times, north toward other routes, and the grand plan for this corridor quietly folded.

The trail held on a while longer, doing what it had always done. But in 1887, the railroad finally came through this county, and when the iron rails arrived, the old overland road's importance declined. That's the polite way to say it.

A trail that was once a candidate for the grandest railroad in America ended up stepped over by the very thing it once might have been. Captain Marcy blazed it in 1849, gold seekers wore it down, railroad dreamers almost made it immortal in 1853, and then, in 1887, it was done. Some roads carry everything for a while, and then the world just moves on down a different line.

What the marker says

This overland route, blazed in 1849 by energetic and efficient Army Captain R. B. Marcy, was best known as part of the California gold trail. Starting in Oklahoma, Marcy led an expedition across the Texas Panhandle and back through central West Texas. Both of the wagon roads he laid out served the emigrant traffic. In 1853, this section was planned as part of the route for the first transcontinental railroad in America, but the Civil War shifted sentiment to northern routes. Its importance declined after the railroad came through this county, 1887. (1969)