Route of Old Colony Line Road

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. There's a road out here, friends, that most folks drive right past without a second thought. Highway 24.

Ordinary enough today, pavement and painted lines, maybe a feed store or two along the way. But that road has got a memory on it. A long one.

It follows, at least in part, the old Colony Line Road, and that road goes back to when Texas was still its own republic and the land out here was frontier, plain and simple. The southern half of Hunt County, the very ground you might be rolling through right now, once lay inside a pioneer colony. Six thousand five hundred square miles of it, granted in 1844 by Sam Houston himself, President of the Republic of Texas, to a man named Chas.

F. Mercer. The purpose was clear enough: bring colonists into Texas.

Fill up this big, open country with people willing to put down roots. And come they did. Settlers from the Old South, traveling in a steady stream of covered wagons, rolled along this road looking for somewhere to begin again.

Now picture the other direction on that same road. Ox-wagons, loaded heavy, pulling out of Jefferson, bound for supply stores in Greenville, McKinney, Dallas, Fort Worth, and on out to the frontier. That road was doing real work.

It followed the north boundary line of the Mercer colony, and it connected a world that was still being built. People coming in, goods moving through, a territory taking shape one wagon rut at a time. Next time you're on Highway 24, you might just feel the road remembering.

What the marker says

Early travel artery. Followed the north boundary line of the Chas. F. Mercer colony, a 6,500-square-mile tract granted to Mercer in 1844 by Sam Houston (President of the Republic of Texas) for purpose of bringing colonists into Texas. Southern half of Hunt County once lay in this pioneer colony. Over the road came ox-wagons from Jefferson to supply stores in Greenville, McKinney, Dallas, Fort Worth and the frontier. Settlers from the Old South traveled it in a steady stream of covered wagons. Highway 24 today traces part of the road.