Route of Old Military Road

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this stretch of Coleman County ground. Now, not every road starts out as a road. Some start as necessity.

In the 1850s, the U.S. military needed a way to move supply trains and cavalry along a line of forts reaching from Fort Belknap on the Brazos all the way down to Fort Mason and on to Fort Clark, near the Rio Grande. So they opened one. The Old Military Road.

And once a road like that is open, well, it tends to collect history whether it means to or not. Supply wagons rolled it. Cavalry rode it.

And among the great men who passed along this road was one Colonel Robert E. Lee. He traveled this ground as a U.S.

Army officer, well before the years 1861 to 1865, when he would serve as general of Confederate forces in the Civil War. Think about that for a moment. The same boots, the same dust, the same Texas sky.

A man on his way to becoming one of the most consequential figures of the nineteenth century, and this road was just part of the route. The Old Military Road didn't care about what was coming. It just ran south, from the Brazos toward the Rio Grande, doing what roads do.

Carrying people toward whatever waited for them next.

What the marker says

Opened in 1850s for supply trains and cavalry travel along line of U.S. forts from Belknap on the Brazos to Fort Mason and to Fort Clark near the Rio Grande. Along this road passed great men, including Col. Robert E. Lee, later (1861-65) general of Confederate forces in the Civil War. (1972)