DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some crossings are just crossings. A low spot in the bank, a shallow stretch of water, and you get to the other side.
But this particular spot on the Red River country of Bowie County — this one had been calling people across for a long, long time before anyone thought to charge a toll. Nature herself constructed it. That's what the marker says, and I find that worth sitting with for a moment.
Not a surveyor, not an engineer — nature. And once she'd laid it out, folks just kept showing up to use it. The Caddo Indians were first among those the record names.
Then came the early French and Spanish explorers, threading through this part of the country the way explorers do, following every natural advantage the land offers. By 1815, and on through 1830, travelers were making their way over Trammel's Trace right here at this crossing. Trammel's Trace — a road that cut through wild country and put this spot squarely on the map of places you had to get through if you were going anywhere that mattered.
Then, sometime before 1837, a man named Mark Epperson looked at that natural crossing and saw an opportunity. He established a ferry here. Now a ferry is a humble thing — a flat boat, a rope, maybe a prayer — but it was the difference between stuck and moving for every traveler, trader, and settler who came through.
Epperson's ferry served them all, and it kept on serving until the day someone finally built a wooden bridge at this site. That bridge came before the modern structure, which was erected in 1924. So you've got centuries of crossings stacked on top of each other right here.
Caddo footpaths, French and Spanish boots, Trammel's Trace wagon ruts, Mark Epperson's ferry rope, a wooden bridge, and then concrete and steel in 1924. Each one replacing the last, but none of them forgetting what came before. The State of Texas erected this monument in 1936 to mark the spot.
But here's the twist — and every good story has one — that original site, seven miles to the southwest, got swallowed up. Lake Texarkana rose, and the water didn't ask the monument's permission. So in 1956, they moved it.
Picked it up and brought it here, to dry ground, to keep telling the story of a crossing that nature built and people never stopped using. Some places earn their history. This one just kept accumulating it, layer by layer, right up until the lake said that's enough — and even then, the story refused to sink.
What the marker says
At this crossing, constructed by nature and used by Caddo Indians, early French and Spanish explorers, and travelers over Trammel's Trace, 1815, 1830, Mark Epperson before 1837 established a ferry used until the construction of a wooden bridge antedating the modern structure erected in 1924. Erected by the State of Texas 1936. SUPPLEMENTAL PLATE: 1956 This monument was removed to its present location when its original site, 7 miles southwest, was inundated by Lake Texarkana