Telegraph Road

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it too. There's a road out here in Montgomery County with a name that carries its whole history in it. Telegraph Road.

And the story behind that name goes back further than the telegraph itself. Way back to 1845, settlers were already moving along this trail, connecting the towns of Montgomery, Houston, and Huntsville. A pioneer trail, plain and simple, worn down by boots and wagon wheels and the kind of hard freight-hauling work that built early Texas from the ground up.

It was an important transportation and freighting route, and folks depended on it. Now, a road that useful doesn't stay quiet for long. In 1854, the Texas and Red River Telegraph Company was established, and when those men started stringing wire, they looked out at the landscape and saw a path already cut through it.

They ran their lines right along that historic trail to extend service to Montgomery and Houston. And somewhere along the way, people started calling it what it had become. The Telegraph Road.

Now here's the part that sticks with me. The wires eventually were removed. The technology moved on, the way technology does.

But the road, that old pioneer trail, it stayed. Portions of it remained visible for many years. The name outlasted the very thing that gave it the name.

That trail was there before the telegraph, and it was there long after. Some roads just refuse to be forgotten.

What the marker says

A pioneer trail connecting the towns of Montgomery, Houston, and Huntsville, in use as early as 1845, became an important transportation and freighting route for early settlers. After the Texas and Red River Telegraph Company was established in 1854, wires were strung along the historic trail to extend service to Montgomery and Houston. The route soon became known as the "Telegraph Road." Although the wires eventually were removed, portions of the old Telegraph Road remained visible for many years. (1972)