DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Trammel's Trace, out in Cass County. Now, before there were highways, before there were railroads, before there was much of anything between St. Louis and the wild southwestern reaches of this continent, there was a trail.
And trails don't just appear — somebody has to walk it first, mark it, push through the brush and the boggy creek bottoms and say, this way. This is the way. That somebody, in 1813, was Nicholas Trammel.
Born in 1780, died in 1852 — a man who left his mark on this land so deep that it still carries his name two centuries on. What Trammel laid out was no mere footpath. This was a pioneer trail that originated all the way up in St.
Louis and arced down through the wilderness, linking two of the great colonial roads of the era — the Southwest Trail on one end, and the King's Highway to Mexico on the other. Think about that. One trail, stitching together two arteries of an entire continent's worth of movement.
Settlers, traders, soldiers — if you were headed southwest and you knew what you were doing, you were on Trammel's Trace. Now, the Trace enters Cass County — this county right here — at a place called Epperson's Ferry. And from there it didn't just cut a straight line south.
No, it swept. It continued south and west in an arc, and along that arc it passed through a place called Chalybeate Springs, which most folks would come to know as Hughes Springs. There's something almost musical about the way this trail moves through the landscape.
An arc, they say. Not a slash, not a grid line — an arc. Like the trail itself was following something, bending around the shape of the land the way water does.
Nicholas Trammel laid it out in 1813, and the land of Cass County has been remembering ever since.
What the marker says
Entered Cass County at Epperson's Ferry. Continued south and west in an arc, passing through Chalybeate Springs (Hughes Springs). This 1813 pioneer trail originated in St. Louis and linked the "Southwest Trail" with the King's Highway to Mexico. It was laid out by Nicholas Trammel (1780-1852).