Central National Road of the Republic of Texas

Road commissioner John Yeary left a longer trail than the road. The Handbook of Texas says he was born in Virginia in 1796, became an Army captain and reached Fannin County in 1839. After an 1841 attack on his home wounded his wife with an arrow, he gained a name as an Indian fighter and rode with Ranger Edward Tarrant in 1842. For his road work he claimed 640 acres near Floyd, where a locust post became the forty-eight-mile post. By 1852 four enslaved people worked his land. He was killed in 1854 stopping a fight in his store.

What the plaque says

Central National Road of the Republic of Texas During its brief existence, the Congress of the Republic of Texas made significant efforts to plan for the inevitable increase in settlement. One of those efforts was the establishment of the Central National Road, designed to connect the Red River to existing military roads along the Trinity River and points farther west, thus opening much of northeast Texas to both settlement and commerce. On February 5, 1844, the Congress created a five-man commission to supervise the surveying and construction of the road. Commission members, which included John Yeary, received land for their work. Yeary selected property in present Collin County and founded a settlement that grew to become Farmersville. The commissioners chose George Stell of Paris, Texas, as surveyor for the project. He began his work in April 1844 from a point now within the city of Dallas. He and his assistant traveled northeast, measuring and marking the exact route, which passed through the present counties of Dallas, Rockwall, Collin, Hunt, Fannin, Lamar and Red River; only three of them had been formally organized at that time. The new route utilized existing prairies and natural stream crossings, and avoided obstacles like densely wooded areas. It ended at the Kiomatia Crossing of the Red River near present Jonesborough, Red River County. While records are unclear as to whether construction was ever completed, history shows the Central National Road was short-lived, soon replaced by the Preston Road and other early routes, and eventually by rail lines. It did, however, help open northeast Texas to increased growth and development. Through Yeary's association with the road and his settlement in Collin County, it also directly impacted the early growth in population of this area. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 11 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 15 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 17 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 24 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Community Independent School District — 1.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Josephine — 2.0 mi
• Josephine — 2.0 mi
• Empire Masonic Lodge — 2.2 mi