Central National Road of the Republic of Texas

Congress paid for the road in land. In February 1844 it named a five-man commission to choose the route, see it cleared and have bridges built, and paid them in acreage, much of which they picked along the line. Surveyor George W. Stell of Paris laid out a path that probably began at John Neely Bryan's Trinity crossing. With the Austin road to Preston Bend opened in 1840, it was meant to make an international highway between St. Louis and San Antonio. That plan went unrealized as the frontier moved west and newer towns drew other routes.

What the plaque says

Central National Road of the Republic of Texas In an effort to improve overland transportation, the Republic of Texas Congress authorized the Central National Road in Feb. 1844. The roadway was to be 30 feet wide and cleared of stumps over 12 inches high. A survey team led by Major George W. Stell platted the route from near the mouth of Elm Fork on the Trinity River in present downtown Dallas, northeast to Kiomatia on the Red River. The highway linked a road leading south to Austin and San Antonio with a U.S. military highway extending north to St. Louis from Fort Towson in present Oklahoma. Running east from Dallas, the Central National Road turned northeast to cross the area that is now Rockwall County. Portions of FM 740, known locally as Ridge Road, follow the historic route. The earliest Rockwall County pioneers settled near the road about 1846. Sterling R. Barnes located his homestead about two miles south of the present site of Rockwall, and John O. Heath settled near the crossing of the East Fork of the Trinity River. The towns of Heath, originally named "Black Hill" and later "Willow Springs," and Rockwall, the county seat, were founded along the highway. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 1.1 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.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 17 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.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 19 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.
• Fair Park — 20 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.

More markers nearby

• Rockwall County — 1.3 mi
• The Church of Christ in Rockwall — 2.0 mi
• Fate Presbyterian Church — 4.3 mi
• Sterling Rex Barnes — 5.4 mi