Chalybeate Springs

The pirate gold in this story has a source and a doubter. Reece Hughes's son Howell, writing about 1929, recalled that an old sea pirate named Trammell buried a strongbox of gold coins near a Native village on the trace. Later tellers made Trammell one of Jean Laffite's men. Writer Mike Cox found nothing in Trammell's biography to suggest piracy or buried treasure. By the family's account the Hughes brothers pitched a tent on March 28, 1839, near a spring-fed creek about a mile east of today's town. They found no gold, the son wrote, and cleared a farm.

What the plaque says

Chalybeate Springs (Pronounced "KA LIB E ATE) Discovered in 1839 by brothers Reece and Robert Hughes (from Alabama) while looking for pirate gold. springs derive name from iron salts in water. In 1847 Reece Hughes (1811-1893), wealthy planter who later built iron foundry, started the first town of Hughes Springs here. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 3.6 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 24 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 24 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Atlanta State Park — 27 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.

More markers nearby

• Trammel's Trace — steps away
• Town of Hughes Springs — 1.2 mi
• Harris Chapel Cemetery — 4.5 mi
• Morris County — 5.9 mi