Cherokee Trace

The Stephen F. Austin State University Heritage Center describes how the Cherokee built the road: they felled trees, cleared underbrush, and dragged buffalo hides behind their horses to press down tall grass. Along it they planted Cherokee roses and honeysuckle and set up camps at springs. The same account says Sam Houston had promised the Cherokee title to Piney Woods land, a treaty the Texas Senate refused to ratify. After Lamar ordered them out in June 1839 and Chief Bowles died at the Battle of the Neches, the survivors fled north along the trail.

What the plaque says

Cherokee Trace In 1821 near this site, Cherokee Indians blazed a trail from near Nacogdoches, Texas, to their home reservation at White River, Ark. They slashed trees, cleared path, planted "Cherokee" roses, and established camps at springs. Used by Sam Houston, friend of the Cherokees, on his move to Texas; by David Crockett, other soldiers of the Texas Revolution, and thousands of immigrants. After June 1839, when Texas settlers drove the Cherokees out of the state, the Indians departed over this trail; others traveled it for years thereafter. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 9.9 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Tyler State Park — 25 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 25 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• White Oak Independent School District — 0.7 mi
• Point Pleasant — 2.3 mi
• Longview — 2.6 mi
• Gregg County Discovery Oil Well, F. K. Lathrop A-1, Aransas Fuel Oil Co. — 2.6 mi