Cross Timbers

Settlers and explorers met the Eastern Cross Timbers as a forest to get through. In 1716 the Spanish explorer Domingo Ramón called the region Monte Grande and wrote that the oaks were so dense his party had to cut trees with axes to ride through. Later settlers near Keller, the Handbook of Texas says, kept their homes in the timber and their farms or ranches on the open prairie, fattened hogs on acorns, gathered wild grapes, and hauled in building lumber by wagon from Grapevine because the local wood was poor for it.

What the plaque says

Cross Timbers This narrow strip of sandy timberland, called "The Eastern Cross Timbers", separates the Blackland Prairie and the Grand Prairie. It covers about one million acres. Indians camped here because the mild climate, good soil, frequent rains and nearby prairies supported large herds of buffalo and horses. There were salt licks, fresh water springs, trees for fuel, and good grass. They also found game for food and hides. West of the Grand Prairie, covering about 2.7 million acres, is "The Western Cross Timbers". During the 18th century Wichita Indians, of Caddoan stock roamed this area. Southern plains tribes, such as the Kiowa and the Comanche, often wintered here and traded with them. Cultural exchanges occurred here as trade routes developed between flint sources in the south and tribes from the north. By 1720 French traders came. They opened the trading posts and bartered with the Indians. The Spanish moved through, traveling to their Mission outposts. Settlement in the 1840s by Anglo-Americans led to clashes. A turning point came on May 24, 1841, with the battle of Village Creek, a few miles west of this site. The Indians withdrew to the west, leaving the land to the white settlers. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 6.5 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 15 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 16 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 16 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church — 3.6 mi
• Marrow Bone Spring — 3.6 mi
• Middleton Tate Johnson — 3.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Arlington — 4.4 mi