Dallas-Shreveport Road

Before the railroad, the road was the county's market line. The Handbook of Texas says farmers hauled produce about 125 miles to Shreveport until the Texas and Pacific crossed the north of the county in 1873. The rails went through Jordan's Saline, which became Grand Saline in 1872, and missed Canton by ten miles. Wills Point was laid out beside the new line in 1873. Canton businessmen, unwilling to use the Wills Point railroad, founded Edgewood on the line instead, and Wills Point later made its case for the courthouse.

What the plaque says

Dallas-Shreveport Road A trail established by Caddoan Native Americans and later used by French traders who traversed this area is known today as the Dallas-Shreveport Road. The trail emerged in the mid-1830s as a main route into North Texas for emigrants and cargo from the river port of Shreveport, Louisiana. Van Zandt County's first courthouse was built along the route at Jordan's Saline in 1848. Used extensively for troop movements during the Civil War the route remained active with emigrants and ox teams into the 1900s. The route has greatly influenced settlement patterns in this area. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 16 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.
• Purtis Creek State Park — 24 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 31 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.

More markers nearby

• County Seat War — steps away
• White Rose Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• First Christian Church of Wills Point — 1.1 mi
• Elbert Gray — 1.3 mi