Dawdy's Ferry

Hutchins, the town this crossing belongs to, took its name from William J. Hutchins, a promoter of the Houston and Texas Central Railway. The Handbook of Texas says settlement began about 1860 as a trading place for people along the river's west bank, and the railroad arrived in 1872 with a post office. By 1884 the town counted 250 people, three general stores, three gins, two gristmills, a sawmill, three doctors and a wagonmaker. The Handbook counts 500 people there in 1926.

What the plaque says

Dawdy's Ferry Illinois native Alanson Dawdy (1826 - 1901) came to Dallas County in 1847. In 1854, he was granted a license to operate a ferry at this site on the Trinity River, the southernmost crossing at the time. An important route for citizens living on both sides of the river, the ferry continued in operation until about 1876. Ferry charges included one dollar for a wagon with four or more animals, ten cents for a man and horse, and five cents for a person on foot. The first permanent bridge was installed at this site in 1888. Dawdy was a veteran of the Mexican and Civil Wars. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — 10 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 10 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 10 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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 12 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.

More markers nearby

• Hutchins Memorial Cemetery — 1.9 mi
• Rylie Prairie — 4.0 mi
• Kleberg — 5.4 mi
• Former Site of Head House — 5.6 mi