Doan's Crossing on Red River

The ford was a hard one to cross. Quicksand patches and strong currents at high water meant drivers often paid to have a bridge of straw laid on the roadbed. Livestock inspectors for the Southwestern Cattle Raisers' Association checked each passing herd for proper ownership. The Doans' store handled mail for cowhands and for settlers in Old Greer County north of the river, and Frazer, forerunner of Altus, Oklahoma, relied on it until Frazer's own post office opened in 1886. Corwin Doan's careful journal of herds and owners was later destroyed.

What the plaque says

Doan's Crossing on Red River By herds on the Western Texas-Kansas Trail, 1876-1895, six million cattle and horses crossed here. "You don't need much monument if the cause is good. It's only these monuments that are for no reason at all that has to be big. Good luck to you all anyhow. Yours, Will Rogers." Dedicated to George W. Saunders, President of the Old Trail Driver's Association, "Who kept the trail records straight." Doan's Crossing A major route for cattle drives known primarily as the Western Trail developed from far South Texas to Dodge City, Kansas, in the 1870s. About 1876, trail drivers along the route began crossing the Red River near this site. In 1878, Ohio native Jonathan Doan established a trading post near the crossing and became the first person to permanently settle in Wilbarger County (organized in 1881). In the early 1880s he and his partner/nephew Corwin F. Doan recorded the passage of hundreds of thousands of cattle along this river crossing which became known as Doan's Crossing. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Doan's Crossing — steps away
  A store, an adobe house and a granite marker of ranch brands at the Red River ford where the Western Trail herds left Texas, kept alive by a May picnic held since 1884.
• Red River Valley Museum — 13 mi
  Vernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.
• Museum of the Western Prairie — 22 mi
  The Oklahoma Historical Society's museum in Altus, telling southwest Oklahoma from the granite uplift through the Western Trail, Texas's Greer County, dugouts, irrigation and the air base.

More markers nearby

• Thaddeus Edgar Johnson — 13 mi
• Early Wilbarger County — 13 mi
• Red River Valley Museum — 13 mi
• Wilbarger County — 13 mi