Exploration Route of Lt. James W. Abert

Abert's account lay almost forgotten in government files until 1941, when H. Bailey Carroll published the 1845 report in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review; John Galvin edited illustrated editions in 1967 and 1970 as Through the Country of the Comanche Indians in the Fall of the Year 1845. The Handbook of Texas notes that Abert labeled the Alibates outcrops Agate Bluffs, reached Bent's trading house on September 14 and painted watercolors, among them the Kiowa leader Dohäsan, whose village the party visited on September 17. A finch he found, Pipilo aberti, carries his name.

What the plaque says

(Campsites: 5 mi. SW and 3 mi. NE of marker) The United States government had the Canadian River explored in 1845, just before Texas joined the Union. Topographical engineer James W. Abert (1820-1897), a West Point graduate, had charge of a 33-man party, and spent two or more days in the vicinity of this marker. Near here he was visited by Kiowa Indians, who said that they were at war with Texans. Abert was made welcome after he proved to be an American. His map of the river and notes on geography and the Indians proved valuable to Texas and the nation. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument — 7.9 mi
  Hand-dug pits on a mesa above the Canadian River where people quarried banded flint for thousands of years and traded it across the Plains, seen on a ranger-led climb.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 9.4 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.
• Window on the Plains Museum — 17 mi
  Moore County's free museum on the Dumas highway, telling an industrial Panhandle of zinc smelters, helium and gas plants alongside the farm and ranch rooms.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 20 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.

More markers nearby

• The Canadian River — 9.4 mi
• Route of Tascosa-Dodge City Trail — 12 mi
• Antelope Creek Ruins — 13 mi
• Masterson — 13 mi