First Fannin County Settlement

The Rover's passengers wrote their own account. A card signed by cabin passengers, among them Daniel Rowlett, Dan Slack, Edward and John Stephens and R. H. Locke, thanked Captain Benjamin Crooks for getting the steamboat through the Red River raft. The card dates the boat's entry into Twelve Mile Bayou to December 31, 1835. The steamboat climbed bayous and lakes, building dams to raise the water, and needed 41 days to reach open river above the raft, with army stores for Fort Towson and about 150 people bound west.

What the plaque says

First Fannin County Settlement (1 mile east of landing) Established April 1836 by five pioneers moving to Texas on the "Rover," one of few steamboats to pass around snags and bends of Red River to this area. The colonists -- from four states of the "Old South" -- were Richard Locke, Dr. Daniel Rowlett, Daniel Slack, Edward and John Stephens. They were soon joined by Jabez Fitzgerald and Mark Roberts and families, who traveled overland. Leader of settlers was Rowlett, planter and lawyer as well as doctor, instrumental in creation of Fannin County, 1837; he served Republic of Texas in army and in 2nd, 4th and 8th Congresses. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 20 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Fort Washita Historic Site — 31 mi
  The 1842 post built to keep the peace for the Chickasaw and Choctaw in their new lands, burned at the end of the Civil War and bought by the Chickasaw Nation in 2017.

More markers nearby

• Site of Smith Plantation — 8.3 mi
• Jones' Mill Community — 14 mi
• Vineyard Grove Baptist Church — 15 mi
• Chahta Tamaha — 15 mi