Jefferson

According to the Handbook of Texas, trade grew from $3 million in 1867 to $8 million in 1870, with more than 75,000 bales of cotton shipped each year; by 1870 only Galveston did more business. The town had 988 people in 1860 and 7,297 in the 1872 supplementary census, its peak. The popular story says Jay Gould, angered by a cool welcome, bypassed Jefferson and wrote in the Excelsior Hotel register that it meant the end of the town. The Handbook calls the curse completely unfounded; Gould did not acquire the Texas and Pacific until the early 1880s.

What the plaque says

Jefferson Home to the Caddo Indians for centuries, this area of Texas attracted Anglo-American colonists to settle here in the early 1800s. Founded in 1839, Jefferson developed along a double-grid pattern. Daniel Nelson Alley platted the townsite in a true north-south and east-west pattern, while Allen Urquhart drew a plan with streets leading diagonally to and from Big Cypress Bayou. Jefferson was a center of commerce and an important shipping point on the Red River system. Riverboats arrived at the wharves daily, making it a major inland port of entry for Texas pioneers. It was the seat of Cass County from 1846 to 1852, and was named seat of the new county of Marion in 1860. During the Civil War Jefferson served as a major supply center for the Confederacy. The late 1860s saw the imposition of martial law by Federal reconstruction troops, and a devastating fire in 1868 destroyed much of the central business district. Destruction of a massive logjam on the Red River in November 1873 diverted the river's flow and lowered the water in Big Cypress Bayou. The decline of Jefferson's economy due to the loss of its port continued until 20th-century tourism began to revive the town. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jefferson Historical Museum — 2.0 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 2.0 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 11 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Trammel's Trace — 0.7 mi
• Homesite of Barry Benefield — 1.8 mi
• George Webster Smith — 1.9 mi
• Captain William Perry — 2.0 mi