LeGrande Survey of 1833

Alexander Le Grand, a Marylander by his own account, first appears in New Mexico in 1823, and in 1824 he captained a caravan of eighty-three traders from Missouri to Santa Fe. In 1826, for a reported $10,000, he contracted to survey an empresario grant of some 48 million acres beginning where the thirty-second parallel meets the 102nd meridian. His thirty-man party left Miller County, Arkansas, in June 1827 and reached Santa Fe in November; whether he actually ran the survey described in his journal has long been doubted. He died in Houston in 1839.

What the plaque says

LeGrande Survey of 1833 Made in era of Mexico rule in Texas for John Beales, who through partnerships, acquired 70,000,000 acres of land and gained the title of "Texas" largest land king. Alexander LeGrande's survey covered about 2,000 miles in west Texas, Oklahoma Panhandle and Eastern New Mexico then south to the 32nd parallel. Hardship and tragedy plagued LeGrande's abandoned survey. First exploration here is usually credited to Capt. R. B. Marcy, U.S. Army; LeGrande's work was years earlier. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 13 mi
  Odessa's oldest standing building, an 1887 brick house of a family the Texas and Pacific drew west, later cut into apartments for the oil boom and now a free house museum.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 14 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.
• Odessa Meteor Crater — 18 mi
  A shallow bowl in the ranchland southwest of Odessa where a shower of iron meteorites struck in the late Ice Age, with a trail down into it and a small museum on the rim.
• Museum of the Southwest — 20 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.

More markers nearby

• Baker Ranch School — steps away
• Gardendale — 2.8 mi
• Emigrant Trail — 7.7 mi
• Prairie Dog — 9.6 mi