Marcy Trail

The railroad that later followed Marcy's road made a town here. In late June 1881 the Texas and Pacific, building between Dallas and El Paso, set up Midway Station, a section house halfway between the two cities. The first permanent resident was Herman N. Garrett, a sheepman who shipped his flock from California to El Paso and drove 300 head across the Pecos in 1882. Other ranchers followed, and when a post office was granted on January 4, 1884, the place was renamed Midland, because Texas already had other towns called Midway.

What the plaque says

Marcy Trail Plotted in 1849 by a U. S. Army surveying expedition under Capt. Randolph B. Marcy. Guided by Manuel, a Comanche Indian, Marcy crossed the dreaded staked plains of West Texas, proving their feasibility for travel, and opening a new and shorter road west. Marcy's trail from Dona Ana, N. M., to Fort Smith, Ark., became a major road to the California gold fields. Later the overland stage followed it for about 125 miles and in 1881, Texas and Pacific Railroad built along part of the route. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 5.4 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Museum of the Southwest — 5.5 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.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 5.7 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Midland County — steps away
• Brown-Dorsey House — 4.3 mi
• John Valentine Pliska — 4.4 mi
• Staked Plains — 4.4 mi