Marshall-Shreveport Stagecoach Road

The Stephen F. Austin State University Heritage Center profiles William T. Bradfield, born in North Carolina in 1813, who moved to Harrison County about 1852. It says his Marshall to Shreveport line was running by the late 1850s, and an April 1859 advertisement in Rusk's Texas Enquirer listed service three times a week through Marshall, Henderson and Rusk to Crockett. By April 1869 he also ran Marshall to Dallas, a four-day trip that cost $20 from Hallsville. The railroad reached Hallsville that August, and he later sold the line.

What the plaque says

Marshall-Shreveport Stagecoach Road Before the Civil War (1861-65), the stage road was the main transportation artery between Marshall and Shreveport, providing a link with New Orleans for distant markets. Extending northeast from Marshall, the stage road paralleled the later route of State Highway 43 and passed about 2.5 miles north of this site. Merging with the route from Jefferson, it turned southeast toward Waskom. In some areas, iron-rimmed wheels and horses' hooves trampled the narrow roadbed as much as 12 feet below the surrounding terrain. Travel over the dirt road was uncomfortable in dry weather and often impossible in rainy seasons. Regular stage service was established by 1850, with three arrivals and three departures weekly from Marshall. Arrival of the stage was a major event. At the sound of the driver's bugle, townspeople rushed to meet the incoming coach. By 1860 Marshall had several stagecoach lines and a network of roads. The Marshall to Shreveport line was operated by plantation owner William Bradfield and his son John. The stage continued to run during the Civil War, despite the shortage of drivers and horses. Use of the stage road declined after the war, when the Southern Pacific completed a rail line to Shreveport. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 6.6 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 6.8 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 7.1 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 7.7 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

• Town of Scottsville — 4.0 mi
• Marshall — 5.0 mi
• Harrison County — 5.1 mi
• Woodlawn Baptist Church — 6.1 mi