Military Road (Ft. Belknap-San Antonio)

Francis Theodore Bryan was a Topographical Engineer, wounded at Buena Vista in the Mexican War. In 1849 he was sent to find a northern route from San Antonio to El Paso by way of Fredericksburg and the San Saba, and he reported it practical, recommending wells along it. In the months that followed he made reconnaissance tours between San Antonio and Fort Belknap. He resigned in 1861, was arrested on his way home to North Carolina, and built a business in St. Louis, from which he gave the University of North Carolina a rare-book collection in 1891.

What the plaque says

Military Road (Ft. Belknap-San Antonio) Past this point extended a Military Road connecting Fort Belknap and San Antonio. Blazed in 1851 by Lieutenant Francis T. Bryan of the U.S. Army. Traveled by troops, supply trains and frontier settlers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Belknap — steps away
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 9.2 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.

More markers nearby

• Colonel William C. Young — steps away
• Butterfield Overland Stages — steps away
• Tonkawa Scouts, C.S.A. — steps away
• Major Robert S. Neighbors — steps away