Old Neches Saline Road

Salt made the trail a road: by the 1820s settlers, including the Cherokee chief Bowl (Duwali), boiled brine from the Neches saline in iron pots. On October 5, 1838, the Killough settlement nearby was attacked and eighteen people were killed or carried off; survivors fled to Lacy's Fort. The Handbook says Cherokees were blamed and Lamar ordered them out. Gen. Hugh McLeod wrote that the band included Caddos, Coushattas, runaway slaves, Mexicans and possibly Keechis, and survivors said they saw a white man dressed as an Indian. The white-man report was never substantiated.

What the plaque says

Old Neches Saline Road Originally an Indian trail. Used in 1765 by the Spanish priest Calahorra on an Indian peace mission. Gained importance, 1820s, for use in hauling salt from Neches Saline to Nacogdoches. Survivors of the Killough family massacre of 1838 fled via the road to Fort Lacy. The Texas Army used it en route to fight Mexican rebel Cordova in 1838 and in Cherokee War, 1839. Some of Kentucky volunteers went this way to the Mexican War, 1846. After Indian wars, road brought in many settlers. Jacksonville, Dialville and Larissa grew up along its path. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 23 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 25 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 28 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 31 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.

More markers nearby

• Jackson Smith — 1.9 mi
• Fry's Gap — 1.9 mi
• Jacksonville College — 2.7 mi
• Fred Douglass School — 2.8 mi