On Burleson Lake: Camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas

The army that mustered out from Burleson Lake in July 1839 had just carried out a removal. The Handbook of Texas says the Senate declared the Cherokees' 1836 treaty void in 1837, and that after the fighting at the Neches the troops marched toward the Sabine headwaters. On July 21 and 22 they destroyed huts, fields, villages and more than 200 acres of corn. The pursuit ended July 24, and most Cherokees and their allies fled to Indian Territory. The Alabama and Coushatta were the only peoples left in East Texas in significant numbers.

What the plaque says

On Burleson Lake_Camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas On Burleson Lake, 3.5 miles west of here was last Cherokee War Camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas. Under Gen. Kelsey H. Douglass, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, Gen. Edward Burleson, and Col. Willis H. Landrum. Texas Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston ordered the army mustered out after its decisive victory in Battle of the Neches against Chief Bowles of the Cherokees and associated tribes on July 16, 1839, in Van Zandt County. From the Burleson Lake Camp, the soldiers departed for their homes on July 25, 1839. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Governor Hogg Shrine — 13 mi
  Quitman's 27-acre city park, once a state historical park, where two houses tied to James Stephen Hogg's marriage stand beside an arboretum, a nature walk and the grounds of the Old Settlers Reunion.
• Tyler State Park — 15 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 19 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• In this vicinity extended the Vial-Fragoso Trail — 1.5 mi
• Caddo Indian Communities in Wood County — 2.4 mi
• Mineola Black Spiders — 3.5 mi
• Rufus Cornelius Hickman — 3.7 mi