Pendleton Crossing

Before any bridge, travelers on the Camino Real crossed the Sabine by ferry. A boat ran here from around 1795 as the Chabanan Ferry. James Taylor Gaines bought it in 1819, and it carried his name until he sold it in 1843; after that it became Pendleton's Ferry. The Gaines-Pendleton Bridge replaced the boat in 1937. For years the ground on both sides was contested, because the United States and Spain each claimed it until the 1819 treaty took effect in 1821, and the crossing sat at the edge of the Neutral Strip.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• North Toledo Bend State Park — 5.8 mi
  A 900-acre park on the Louisiana shore of the 186,000-acre Toledo Bend Reservoir, with trails, disc golf and cabins, near the flooded sites of Pine Flat and other Sabine Parish communities.
• Red Hills Lake Recreation Area — 7.5 mi
  A 19-acre Sabine National Forest lake completed by the CCC in 1940 near Milam, a short drive from Toledo Bend Reservoir, with a swimming beach, fishing and camping from May through October.
• Fort Jesup State Historic Site — 20 mi
  The 1822 army post Zachary Taylor built to hold the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, with the one surviving kitchen, a reconstructed officers' quarters and a museum open Friday to Sunday.
• Mission Dolores State Historic Site — 24 mi
  A Texas Historical Commission site in San Augustine, with a museum and a diorama of the Spanish mission among the Ais, where no above-ground remains survive, on El Camino Real de los Tejas.

More markers nearby

• The History of Toledo Bend — steps away
• James Taylor Gaines — 3.3 mi
• Gaines Memorial Bridge — 3.4 mi
• Sabine Town Cemetery — 5.9 mi