Route of Marcy Trail

Marcy went on to write the road manual for the whole West. Recalled to Washington after a famous winter march of more than a thousand miles to relieve Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston's army in Utah in 1857-58, he prepared The Prairie Traveler (1859), with advice on equipment, organizing wagon trains and avoiding attack, and notes on thirty-four overland trails. During the Civil War he was chief of staff to his son-in-law, George B. McClellan. He became inspector general of the army in 1878, retired in 1881 and died in 1887.

What the plaque says

This overland route, blazed in 1849 by energetic and efficient Army Captain R. B. Marcy, was best known as part of the California gold trail. Starting in Oklahoma, Marcy led an expedition across the Texas Panhandle and back through central West Texas. Both of the wagon roads he laid out served the emigrant traffic. In 1853, this section was planned as part of the route for the first transcontinental railroad in America, but the Civil War shifted sentiment to northern routes. Its importance declined after the railroad came through this county, 1887. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Citadelle Art Museum — 7.7 mi
  A 1910 Baptist church saved from demolition in 1977, made into a family home filled with art, and given to Canadian in 2009 as one of the Panhandle's few art museums.
• River Valley Pioneer Museum — 7.9 mi
  The Hemphill County museum in Canadian, a Santa Fe division town of 1887 on the river breaks that held one of the first commercial rodeos in Texas and voted itself dry in 1903.
• Canadian River Wagon Bridge — 9.0 mi
  The longest pin-connected bridge in Texas, 3,255 feet of Parker trusses across the Canadian River at Canadian, built for wagons in 1916 and reopened as a footpath in 2000.
• Gene Howe Wildlife Management Area — 10 mi
  Five thousand acres of sand sage and cottonwood bottomland along the Canadian River east of Canadian, bought by the state in 1950 for wildlife research and open to walkers with a permit.

More markers nearby

• 58 Yards West to Routes of Historic Trails — 1.4 mi
• Gen. Nelson Miles Expedition (Headquarters Dugout) — 5.8 mi
• Mary B. Isaacs — 7.5 mi
• First Church Bell — 7.7 mi