Route of Old Colony Line Road

Hunt County had no railroad and no navigable river until 1880, so whatever settlers could not grow came by ox cart, with Jefferson, 120 miles east, the nearest market. The Handbook of Texas calls the result a yeoman-farmer county, not a plantation one: a few slaveholders formed the political elite, but no cotton society took root without transport. Its figures for 1860 are 412 farms and a cotton crop of only 22 bales. Freight roads like this one carried that dependence until the Katy and the East Line reached Greenville in 1880 and 1881.

What the plaque says

Route of Old Colony Line Road Early travel artery. Followed the north boundary line of the Chas. F. Mercer colony, a 6,500-square-mile tract granted to Mercer in 1844 by Sam Houston (President of the Republic of Texas) for purpose of bringing colonists into Texas. Southern half of Hunt County once lay in this pioneer colony. Over the road came ox-wagons from Jefferson to supply stores in Greenville, McKinney, Dallas, Fort Worth and the frontier. Settlers from the Old South traveled it in a steady stream of covered wagons. Highway 24 today traces part of the road. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 5.4 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 21 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 25 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Burleson College — 3.2 mi
• Hunt County's First Railroad — 4.0 mi
• Greenville Building and Loan Association — 4.2 mi
• Greenville — 4.2 mi