Sand Springs

The town may owe its site to this water. The Red River Historian writes that the Katy would not have chosen the place in 1872 without a dependable supply, and Sand Springs, feeding Pawpaw Creek, provided it. The creek flooded so often that it was routed underground as the city grew, and the springs were dammed into Waterloo Lake, which supplied the town. The dam drowned the old camping grounds, but sandstone bluffs still rise above the lake, and generations of visitors have carved their names there. The writer, visiting recently, found no nineteenth-century inscriptions.

What the plaque says

Sand Springs A noted watering place on pioneer trails, known as early as 1840 to settlers and prospectors who camped near the strong currents of water boiling up at the foot of a rocky bluff. The sandstone of the bluff's face became an inscription rock, in which travelers carved names or initials and dates of their visits, sometimes to assure friends or relatives who were to follow later over the same trail. A campsite for prospectors, including California-bound gold seekers passing this way, 1849-1850s, the spot was mapped in 1857 as a watering spot for the Southern Overland Mail coaches of John Butterfield, racing from Saint Louis to San Francisco. After the Civil War (1861-65), many cattle herds passed this way for water while being driven north to market. When Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was built to Denison townsite in 1872, Sand Springs gained new importance, feeding Waterloo Lake, built in late 1800s and used for many years (prior to 1908) as city's main water supply. But the old campsites were inundated. Other steps in man's progress reduced flow of the water. The area remained a popular picnic ground for years. Its history is revealed by the weathered carvings still visible on the inscription rocks. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 2.1 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 5.4 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 18 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Waples Memorial United Methodist Church — 1.8 mi
• Miller's Spring — 1.9 mi
• Forest Park — 1.9 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 2.1 mi