Site of an Indian Village

A 1946 county history says legend puts an Indian village where Gilmer now stands, and points to the spring in what it calls Roosevelt Park as an old camping ground, from which a ditch carried the stream almost to the square. The Handbook of Texas says the Cherokees used the Cherokee Trace and were expelled from Texas in 1839. The history adds that Chief Bowles was killed in a two-day battle on the Neches River, and that the Cherokees retreated up the Trace until they scattered in the Little Cypress bottom.

What the plaque says

Site of an Indian Village Established early in the 19th century by a band of Cherokees. Inhabited until those Indians and their associated tribes were driven from Texas in 1839. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 24 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 25 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Daingerfield State Park — 25 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Tyler State Park — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Croley Funeral Home — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Gilmer — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Gilmer — 0.2 mi
• Upshur County, C. S. A. — 0.2 mi