Torrey's Trading Post No. 2

The post on Trading House Creek worked as a bank as much as a store. According to the Handbook of Texas, it handled at least 75,000 deerskins between 1844 and 1853 and cleared notes for rangers and Native traders, with some loans repaid at six shaved skins to the dollar. For a price it also recovered stolen horses, runaway slaves and captured Mexicans from Native groups. A council ground lay four miles west, and in November 1845 a treaty was made at the post with Kichai, Tawakoni, Waco and Wichita groups.

What the plaque says

Torrey's Trading Post No. 2 (2.3 mi. north on bluff above Trading House Creek) Site of greatest Indian council in Republic of Texas. There President Sam Houston made famous 1844 peace talks to assembled chiefs. A "listening post" for frontier; aided in peacekeeping. Built 1844 and run by Geo. Barnard for the Torrey Brothers. In 1849 the post was moved to Waco by Barnard. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Armstrong Browning Library — 7.3 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 7.4 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 8.0 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 8.0 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church — 5.3 mi
• Riesel — 5.5 mi
• Friedens Evangelical and Reformed United Church of Christ — 5.5 mi
• Downsville Baptist Church — 6.3 mi