Trammel's Trace

The road began as a web of Caddo trails. In the early 1800s Anglo smugglers used them to move horses out of the Red River prairies of Spanish Texas. In 1824 Daniel Davis helped Nicholas Trammell cut a trail for wagons, mainly for residents of Pecan Point heading to Stephen F. Austin's colony. The trace had two starts, Pecan Point and Fulton, Arkansas. The Handbook of Texas says Sam Houston and David Crockett rode it and that before 1836 it was the main migration road from Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee. Sections remain visible on private land.

What the plaque says

Trammel's Trace Traces began as foot paths used by the Indians to mark their trails through wilderness areas. They later were used by surveyors in mapping early land grants. In 1824 Nicholas Trammel (1780-1852), a government scout, began opening up the trace that now bears his name. Trammel's Trace was, for many years, an important route of immigration into Texas. Approximately 180 miles long, it began at Fulton, Arkansas, and continued to Nacogdoches, Texas. Trammel's Trace entered Marion County on its northern boundary and left the county about 3.5 miles south of Jefferson. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jefferson Historical Museum — 1.3 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 1.3 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 11 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Jefferson — 0.7 mi
• Homesite of Barry Benefield — 1.1 mi
• George Webster Smith — 1.2 mi
• Captain William Perry — 1.3 mi