William Becknell

Money trouble set Becknell on the trail. The Handbook of Texas says financial trouble drove him to organize the 1821 trading party from Franklin, Missouri, that was welcomed into the previously forbidden province of New Mexico. In 1822, on his second trip, he took the first wagons across the trail, and on a third, in 1824 and 1825, he led trappers into Colorado. After moving to Red River County in 1835 he went to the Texas capital in 1836 believing he had won a House seat, then gave it up when Collin McKinney arrived with more votes.

What the plaque says

William Becknell (Star and Wreath) Born in Virginia, 1797. Pioneered the Santa Fe Trail. Served in the Army of the Republic of Texas. Died 1865. Erected by the State of Texas 1957.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lennox Woods Preserve — 9.3 mi
  A Nature Conservancy preserve of mature East Texas forest north of Clarksville, kept by the Lennox family for four generations, with a 1.5-mile loop under post oaks more than 300 years old.
• Eiffel Tower — 20 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 22 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.

More markers nearby

• William Becknell — steps away
• A House of the William Becknell Family — 3.3 mi
• Clarksville Cemetery — 6.8 mi
• The Northern Standard — 6.9 mi