Preston Road/Shawnee Trail
Marker Title: Preston Road / Shawnee Trail
City: Pottsboro
County: Grayson
Year Marker Erected: 1998
Marker Location: FM 120 E in Friendship Park, Pottsboro.
Marker Text: In 1840, authorized by an 1838 act of the Congress
of the Republic of Texas, Col. W.G. Cooke and the Texas First Infantry
Regiment laid out a military road from Austin north through what became
Dallas to the Holland Coffee Trading Post on Red River (later covered
by Lake Texoma). Coffee developed the town of Preston near the trading
post, and Cooke's military route became known as Preston Road between
the Red River and Dallas. Immigrants came from Missouri and Arkansas
through Indian Territory (Oklahoma) into Texas along Preston Road. In
one six-week period in 1845, roughly 1,000 wagons crossed the river
into Texas. From the mid-1850s the road marked the route for Texas'
first cattle drive. Later known as the Shawnee Trail, it probably was
named for a Native American village called Shawneetown north of what
became Denison. Cattle swam the Red River at Rock Bluff Crossing, a
natural rock formation that served as a chute into the water, later
the site of the city of Sherman's water intake station on Lake Texoma.
This remained the principal route to the north for Texas cattle until
the Civil War. The last large herds moved through Grayson County in
1871. The old route remains visible at Rocky Point on Lake Texoma, and
along Hanna Drive. The overall passage is followed by parts of Preston
Road in Grayson County, a farm-to-market road and State Highway Route
289, and Preston Road in Dallas. (1998)
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