Head of Elm, also known as Saint Jo, was the site of an eighteen forty-nine camp of Captain Randolph B. Marcy on a government survey trip, an eighteen fifty-four survey by Captain John Pope for a proposed federal railroad, and an eighteen fifty-five passage by the U.S. Second Cavalry under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnson en route to establish Texas frontier forts, when a settlement was reported there. In eighteen fifty-seven Colonel James B. Leach headed a Corn Train to Fort Belknap there, in eighteen sixty a U.S. post office opened with John W. Womble as postmaster, from eighteen sixty-seven to eighteen eighty-seven drivers on the great cattle trails camped and watered there, and in eighteen seventy-three Saint Jo was founded on the site by I.H. Boggess and J.A. Howell.