For at least 300 years, pack trails and wagon roads in this area developed into modern roads such as U.S. Highway 181. Old trails made by Indians, wild cattle, and mustang horses became highways for 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century expeditions coming from Mexico to claim Texas for Spain. When pioneers established land grants here, they also used Indian trails and placed towns along them. Beeville, the county seat, stood at the natural intersection of the San Patricio-Helena Road and the Goliad-Laredo Road. About 20 miles south, the Matamoros-Goliad Road, called Camino Real by old-timers, was probably the most historic road in the area. From 1861 to 1865, the cotton road, called the lifeline of the southern Confederacy, crossed Bee County. A later route of great value was a cattle trail that funneled thousands of Longhorns from the Rio Grande to the Red River and then onto the Dodge City Trail or the Chisholm Trail to northern markets. The area also included La Para, or Grapevine, Road, the Indianola-Papalote Road, and a road to now-vanished St. Mary's, a port on Copano Bay off the Gulf of Mexico.