Early Texas Freighting

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Texas, freighting moved the goods that built and sustained distant settlements as teamsters braved Indians, bandits, and Texas weather to supply outlying forts and inland towns that suffered when imports from the Gulf Coast, the U. S., or Mexico slackened. One of the few regular runs connected Austin and Matagorda, with wagons leaving each city on the first and fifteenth of every month and crossing Matagorda, Wharton, Colorado, Fayette, Bastrop, and Travis Counties. Houston became a major Texas freight center because of its access to Galveston Bay, and George T. Howard and Charles Ogden were early freight men. First carts, and later wagons carrying 3000-7000 lbs. of cargo, were drawn by three to six yoke of oxen or mule teams. "Grass rates" for oxen grazed along the way were less than "Corn rates" for faster mules. Early wooden carts were fifteen feet long with two seven-foot wheels and a thatched roof, and their hubs were greased with prickly-pear leaves. For heavy loads on rough roads, the two-ton "Prairie schooner" was best. Caravans ranged from five to one hundred fifty wagons, and when resting or under attack the wagons formed a round protective corral while trained mules took their places instantly. Teamsters often banded together for mutual assistance, but with the coming of the "Iron Horse" in 1853, the freighter slowly began to disappear from the state.

Matagorda, Texas · United States