By 1835, the under-funded provisional government of Texas offered to pay its soldiers with land, and surveying parties flooded the frontier, entering Native hunting grounds. Hard-fought battles and skirmishes brought no lasting victories to the Natives as roads, settlements, and farms sprang up after the new Republic formed in 1836. In 1840, Colonel William G. Cooke of the first regiment of infantry of the Texas Army was authorized to lay out a military road from Austin to the Red River along the old trail known as the Shawnee Trail, Preston Trail, Preston Road, Military Road, and the Texas Road. The building of Preston Road marked an important beginning to safe and secure commerce, trade, and settlement in the area. Military surveyors used transits and a linked Gunter Chain with sixty-six links to a chain and a length of sixty-six feet to lay out their roads, often along old buffalo or cattle trails. The unit of measure for all Texas roads surveyed in this era was the Bara, one Bara equaling 2.779 feet, the Spanish equivalent of a yard.