Early nineteenth-century trade routes across the Sabine River were few and served all travelers and traders. The Beef Road, which replaced the earlier Zavala Road, had become an important route by 1840 and crossed this area. Named for the cattle trade, it began in the Huntsville and Liberty regions and ran through Zavala and Jasper into present Newton County, where it forked near this site into three routes. The northern fork to Natchitoches crossed the Sabine at Bevil’s Ferry, later Haddon’s; the middle route to Alexandria led to Hickman’s Ferry, later Burr’s; and the southern branch to Opelousas crossed at New Columbia. Cattle were corralled at night in beef pens located along the trails, including Week’s Chapel and Toledo. During the Civil War, the Beef Road was an important supply artery to the Confederate States until the Federal Army gained control of the Mississippi River in July 1863, halting the eastern cattle drives. Sabine River crossings were fortified against attack because the roads would have been necessary for an invading force, but the expected invasion never came. Railroad expansion into Kansas in the late 1860s diverted the cattle drives northward and led to the decline of the Beef Road as a major cattle trade route.