The Texas Road

Before settlers moved into Texas in the 1830s and 1840s, the northern portion of this route through what later became Honey Springs was known as the Osage Trace. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Osage used the area to gather salt from the Neosho (Grand) River Valley, and American and French traders exchanged furs and peltries with them along the path for ammunition, knives, beads, vermillion, arm bands, strouding, and other goods. In the 1840s and 1850s the route also served as a cattle trail, better known as the Shawnee Trail, over which thousands of longhorn cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas and Missouri. Many settlers traveling to Texas used the road, and newspapers advertising the route gave rise to the name "Texas Road." Later, gold seekers known as 49ers passed over part of it on the southern route to California and later to Denver, Colorado, and the north-south road met the east-west gold rush road to California at North Fork Town. After the Civil War, travel on the road continued, but the construction of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway parallel to it by 1872 made it obsolete, and in the early 20th century the Jefferson Highway was built along much of its course before eventually giving way to present-day Highway 69.

Rentiesville, Oklahoma · United States