For centuries this area of Texas was home to the Caddo Indians, and in the early 1800s it attracted Anglo-American colonists. Founded in 1839, Jefferson developed on a double-grid pattern, with Daniel Nelson Alley platting the townsite in a true north-south and east-west layout while Allen Urquhart drew a plan with streets leading diagonally to and from Big Cypress Bayou. Jefferson became a center of commerce and an important shipping point on the Red River system, with riverboats arriving at the wharves daily and making it a major inland port of entry for Texas pioneers. It served as the seat of Cass County from 1846 to 1852 and became the seat of the new county of Marion in 1860. During the Civil War, Jefferson was a major supply center for the Confederacy. In the late 1860s, Federal Reconstruction troops imposed martial law, and a devastating fire in 1868 destroyed much of the central business district. After a massive logjam on the Red River was destroyed in November 1873, the river’s flow was diverted and the water in Big Cypress Bayou dropped, contributing to a continuing economic decline after the loss of the port until 20th-century tourism began to revive the town.