Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas

The Texas Frontier, 1840 –1860

70 The Texas Frontier, 1840–1860 ~HE evolving Chihuahua roads were both an opportunity and a threat to the ambitious plans of Mirabeau B. Lamar. Laredo was in Mexico and could be ignored. But Austin was the new capital of Texas and, prior to its near abandonment between 1842 and 1845, needed a push. To supplement Austin’s emerging (if costly) trade with the seaports at Houston and Galveston, the push would be provided by a proposed north-south Military Road and an expedition to Santa Fe. The former would be a critical chapter in the history of I-35; the latter would be a comedy of errors. Initiated by Lamar, the Military Road was authorized by the Texas Congress in December 1838 and reaffirmed by Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston in December 1839. The objective was to facilitate frontier trade and complement military defense schemes. Initially the road was intended to link Preston, the Red River crossing of the Chihuahua Road, with Austin and the village of San Patricio, west of Corpus Christi on the Nueces River. San Antonio was to be bypassed. The project was authorized because there were no wagon roads—only Indian trails— connecting the upper Red River to the populated regions of Texas in 1840. The Military Road Expedition would be commanded by Colonel William G. Cooke of the First Regiment of Infantry, a last-minute replacement for Edward Burleson and a key player in the recent “Court House Massacre” of Comanche peace delegates in San Antonio (March 19, 1840). Assisted by surveyor William H. Hunt, Cooke was commissioned to lay out a new road to connect a string of forts, way stations, and trading posts along the republic’s northern and northwestern frontier.1 The Military Road and related forts were intended to protect prospective settlers and traders from hostile Comanches. The road was also designed to intersect with the U.S. Army’s chain of forts north of the Red River—Washita, Towson, Gibson, and Smith (map 7). In 1816, a few Anglo families had settled in Jonesboro, Texas, opposite the future site of Fort Towson (1824) in Indian Territory. Trappers and Indian traders appeared more frequently after Fort Washita was founded in 1834 and Texas became independent in 1836. By then, the Anglo population of the upper Red River Valley had expanded to between six hundred and seven hundred. At Preston Bend, opposite Fort Washita, John Hart and two partners had cleared and abandoned a tract of land by 1838. The site remained vacant until another Indian trader, Holland Coffee , arrived and established Coffee’s Trading Post, the predecessor to Preston. Like most Indian traders, Coffee was somewhat of a rogue. He had traded with friendly Choctaws and other tribes in the wild Red River region west of the Cross Timbers as early as 1833. He had also visited Preston Bend in 1836.2 Coffee almost certainly traded contraband guns and whiskey to local Indians and may have traded in cattle stolen from Anglo pioneers. His 1839 marriage to the imposing Sophia Suttenfield added to Coffee’s evolving business empire. Ms. Suttenfield had somehow acquired ownership of as many as thirty slaves in a region where slavery was still rare. Coffee’s claim to Hart’s Preston property was somewhat murky and was clouded further by Hart’s murder in 1840 at the hands of one of Coffee’s partners. Still, this did not prevent Coffee from being elected to Texas’ Third Congress in 1838, representing Fannin County (prior to its reorganization). In 1839, Coffee also employed one John Neely Bryan, the future founder of Dallas, and acquired nearly four thousand acres in local property.3 Coffee’s Trading Post, situated on the south bank at the ancient Rock Bluff ford of the Red River, was located along a major east-west Indian trail and an emerging wagon road running between Missouri and southwestern Texas. By 1839, a log-raft ferry service was in operation to carry occasional bullion-laden wagons from Chihuahua en route to Forts Washita and Towson. Initially, the Chihuahua Road ran northeastward from Comanche Springs (the future Fort Stockton) via Big Spring through what would become Cooke, Grayson, Fannin , and Lamar counties, before crossing the Red River at Jonesboro. By adding a second river crossing west of the one at Jonesboro, Coffee’s Trading Post facilitated a continuing westward expansion of the upper Red River Valley.4 A Texas congressman since 1838, Coffee must...