Inland Roads

A military road was provided for by the congress of the republic, from the mouth of Bois d'Arc, on Red River to the Nueces River at the crossing of the Presidio road, in 1839. This military road was to be sufficiently cleared and bridged to admit of passage of wagons. Blockhouses, or garrisons, were to be maintained at various points. In the vicinity of each fort three leagues of land were to be surveyed in lots of 160 acres each, two of which lots were to be reserved to the government and two were to be given to each soldier of the regiment on duty along said road for its protection and improvement. The remainder was to be distributed among such ablebodied citizens as would settle upon and cultivate it for the space of two years. The frontier regiment was to consist of eight hundred and forty men, to serve for three years. unless sooner discharged. The regiment was to be divided into fifteen companies of fifty-six men each, and to be stationed along the road as follows: Fifty-six men at Red River; one hundred and sixty-eight men at the three forks of the Trinity: one hundred and twelve men at the Brazos: one hundred and twelve men at Colorado; fifty-six men at the San Marcos; fifty-six men on the Cibolo; fifty-six men at the Rio Frio and two hundred and twenty-four men at Nueces. The troops were to cultivate a part of the three hundred and twenty acres reserved to the government for their sustenance. Beginning in 1840 this road was laid out and opened up by Capt. William G. Cook (for a long time in the ranger service of Texas), after some delay and much hardships, from Austin to the mouth of Kiomitia Creek on Red River. It took in White Rock, in what is now Dallas county. In 1840-41 Birds Fort, twenty-two miles west of the present city of Dallas, was built and occupied for a short time by a company of three months' rangers, under Capt. John Bird. After the rangers left several families located there. Late in November, 1841, John Neeley Bryan, a Tennesseean, who had spent some time in the settlements on Red River, camped and erected a tent on the banks of the Trinity, near the site of the present courthouse in Dallas, and remained alone until the succeeding spring, except when visited by persons looking at the country. He was the first settler in Dallas county. In the spring of 1842, several other persons having arrived in the meantime at Bird's Fort, the family of Capt. M. Gilbert being the first and next that of John Beeman, the former in canoes and the latter in an ox wagon, abandoned the fort and removed to Dallas; that of Beeman to remain permanently. Other families followed until quite a settlement was firmly established. Their nearest markets were Houston, two hundred and seventy-five miles be-low, and Shreveport, over two hundred miles by the road on Red River, and in the beginning without roads to either place. The military road was changed from White Rock, four miles distant, to Dallas in 1843, and a village speedily sprung up at the latter place, as the road came to be one of the favorite routes of travel for imigrants to Peters' colony and for persons whose destination was points farther in the interior.